By critically assessing the discourse, intent and teleology of the United Nations Charter when the text of the instrument was being finalised in 1945, this thesis argues that the majority of the world's states gathered at the UN Conference on International Organisation in San Francisco were aware of the fact that the core provisions of the treaty were being dictated by the five permanent members of the Security Council. Nevertheless, these states accepted the Charter in its current form in return for the promise of a more democratic UN in the future. This qualified acceptance was manifested in Article 109 of the Charter and, more specifically, in that article's paragraph 3, which provided for a facilitated Charter review in ten years' time. Recognising that globalisation has outpaced fragmented state-centric global governance, and that world-wide threats in areas such as the violation of human rights, climate change, armed conflicts, and the use of conventional and nuclear weapons continue to exist, this thesis argues that elusive global governance and its instrument of international law are, in the absence of a global government, ill-equipped to deal effectively with these borderless problems. Bridging the governmental gap, however, the UN Security Council, with its monopoly on the use of force in order to maintain "peace and security" under Chapter VII of the Charter, has demonstrated erratic and unplanned competencies. In fact, in the past 25 years, the Council has deployed its auto-interpreted expanded powers in the diverse areas of court-making, law-making, defining criminality and sanctioning non-state actors as criminals. It has even involved itself in the settlement of tort claims, awarding damages to individuals and corporations. The Council has, in effect, emerged at the apex of the legal order and has shown its capacity to legislate globally. The founders, when drafting the Charter, were aware of the democratic and legitimacy deficiencies of the Council and, in order to redress them, and to apply the experiences learned during the UN's first years of operation, provided for a revisions process, including the holding of a Charter review conference, as enshrined in Article 109. Why the UN has never in its 70-year history held such a review conference, and whether paragraph 3 of Article 109-neglected by researchers and politicians-is still in force, are at the core of this thesis's analysis. It will be argued that, if such a review conference is convened now, it would most likely trigger the process of UN constitutionalisation, and thus help transform the UN, so it can ultimately fulfil the objectives set out in the Charter's preamble-including guaranteeing and the protecting the fundamental rights of "we the peoples".

The corpus of the duty to prevent genocide was partially circumscribed for the first time in a court of law in the 2007 Bosnian Genocide case. In that case, the International Court of Justice adopted the due diligence standard to define the scope of the duty to prevent genocide. This standard provides that if a State has the capacity to effectively influence genocidal actors and the knowledge that there exists a serious risk that genocide may occur, then that State must do everything within its power - everything within the means available to it - to prevent the genocide from occurring. While the Court's holding in the Bosnian Genocide case was an important step in the normative development of the duty to prevent genocide, the Court nevertheless neglected to expound the full extent of the scope of the due diligence standard. For instance, the Court's holding did not address whom among the several States of the international order must act, and how such States once identified must act when the duty to prevent genocide is triggered. This dissertation attempts to do so. First, it provides an overview of the obligations laid out it in the Genocide Convention, and expounds the significance of the due diligence standard in the prevention of genocide. Second, it identifies the central role to be played in genocide prevention by the five permanent members of the Security Council (the P5), which, as the 'great powers' of the international order, have the greatest capacity to not only effectively influence genocidal actors but also to remain informed about imminent or ongoing genocides. Third, it explores the manner in and the extent to which the P5 must act within and without the Security Council when faced with an imminent genocide, as dictated by the due diligence standard. Finally, it analyzes the standing of the duty to prevent genocide under customary international law and dispels, through a conflict of norms analysis, any doubts arising from possible conflicting obligations held by the P5 under the UN Charter, in favor of their ultimate duty to prevent the occurrence of genocidal acts. Ultimately, the findings described in this dissertation have significant consequences for not only the duty to prevent genocide, but also the responsibility to protect doctrine, the responsibility not to veto initiative, and the prohibition of the use of force in general. They go beyond the soft spoken political commitments to protect national, ethnic, racial, or religious groups from what has been considered 'the crime of crimes', to flesh-out the self-standing legal value of the duty to prevent genocide, and the consequences thereof to the international community at large. As a result, Everything Within Their Power: The P5's Duty to Prevent Genocide will be of particular interest to scholars and students of international law and international relations.

