This thesis probes the limits of concepts and practices in criminal law through an interdisciplinary analysis of vulnerability and gender, shown through the case study of women who act as drug mules and have been sentenced for drug importation offences in England and Wales. While this thesis critiques the current state of drug control and how international drug law characterizes drug trafficking as crime carried out by ‘evil’ and ‘greedy’ offenders, the enquiry is much broader because it questions role of criminal law in the severe punishment of drug mules. Discourses on the vulnerability of drug mules expose the difficulties of judging them solely as threatening traffickers and highlight the particular effects and situation of women participating in the international drug trade. Rather than accepting the victim-offender dichotomy given by legal categories, this thesis suggests that the ambivalent construction of drug mules’ legal subjectivity evinces a deep-seated contradiction in criminal law. The strict frameworks within criminal law labelling actors into either victims or offenders are ways in which the ambiguity intrinsic in human action and embodied social life are denied while shaping and perpetuating a heterosexist models of legal subjectivity. Drawing on phenomenology, critical theory, and feminist legal theory, the thesis offers a critique of legal subjectivity and the grounds of criminal law from the perspective of gender and vulnerability. Specifically, it maps the effects of disembodying legal personhood and notions of subjectivity in Western liberalism, noting in particular how they can lead to violent practices in law and politics which securitize physical and political bodies in pursuit of an ideal of invulnerability. Disembodiment is not only a modality of living which alienates embodiment from history, gender and relationality, but it also facilitates gendered forms of violence. While this project contests relations of invulnerability by rethinking embodied vulnerability, there are also important challenges for feminist scholars in foregrounding the body of women in criminal law. The interdisciplinary gender analysis presented here suggests that describing drug mules as vulnerable offenders alone cannot provide justice to these offenders because it can reify the logic of invulnerability. Thus, we need to understand what the modes of relations with the vulnerable body are and how these relationships to vulnerability are re-inscribed in legal, scholarly, and political discourse. Although vulnerability discourses can be totalized into existing norms of subjectivity in criminal law, namely feminized victims and masculinized agents, this project also gestures towards imagining vulnerability otherwise. This involves holding space for ethical ambiguity in the encounters between law and gender occurring in the context of neoliberal precarity and securitized drug policies.

The thesis examines the emergence and development of the financial capability project in the United Kingdom. It investigates how consumer financial literacy education came to be increasingly deployed by policy makers and financial regulators to govern financial markets and to protect consumers. The thesis focuses on and unpacks a number of different practices and processes that constitute and support the project on financial capability. It looks at some of the predominant discourses surrounding the legitimization of consumer financial education and explains the underlying rationale for this novel regulatory approach. To explore different configurations of regulatory techniques used to protect consumers, the thesis studies three sites where distinct financial capability initiatives were rolled out in the UK context. The first site unpacks the financial capability measure and documents in detail the financial knowledge practices that are used to define and determine what is considered to be high or low levels of consumer financial capability. The second site describes how the project on personal finance education was carried out in English schools. It interrogates the activities of Personal finance education group (Pfeg) – the principal promoter of financial school education – and exposes different ways in which Pfeg’s major financial donors have informed and shaped the UK’s national strategy on financial education at schools. The third site looks at the regulation of the provision of financial advice in the UK. It probes into the assumptions about consumer financial decision-making that form the basis and rationale for consumer protection and state intervention via the provision of financial advice. The thesis terms these sites as ‘edu-regulatory’ in order to illustrate how financial information, financial education and financial advice are utilised to govern consumer behaviour and financial markets. The analysis of three edu-regulatory sites shows that the underlying rationale for this novel regulatory approach is the democratisation of financial knowledge. The project on financial capability presupposes that greater consumer access to financial information, financial education, and financial advice equips consumers with knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to govern themselves and financial markets. Borrowing ideas and findings from social studies of finance, the thesis cautions against this newly emerging approach to consumer protection. It argues that the project on financial capability promotes access to financial knowledge which is highly de-contextualised. This de-contextualisation simplifies consumer financial decision-making and ignores the socio-economic, cultural and political environment within which consumers make their choices. Despite grand claims about consumer empowerment that tends to accompany the financial capability project, the thesis highlights important limitations to such edu-regulatory techniques. It argues that consumer decision-making is highly complex and contextual, thus, financial knowledge gained as a result of financial capability programmes will always intersect with the environment. Consumer protection policies based on edu-regulation has the potential to shift regulatory focus from structural problems present in financialised, political economies to individuals. The financial capability project largely ignores the importance of these circumstances to financial decision-making processes. Instead, it mis-attributes them to consumers’ lack of understanding and their inability to successfully navigate the financialised world. The thesis suggests that consumer financial education fails to strengthen consumer protection or reduce consumer exposure to financial risks. The financial capability project contributes to further marginalisation of consumers who are the least capable of managing their financial and economic lives through mere information, education and advice.

