This thesis examines whether the rule against torture and ill-treatment in international human rights law could be interpreted to provide more effective protection to older people from key forms of mistreatment which they frequently experience. The thesis' inquiry is prompted by the current disagreement at the United Nations over whether the universal human rights framework contains 'normative gaps' or merely 'implementation gaps' regarding older people. The thesis argues that there are doctrinal shortcomings in the anti-torture framework as currently understood, which prevent the norm from effectively protecting older people in contexts of deprivation of liberty, lack of access to adequate care and impunity for 'historic' torture or ill-treatment. The thesis contends that these doctrinal limitations stem from conceptual paradigms developed without consideration of older people's experiences and from the tendency for discriminatory structures and attitudes in society and law to obscure older people's rights violations. The thesis proposes that dignity reasoning could guide and facilitate the norm's interpretation in order to more effectively protect older people. Maintaining that dignity is the core value underpinning the norm, the thesis proffers a substantive conception of a dignity violation that would shed light on older people's human experiences of torture or ill-treatment, thus challenging the norm's current formalistic constraints. A cornerstone of the proposed conception of a dignity violation is the idea of vulnerability. The thesis argues that an understanding of vulnerability as inherent or situational powerlessness would allow for the identification of structural causes of older people's mistreatment, which could be addressed by adaptation of the norm's positive obligations. By investigating the need and potential to address doctrinal shortcomings within the existing international human rights normative framework, the thesis provides a perspective that has been missing from the debate over a dedicated instrument on the rights of older people. The thesis also makes a unique contribution to scholarly analysis of the meaning and functions of dignity and vulnerability in human rights adjudication.

The thesis conducts a review of the US Alien Tort Statute (ATS) to determine how it may be used to improve the prospects of international law enforcement in national courts, particularly with regard to international human rights law. Analysis follows case law under the statute and deals with a series of discreet issues that have arisen in US courts. An argument is made in earlier chapters that the ATS may be used to improve the prospects of international law enforcement if US judges voluntarily adopt legal standards issued by international courts and tribunals. Later chapters examine case law from the US Supreme Court to assess how the statute may improve international law enforcement in the future. Particular areas of interest are the extraterritorial application of US law, corporate liability for international law violations, how to manage the foreign policy implications of the statute, and the possibility of a similar legislative development in the UK. The thesis concludes that the ATS may be used to improve the prospects of international law enforcement in key areas, which are identified by an examination of case law.

This thesis looks at the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency Scheme. This is a green tax on energy consumption that targets large businesses not already covered by the EU ETS or CCAs. The CRC has been reformed on numerous occasions and will now come to an end in 2019. Importantly, the CRC has received relatively little academic attention, especially in legal scholarship. Drawing upon 31 original, semi structured interviews with regulatees, solicitors and the Environment Agency; and a quantitative analysis of emissions under the scheme, this PhD will begin to tell the story of how the CRC has been perceived by those who pay it. This is an account of how different regulatory aspects send deeper messages to regulatees. In particular, this thesis considers: stability; competence of the regulator; nudging; positive incentives; and the efficiency of the CRC. As such, this thesis draws on a wide range of literature in order to analyse the above themes in light of the original data from the empirical study. This thesis concludes that how regulation is packaged and presented to regulatees is critical and can affect how they engage with a regulatory scheme such as the CRC.

This thesis uses a socio-legal methodology to investigate how mental capacity law balances protection and empowerment of vulnerable adults in cases concerning capacity to: consent to sex, marry and decide on contact. The thesis questions answered are: 1) Who is understood to be vulnerable in mental capacity law and why? 2) To what extent do vulnerable adults participate in mental capacity law proceedings? 3) What forms of knowledge are valued in mental capacity law? 4) How do mental capacity law interventions balance protection and empowerment in relation to adults vulnerable to abuse? These questions are answered by analysing empirical data collected through Court of Protection observations, case file reviews and social worker interviews. I argue that mental capacity law views its subjects as inherently vulnerable, usually because of their disability, in contrast to viewing adults as being vulnerable for situational reasons. Contributing to vulnerability theory, I argue that vulnerability needs to be understood in situational, embodied and relational terms, rather than as caused by features inherent to the individual, such as their mental disability. Viewing adults as vulnerable in situational ways can lead to more nuanced interventions to protect them from abuse whilst ensuring they are empowered as decision-makers.