The shortage of water as a resource is a threat to which both Ethiopia and England are exposed. This vulnerability of the countries necessitates the question of whether existing management systems for water resources will promote the sustainability of such resources. With growing natural resource insecurity over the last fifty years, the tragedy of the commons and the integrated water resources management (IWRM) approach are at the forefront. This study evaluates the tragedy of the commons and the IWRM approach to identify key features of effective water resource management (WRM) systems. The study also assesses the effectiveness of English and Ethiopian systems by reference to their salient features, to explore the extent to which the major facets of an effective system are reflected within the countries water policies and laws. The evaluation demonstrates that in the case study countries, some such factors have already been reflected within their water policies and laws. From the overall review of each countries' water policies, it may be argued that the contemporary policies that are in place generally accommodate some of the main attributes of an effective management system for water resources if they are accompanied by proper water laws, implementation strategies and institutional remits that are designed to promote water security. However, while some key features of an effective WRM system can already be seen in the case study countries' water laws, the initiatives which have been taken are limited and varied. Particularly, in Ethiopian WRM systems, the progress made to incorporate the main elements into binding law were slow. Even if some features have been reflected within the water laws of both jurisdictions, theirs scope is limited and incomprehensive. Moreover, their implementations are weak and incomplete in both jurisdictions. This study demonstrates that there has not been much deviation from the 'traditional' way of managing water resources.

The thesis investigates whether the treatment by the criminal justice system of children who kill in England, starting with the commencement of the police investigation into their crime and ending with the completion of their trial and sentencing processes, has differed over time and if so, the reasons for these differences. It does so by placing a special focus on the adoption of four different concepts of the child, which it develops using the extensive literature available. It carries out its analysis through the exploration of five case studies of children who killed between 1800 and 2000, including the notorious 1993 case of the killing of James Bulger. The thesis draws associations between the approach of different elements of the criminal justice system towards these children and the four concepts of the child and examines their movement over time. It also conducts a comparative analysis with the approaches of the press, public reaction and politicians towards these children, by drawing equivalent associations and observing how they evolve over time. Simultaneously, it observes particular features of the different fields in order to determine their influence over those associations. The thesis concludes that the treatment of these children by the criminal justice system was associated with the various concepts of the child to different degrees over time, though the changes and movements have been to a large extent gradual, unemotional and informed. It also argues that during the late 20th century the approaches of the press, politicians and the public became more erratic and emotional and hence came to deviate substantially from the approach of the criminal justice system. The politicisation of crime, the intense competitiveness of the press and the growing involvement and reactions of the public in matters of juvenile crime, which constituted changes in the three fields during the 1990s, are believed to be instrumental in this divergence. Its findings constitute a platform on which a framework for reform of the treatment within the criminal justice system of children who kill can be founded in the future.

The thesis will examine the extent to which China’s Anti-monopoly Law effectively controls the anti-competitive practices of patent owners when exercising their patent rights. The relationship between intellectual property law and competition law is no longer contradictory but has evolved into a convergent and compatible one. The two bodies of law share the same goals to promote competition, encourage innovation and enhance consumer welfare in different ways. Therefore, it is appropriate and reasonable to apply competition law to regulate the exercise of intellectual property rights in certain circumstances. Given the specificity of patent rights and the legal and economic circumstances of China, the scope of the thesis will be limited to anti-competitive practices of patent owners when exercising their patent rights. The research demonstrates the necessity and importance for China to apply its own Antimonopoly Law to address anti-competitive exercise of patent rights. However, China’s Anti-monopoly Law came into effect in 2008 and it seems not to work as effectively as it was expected in regulating such conduct. Despite great achievements, there are still deficiencies and uncertainty influencing the effective and efficient competition enforcement in the anti-competitive exercise of patent rights. The problems not only arise from China’s internal competition enforcement system but also arise from the lack of clear guidance from the competition enforcement authorities. Facing the challenging competition concerns in the 21st century, there are no effective measures available in China. It is not clear in what circumstances the failure to disclose patent interest in the standard setting process can result in antitrust liabilities and to what extent China’s Anti-monopoly Law should intervene. It is also uncertain how to keep a balance between the protection of patent rights and the maintenance of market competition when considering the seeking of injunctions before national courts by the owners of standard essential patents or the reverse payment patent settlement agreements. Therefore, the thesis aims to provide some solutions to these problems to facilitate and improve the effective application of China’s Anti-monopoly Law to the exercise of patent rights. The proposals made in this thesis will be based on the valuable EU and US enforcement experience and case law but give significant consideration to the legal and economic context in China. The Law is stated as at 6 June 2018.