Around 3.3 million people are remand prisoners worldwide, and remand imprisonment affects an excess of 14 million people per year (OSF Justice Initiative, 2014). In Turkey, around 70 per cent of young prisoners are on remand in the newly emerging high security prisons called Children's Closed Institutions for Execution of Punishment (and adult prisons). The remaining 30 per cent are sentenced and received by an open type of prisons known as Juvenile Education Houses. The very specific nature of remand imprisonment occupies little space in imprisonment and penal theories and governmentality studies. Remand imprisonment is either considered as a bureaucratic phase in the prosecution system or approached and criticized within human rights violations (right to fair trial and presumption of innocence). In this thesis I argue that the language of human rights impedes critiques that explore and deconstruct remand imprisonment within penal culture and penal politics in Turkey. The stability in the high proportion and the emergence of high security prisons for remanded youth in Turkey lead the researcher to presume that youth remand imprisonment acquires roles within crime control, and social control that could be comprehended within a look through Turkey's governmentality that would draw a picture of its legal culture. So, this thesis explores the role(s) of remand imprisonment in the juvenile justice system in Turkey by situating remand imprisonment in the centre of penal politics. The essential conceptual tools of prison studies including 'labour/discipline', 'time' and 'space' are analysed in this thesis. The diversity of young defendants charged with drug dealing, crimes against property, bodily injury, murder, sexual offences, and political offences in Turkey calls for a comprehensive method of thought. By adopting a study of Biopolitics, as a method of thought (Foucault, 2007, 2008; Lemke 2001, 2011b, Dean 2010, Rose 1996), I scrutinize the roles of remand imprisonment in Turkey's penal politics in relation to Turkey's political economy, its sovereign power relations with the citizens and in relation to the knowledge production/adaptation in its criminal justice system. Within Biopolitics, 'as the politics of optimizing life of the population,' I consider both the relation between the political economy and penal culture as situated within a revisionist history of imprisonment (Rusche and Kircheimmer, 2003; Melossi and Pavarini, 1981; Foucault, 1977; Foucault 1980), and also discuss the manifestation of sovereign power (Agamben, 1998, 2005) of the state towards youth in conflict with the law. I investigate the mode of knowledge production and adaptation in the youth justice system. I specifically concentrate on the effect of the prevalence of the language of rights on youth remand imprisonment in Turkey, and draw on the sociology of human rights literature to aid my analysis. I approach human rights as a socially constructed language embedded in the liberalism movement of Enlightenment, and demonstrate its compatibility with the quest for security through spatial control, at times when social security remains weak. The primary data for this thesis comes from qualitative interviews, observations, and document analysis conducted in Turkish courtrooms and prisons, as well as production of statistical knowledge based on the Ministry of Justice data. Based on the idea that 'law in action' or 'law in context' (Nelken, 2001) can be different than 'law in the books', explaining the praxis and meaning of remand imprisonment calls for an interpretive understanding (Weber, 1978) of meanings different figures attach to their action. In this thesis I scrutinize what meanings and purposes these different actors attach to remand imprisonment by analysing the data generated from interviews with 50 young prisoners in 6 different prisons (Ankara, İstanbul, İzmir, Konya), as well as interviews with 38 youth justice professionals, constituted by prosecutors, lawyers, judges and social work officials, plus information from 65 hearings in three different Turkish courtrooms (Ankara, İstanbul, İzmir). Analysis of the data in governmentality demonstrates that remand imprisonment has evolved into a spatial crime control mechanism in the 'managerialist' conduct of the youth justice system. In this managerialist governmentality where professionalism over social security remains immature, the imagined self-sufficient, self-contained, invulnerable and decontextualized liberal, rational young defendant in the liberal rights discourse, is managed securely in the youth justice system through spatial control. Findings from this research demonstrate that youth remand imprisonment works as a first resort deterrence and control mechanism of security in Turkey, especially for those charged with offences related to drugs and property. The findings also show how youth remand imprisonment is rationalized and neutralized as sovereign power's expression of just desert, as remand imprisonment is not distinguished from prison sentence. The research data also fulfills an administrative control mechanism of evidence collection. So the diverse population of young remand prisoners are all 'managed' (Feeley and Simon, 1992; Bottoms, 1995) within the same regime of high security prisons that I call 'bureaucratic disposal resort'. This thesis adds a novel and needed contribution to the revisionist approach to imprisonment by analysing remand imprisonment as a crime control mechanism in Biopolitics through the country's political economy and its relations of sovereign power. Findings from the research provide an innovative platform to discuss the compatible relationship between the human rights discourse and the practice of remand imprisonment as a spatial crime control mechanism.

This thesis addresses the subject of women magistrates in England and Wales from their introduction in 1919 and the work subsequently performed by the early women JPs until the late 1940s. Surprisingly, despite the great volume of work on women’s history during the last few decades, historians have not researched this subject in detail. While only a handful of women have become professional judges in this country, many thousands have sat in judgement on their follow citizens as lay justices. This duty is both voluntary and unpaid but it is, along with jury service, a vitally important aspect of citizenship. It is argued herein that this exercise of citizenship through the magistracy was an ongoing concern of feminists and of women’s organisations in the period. Not only did the magistracy change women by making them equal citizens, but also women changed the magistracy, by pioneering modern ideas in the work of the JP and presaging a new, quasi-professional approach. Part One examines the process by which women were brought into the lay magistracy. Chapter One locates the origins of the campaign for the appointment of women as JPs in the women’s suffrage movement and demonstrates that the necessary legislation was largely uncontroversial. Chapter Two analyses the ongoing campaign by women’s organisations and their abilities to bring more women to the magisterial bench. Chapter Three explores the relationship between the emergence of a separate system of criminal justice for juveniles and the creation of women magistrates. Part Two seeks to establish to what extent the ‘woman magistrate’ was a new category. Chapter Four analyses the social backgrounds of the first women appointed as JPs. Chapter Five is concerned with women’s experience of the magistracy, which is examined mostly through their own words. Chapter Six focuses on networks and organisations of women JPs and the campaigns they took part in, and argues that they adopted a distinctly feminist approach to their role. It is concluded that - up to a point - the early women JPs were a new type of magistrate, providing a template for future developments in the lay magistracy after 1950.