The governance of private equity-backed companies is a “black box”: relatively little is known about the decision-making structures in these economically important businesses. This thesis looks inside that black box and, by studying the corporate governance arrangements in a unique sample of predominantly small and mid-size UK private equity-backed companies, proposes a theory to explain them. The dominant theoretical framework for UK legal scholars is grounded in the notion that separation of ownership and control within large companies creates an “agency problem” which either the market, or regulators, or a combination of both, needs to fix. In this thesis, I explain the structure of the typical private equity-backed company and conclude that – although there is no separation of ownership and control in the sense that the shareholders lack economic incentives and wherewithal to intervene – agency problems do need to be solved by private ordering, and I describe how that is achieved in practice. However, I also describe two parallel functions of the decision-making structures that are established: to ensure that the company makes better, and more legitimate, decisions; and to protect the specific and separate interests of the investor. I then explore how well these three objectives can be achieved within the framework set by UK company law, and the ways in which the actors adopt or vary default rules, and seek to contract around apparently mandatory rules, in order to accommodate their multiple objectives. In the final part of this thesis, I describe the evidence that private equity-backed companies outperform their peers, and consider existing empirical research that seeks to explain that outperformance. I argue that the corporate governance systems are a significant explanatory factor and that, by re-conceptualising private equity corporate governance in the way that I have suggested, we can adopt alternative academic frameworks to better understand the drivers of that outperformance. Finally, I draw out lessons for policy-makers and practitioners and suggest avenues for future research.

International lawyers talk about housing but rarely about home. This is surprising when one considers that home is central to everyday life in the world. Home is the navel of our daily journeys and an arbiter of the transitions we make during our life course. The image of ‘home as haven’ conjures a place liberated from fear, emotionally noble and natural, a metaphor for comfort, solidarity and protection. Yet home throughout the world is far from this ideal. Home destruction, forced eviction, displacement, distress sales, dispossession, repossession, unaffordability and homelessness are also emblematic experiences of home. As the desire for home is twinned with increasing anxieties about it arising from the pressures and possibilities of globalisation and its attendant spatial transformations, economic crisis, political realignment and escalating social inequality, the need to ask how the intimate realm of home is linked to the norms, ambitions and contradictions of global phenomena and the international legal regimes that relate to them is extensive. While home is not a well-developed concept in international law, in this thesis I argue that international law is in fact already present at home. Through three studies of home set in different contexts, I illustrate some of the ways that international law gets involved in transformations of home. I suggest that international law’s ‘homemaking’ work can have devastating effects and that these effects are frequently ignored or elided by scholars and lawmakers in the field. Nonetheless, I also argue that the concept of home can be understood as an analytical tool which opens up a terrain of experience – of loss, suffering and struggle but also radical engagement and expanded agency – that is not captured or expressed in international law. Taking a global socio-legal perspective and a critical geographic approach to home, this thesis traces how international law reaches into, takes place in, and gives shape to everyday life in relation to home. While the main aim of the thesis is to draw international law scholars’ attention to home, it also contributes to methodological discussions among international law scholars working at the interface of the local and the global and especially those scholars interested in the everyday life of international law.

In October 2012, a small claims track was introduced in the Patents County Court, as a forum for low-value copyright, trade mark, unregistered design and passing off claims. This thesis presents the results of a socio-legal empirical investigation into the first three years of claims in this court, renamed the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court in October 2013. The investigation takes the stated policy goal of the introduction of the IP Small Claims Track, which was to improve access to justice for SMEs, and explores whether this was in fact achieved for creative SMEs, using a four-part framework. Access to justice is explored through who uses the court during this period, the procedural and substantive justice these litigants experienced and the access to justice implications for wider society from the data. This thesis demonstrates one particular creative group has enthusiastically embraced the IPEC Small Claims Track, namely freelance photographers, but that uptake by other creative businesses has been low. Further difficulties with court procedure and timescale of cases indicate that litigants may struggle to access procedural justice. With only half of claims actively defended, and defence important in how the case progresses, there also appears to be issues with the substantive justice the court can be seen to deliver. This thesis therefore concludes that any improvement in access to justice for creative SMEs is partial only.

This thesis addresses the problem of environmental degradation and human rights abuses by Multinational Corporations (MNCs) operating in developing markets, which has been attributed to the difficulty in regulating modern MNCs. Three main factors that create the environment for corporate impunity for human rights and environmental abuse in developing markets as identified by current scholarship are the mismatch between the modern corporate structure and the rules of corporate law, the insensitivity of the governments of developing markets to the plight of human rights victims, and the general lack of access to judicial and administrative remedies. However, even though the current corporate legal architecture is one of the factors that contribute to corporate human rights and environmental regulatory challenge, emerging regulatory initiatives that seek to address the problem do not consider corporate law reform as one of the options that could resolve the challenge. This thesis challenges the current scholarship and regulatory focus on remedial solution to the problem and investigates existing regimes. This investigation focuses on two areas. First, it focuses on international human rights law and international environmental law, and, secondly, on the legal and regulatory regimes concerned with the corporation, human rights and the environment in Nigeria and selected major developed market jurisdictions. The thesis identifies the current procedures for applying international norms to MNCs as the major problem with the international regimes, and the weak and inefficient enforcement infrastructure in Nigeria and other developing markets as the major problem with holding MNCs accountable for human rights and environmental abuses in developing markets. As a result, the thesis argues that the regulatory challenge could be addressed by focusing on MNC activities at the national level, and suggests a shift from the remedial focus of the current regimes to a preventative approach. The thesis proposes a review of the corporate legal architecture to incorporate the group that is most affected by corporate externalities into corporate boards because that is where the decisions that generate the abuses are made. The thesis concludes with a blueprint for the proposed structure which is aimed at promoting responsible human rights and environmental friendly decision-making as a means of injecting human rights responsibility into corporate decision making, and addressing the problem of corporate human rights and environmental abuses, especially in developing markets.

This thesis presents three essays on intellectual property and the managerial aspect of its protection end exploitation. The first essay provides a systematic review of the empirical trademark literature with the goal to develop a framework that brings together different research streams. Despite its relative youth, this field of scholarly inquiry has already accumulated a critical mass of contributions that allow us to draw initial conclusions about the trademark lifecycle and its multifaceted impact on organisational functioning. Based on a systematic review of 64 academic papers containing some elements of empirical trademark analysis, five broad research areas have been identified, namely: the determinants of trademark deposits; the role of trademarks in differentiating product offerings; the relationship between trademarks and innovation activities; the strategic use of trademarks; and the impact of trademarks on firm performance. Overall, the analysis reveals that the performance-based perspective currently dominates the research landscape, with studies on trademark deposits and the trademark-innovation link to follow. At the same time, there is still relatively little known about the micro-foundations of a firm's trademarking behaviour; the complementary use of trademarks and other intellectual property rights, including its effect on value transference; and the performance implications of different trademark strategies. This essay accounts for these and other findings to outline directions for future research. The second essay focuses on the managerial aspects of intellectual property strategy. Often scholars refer to intellectual property protection as an auxiliary concept that assists in building up or proving an argument about the innovation process. By contrast, this research focuses on intellectual property strategy per se, placing specific emphasis on its managerial dimension. It adopts the upper echelons approach to examine the extent to which CEO characteristics contribute towards the variance in patent and trademark applications. Guided by the resource-based view of the firm, it suggests three areas of resource expertise – legal, scientific, and business – each of which is likely to have a distinct influence on how the chief executive perceives and subsequently responds to intellectual property issues. This proposition is further extended by incorporating the possession of general skills and the moderating role of proactive personality in the overall conceptual framework. The empirical analysis of a sample of 848 CEOs in 261 U.S. publicly-traded companies over the period 1992-2013 generally confirms the contention that executive characteristics are an important determinant for predicting the outcomes of intellectual property strategy. As such, the study reinforces the ongoing academic debate on the need to account for the managerial aspect when considering the strategic decision processes. The third essay offers an extensive analysis of how executive demography affects differentiation strategy. Previous studies of competitive strategy have provided some support for aligning CEO personality traits with product differentiation. This essay suggests further refinement of these findings and extends them by considering a wider range of managerial characteristics proposed in subsequent research. By integrating the upper echelons perspective with the hierarchical view of strategy, this work also draws attention to channels through which chief executives influence organisational outcomes. It particularly argues that along with direct involvement, decisions made by the CEO regarding corporate strategy will affect the extent of product differentiation, too. The empirical testing is based on a sample of 821 chief executives in 259 U.S. publicly traded companies over the period 1992-2013. Using trademarks to measure product differentiability, this research has demonstrated that executive tenure, age, education, functional experience, monetary incentives, CEO duality, and the founder and owner statuses – all this is statistically significant for explaining variations in differentiation strategy across companies, even after when firm and industry-specific effects are controlled for. Furthermore, it has also been shown that chief executives leverage different characteristics, depending on the type of involvement and the strategy level at which they make decisions. By confirming CEO biases that guide product differentiation, this research also contributes to the broader discussion on the importance of accounting for human interpretation in the strategy making process.