Advances in information technology have enabled the design and development of innovations in business methods. This is particularly felt with IT enabled innovations such as Sun Microsystems' stateless shopping Cart for the web which is a Web shopping cart system that does not require any data files to be maintained on either the client or the server.Firms attempt to leverage these innovations to gain competitive advantages through cost reduction and other quality improvements, which may also pass some benefits on to consumers. However, such competitive advantages are increasingly difficult to sustain because business method innovations are often easy to copy or imitate. Quick and cheap imitation of innovative products and processes may reduce the incentives for firms to invest further in innovation. Thus, patent protection for business method inventions became a live issue with different on outcomes as between the US and Europe. At present, in the US business method patents are legally recognised since the State Street Bank decision, 149 F. 3d 1368 (US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit 1998). However, the European Patent Office (EPO) still is noncommittal although some business method-related inventions have been granted de factoprotection by EPO suchas Hitachi Ltd's automatic trading method and apparatus (EP 567 291), the Western Union Company's method and system for performing money transfer transactions (EP 848 361) etc. John Stuart Mill (1909) said "the superiority of one country over another, in a branch of production, often arises only from having begun it sooner".1 So it seems that the uncertainty of EPO's attitude to business method patents may result in a serious negative impact in European industry and economy. This thesis sets out to examine what precisely are the attitudes of the US and European institutions to business method patents and to explain what is the present law and how it has arisen. The author thereafter carries out an evaluation of the rationed economic and social effects of allowing / disallowing Business Method Patents and to address the question of whether Europe should adopt patent protections for business method–related inventions. To address these questions, the research focuses on the following questions: (1) under the current legal framework provided by EPC what business method–related inventions can be granted European patent? (2 )whether business method –related inventions are worth protecting by the patents in Europe. To answer the latter question, the thesis not only analyses the predictable economic and social effects of allowing or alternatively disallowing business method protections generally, but we also discuss “patent quality” which is used by US patent economists to analyse whether business method inventions have a sufficient value to justify the granting of exclusive patent rights in return for disclosure of the inventions' specifications to the public. In analysing the predictable and likely economic and social effects of allowing or alternatively disallowing business method protections, the US position in patenting business method –related inventions needs to be considered, therefore the thesis also evaluates the US patent legal framework for business method patents and contrasts it with the European position. Through analysis of the relevant provisions and decisions, the research has concluded that under the current legal framework business method apparatus inventions are patentable in Europe if they can meet the patentability requirements of the European Patent Convention (EPC). To the effect that if a business method process invention is achieved by a technical means, solves a technical problem, or achieves a technical effect, it is often patentable in Europe provided it meets the EPC patentability requirements. However, turning to the evaluation of the economic effects of business method patents, economic analysis cannot find strong evidence to support increasing the current protections for business method patents. At the same time, the economic analysis also cannot find strong evidence to oppose present protections for business method patents. But when the US position is considered, infringement risk would favour it for it appears on balance that there may be some reason to think that Europe should adopt stronger protections for business method patents. Furthermore, the value of disclosing patented business method–related inventions' specifications seems also to show that accepting business method patents is an appropriate choice for Europe. 1 Mill, J. S.,1909. Principles of Political Economy.7thed. London: Longmans Green. p. 78

This thesis aims to identify and solve the agency problems in the life cycle of private equity (PE) investment under the commercial law system in China by comparing the legislative and adjudicative practices in the United Kingdom (UK) and other related jurisdictions. Based on transaction cost economics as the theoretical foundation of this research, the agency problems of PE investment derive from the two-level separation of ownership and control, one of which is the principal–agent relationship between the PE investors and the fund manager, and the other is the principal–agent relationship between the PE shareholders and the management of investee companies. As effective institutional solvers to agency problems, fiduciary duties as default rules have been widely developed and practised in common law countries to protect the interests of PE investors. Subject to the strong dependency on judicial practices, however, the economic function of fiduciary duties may not be fulfilled properly in the jurisdictions without a sound and independent judicial system such as that in China. Therefore, the logical purpose of this research was to find a series of feasible and costefficient approaches to reduce the agency costs in governance of three organizational structures that are involved in PE investments under Chinese legal and regulatory regimes, namely the limited partnership, business trust and corporation. As the society and economy of the UK are developed along a free-market and liberalistic ideology, the contractual freedom as the core spirit of the UK‘s commercial law has been widely accepted and recognized in both legislative and adjudicative activities. Thus, both the decision-making rules in PE funds and corporate governance of portfolio companies in the UK are also labelled as showing high respect for contractual autonomy. The protective rules sprung from common law and equity in relation to the laws of business organizations and trusts also provide flexible approaches for reducing agency costs in PE investment. Hence, this thesis especially underlines the reference to, and transplantation of, the contractual techniques of the UK‘s business organization law for enhancing investor protection of the Chinese PE industry, by which the negative impacts of political intervention and uncertainty in judicial practices may be effectively constrained. In addition, in order to make this analysis more comprehensive and objective, this thesis also refers to the institutional transplantation of trusts and corporate governance in not only continental and mixed jurisdictions, but also several typical transitional economies in the world. Based on, and beyond, the aforementioned research, this thesis argues that the basic legal framework of PE has undoubtedly been established in China. This notwithstanding, the strong state capitalistic ideology and authoritarian interest pattern still seriously impede the legal reform towards a more market-directed and investor-protection-oriented institutional construction. In a broader sense, another conclusion may also be put forward, namely that the transplantation of different business organizations across jurisdictions are determined by the distribution of the costs of protecting investors. As a brief model, the costs of investor protection are divided into internal and external approaches; the former refers to the cost of contractual arrangements within business organizations and the latter to the costs that are generated from the judicial and regulatory activities outside business organizations. Based on a detailed economic analysis of the main types of business organizations, this research concludes that 1) when the organizational and non-organizational protective approaches generate equal costs, such an organizational form should be most widely applicable and transplantable; and 2) the success of such legal transplantation depends on whether the gross costs of protecting investors can be reasonably distributed by the organizations and regulatory and judicial systems. The developing path of the commercial law system in China may preliminarily illustrate the above thesis, while more detailed studies may be developed infuture.

This thesis uses a mixed methods approach utilising questionnaires, focus groups and interviews to explore how and why an embedded professional association may act to alter a longstanding trait of its profession. Focussing on the trait of social closure at the English Bar, it uses an access programme (Pegasus Access and Support Scheme - PASS) created by a professional association of the Bar (The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple) as a case study. Social closure occurs through mechanisms controlling access to the profession. Whilst formal and explicit exclusionary strategies existed historically, more informal exclusionary barriers still operate. These indirectly disadvantage those from lower socio-economic backgrounds as they emphasise aspirant entrants’ social capital and habituation to the social norms of the Bar. One way in which these attributes can be assimilated or increased is through mini-pupillage; work experience in barristers’ chambers. PASS provides mini-pupillage opportunities to non-traditional aspirant entrants. More widely, it could be construed as a challenge to exclusionary recruitment practices. However, such a challenge requires that the conceptions of merit underlying exclusionary recruitment practices, as well as the practices themselves, are altered. By maintaining the privilege attached to mini-pupillage, PASS was not as radical as sometimes portrayed. The educational and social contexts of students participating in the programme also influenced its efficacy. A challenge to patterns of social closure requires a collaboration between the professional association’s elite, and salaried staff with specialist knowledge of access and education from other professional backgrounds. This emphasises the role of individuals and agency in such action. Despite the general diminished power of professional associations, there remains potential for innovative action. This is realised when the attributes of the professional association combine with acts of agency by individuals which cause elite influence and alternative institutional logics to mutually reinforce one another.

The question of the thesis is ‘How to enhance the effectiveness of the Vietnamese judiciary in dealing with intellectual property rights cases toward the compliance with requirements of the TRIPs Agreement?’. The critical themes in this thesis are how a developing country at the low level of development as in the case of Vietnam, with various distinctiveness in term of economy, society, culture, politics, or legality can enhance its judicial effectiveness in dealing with IP cases in order to fulfil its international obligations under TRIPs Agreement. Despite the importance of the issue, there has not been any research on the first integration of Vietnamese judiciary in line with international regulations on IPRs protection and enforcement applicable to all WTO member states. This thesis will also examine impacts of this international compliance for the Vietnamese judiciary in particular, and to this South East Asian country in general. After analysing the critical situation of IPRs infringements in Vietnam, which lie behind an impetus for change, the thesis will review the historical development of IPRs and main provisions of the TRIPs Agreement. Next, the thesis will examine the definition of judicial effectiveness in special reference to minimum standards as provided in the TRIPs Agreement. I will argue that judicial effectiveness in enforcing IPRs can not be improved to comply with the TRIPs Agreement unless judiciary’s capacity in preventing and deterring IP infringements, judicial organisation and knowledge, and other factors involving legal procedures are enhanced. In the light of above analysis, I will analyse the judicial organisation and legal knowledge in dealing with IP cases, and the adequacy of legislation concerning judicial measures for IPRs enforcement. I will also argue that any content of the reform of Vietnamese judiciary to comply with TRIPs Agreement must take into account, inter alia, the distinctiveness of Vietnamese judiciary, and other unique factors of this country in terms of its economy, society, politic and culture.

This thesis centres on the principal question of the existence of intellectual property law between 1945 and 1994 in Vietnam, and related issues that flow therefrom. A common orthodoxy held that there was no real intellectual property law in the country until the early 1980s, and that the law has been a feature of the Vietnamese legal system only since 1981. This common belief is shared by an absolute majority of scholars, lawyers, and practitioners, both domestic and foreign, who have studied the intellectual property law of Vietnam. This thesis will seek to disprove that belief by drawing on extensive archival evidence, to reconstruct, for the first time, a unique, ignored system of laws regulating copyright, patent, and trade mark, among other kinds of intellectual property protection, in existence between 1945 and 1994. In fact, the existing system of intellectual property law was composed of two main sources. The first component part is comprised of a large corpus of colonial laws from France and a small number of indigenous provisions developed by local governments modelled after the French laws, as well as a unique and local common law practice in relation to intellectual property rights which has been recorded since the seventeenth century. This part of the system dated as far back as 1864 and lasted theoretically until 1955 within the context of a colonial and semi-feudal society. The second part, addressed in the principal part of this thesis, is the theory and practice of socialist law. This part was introduced into Vietnam as early as 1945. At first, it was a supplementation to the established, continued body of colonial laws but, subsequently, from the late 1950s, it evolved to become the principal system, replacing the old laws within the framework of socialist legality, upholding the dictatorship of the proletariat and a centrally planned economy. Since 1986, Vietnam has embarked on a radically different route to develop intellectual property law in compliance with various bilateral and international intellectual property and free trade treaties. Consequently, this socialist intellectual property law was finally displaced as of 1994, as the result of various reforms driving the country towards a market-based economy under a rule of law state.

This thesis is the conclusion of doctoral research that pursued to examine whether indigenous peoples’ demands for access to their cultural practices can be accommodated within criminal law. In a globalised context in which states become increasingly multicultural this question raises fear of social fragmentation and the anxiety for achieving unity. Certainly, Rwanda and Kosovo evidence that claims to access culturally diverse practices may lead to war or even genocide. The context of the thesis is a more benign form of response to these claims: accommodation. While accommodation in general has received great attention from scholars (Kymlicka 1989, Gutmann et al 1994, Tully 1995), within criminal law the only focus has been cultural defences (Renteln 2004, Kymlicka et al 2014). However, little research has been conducted to understand the broader implications of this phenomenon for both the accommodated and the accommodating. The research aims to shed light on these broader implications of accommodation by exploring it within criminal law. Certainly, the simplicity and individualised nature of cultural defence conceals what is at stake for both the accommodated and the accommodating. Specifically, it conceals how criminal law cannot be responsive to the claims of minorities because it seeks to maintain the practices of the constitutional order of which criminal law is part. The result is that the claims of indigenous peoples cannot be accommodated. In order to uncover these implications, the research employs social holism (Pettit 1998) to develop a broader understanding of criminal law as a socio-cultural practice, which enables an adequate description and assessment of the diversity of claims to recognition that minorities make to the state of which they are part. In broadening the view the claims of minorities become linked to their position within the constitutional order (Tully 1995), and then the question arises as to whether minorities have been unjustly excluded or included (Lindahl 2013) in that order, which may lead to recognise a new plurality of responses that the state and its criminal law should provide to them. By broadening the understanding of criminal law it is enabled an adequate framework for the assessment of the phenomenon of accommodation. Certainly, this is necessary for claims to access diverse cultural and social practices to be met with justice, for the state’s responses need to be sensitive to the diversity of claims put forward by minorities, without overlooking that the state as well need to access its particular social and cultural practices.