Despite the existence of a robust international human rights legal framework, Traveller accommodation continues to be a complex and controversial area of human rights in Ireland. Among the many challenges are a lack of delivery of existing legislative obligations, the criminalisation of nomadism, political volatility and an enduring and institutionalised racism. Collectively, these difficulties have resulted in a form of assimilation in practice among Irish Travellers. In order to unpack this complexity and explore routes to improved delivery of accommodation, this thesis moves past doctrinal and policy accounts of Traveller accommodation rights to an empirically-informed analysis of what takes place in practice. This thesis is centrally concerned with the question of how the international human right to culturally appropriate housing is operationalised in Ireland in the case of Traveller accommodation and how that operationalisation might be improved upon. I argue that, to the extent that it is operationalised, this is done through hybrid structures that are often informal or, at least, not formally constituted. This implicates the sub-question: would a formal recognition of hybridity result in improved operationalisation of this right? I argue that it would.

Post-conflict law is an area of law that is a composite of a number of different legal categories. The fragmented nature of post-conflict law leads to a lack of clarity in relation to a number of different issue areas. These have been discussed under the rubric of ‘the jus post bellum’ concept which has attracted a considerable amount of attention from international lawyers. Its proponents argue that it is useful in terms of clarifying the law as it applies during transitions. Several theories of the jus post bellum can be identified. This thesis evaluates the practical and theoretical application of two jus post bellum theories in relation to child soldier perpetrators in transitional criminal justice in post-conflict Colombia.

The clash between religious belief and sexual orientation has become a key flashpoint in modern rights struggles. A decade after the first recognition of lesbians and gay men in UK equality law, the conflict continues to be played out in domestic courts and in the European Court of Human Rights. This conflict is a microcosm of the wider relationship between law, religion and homosexuality, and the discursive techniques deployed by legal and political actors – of which liberal rights discourse plays a key role. This thesis uses a Foucaultian-informed Queer lens to analyse the discourses and underpinning structures that limit the inclusion of non-heterosexuals in the public sphere. Recent case law has highlighted a shift in religious conservative discourse, which now disavows homophobia while seeking reasonable accommodation of religious rights and conscientious objection to homosexual equality in employment and the provision of goods and services. This perpetuates the notion that religion deserves special treatment because of a necessary relationship between religious belief and disapproval of homosexuality. This binary approach not only negates the experience of Queer religious people; it also masks the state’s constructive delegation of homophobia through religious exemptions to equality law. These effects represent harms to gay people, constituting degrading treatment contrary to Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Liberalism’s universal human subject of rights was constructed through the heteronormative and theonormative prism that still permeates equality law. Queer theory’s problematisation of the liberal rights paradigm offers a useful challenge to established norms and to the supposed neutrality of the state when adjudicating between conflicting rights. This thesis represents my contribution to the conversation between liberalism and Queer theory.

Over the past 30 years, the solicitors’ profession has become increasingly diverse. However, the existing literature demonstrates the persistence of structural inequalities as the profession continues to be stratified on a gendered, classed and raced basis. This thesis will explore the position of Muslim women within the solicitors’ profession, and their battle for inclusion within historically closed legal spaces. Drawing upon the feminist frameworks of embodied intersectionality and Critical Race Theory, I aim to develop a greater understanding of the fluid and contingent nature of marginalised identity. Contextualised within an increasingly volatile and hostile society, I focus on how Muslim women’s professional experiences are contoured through complex interactions of gender performance and expectation, religious obligations, community and socio-economic location. Whilst this group have gained a degree of attention within the literature, I contribute new understandings to the experiences of this under-represented, and under-researched group. Thus, the heterogeneous diversity of Muslim women provides the much needed complexity to previous literature concerning women and BAME groups. Through a constructivist grounded theory approach, this thesis analyses with the narratives of 12 Muslim women across legal sectors. Through their voices, I seek to identify the pervasive structural barriers facing this group within the profession, and the reflexive strategies used to progress. I engage with these women’s experiences of negotiation to understand the interactions between their professional and personal obligations, and the resultant impacts on their career trajectories, family relationships and personal wellbeing. Departing from the discourses of passive victimhood, I seek to (re)construct Muslim women as powerful agents in procuring structural change, through their influence as role models, and cultural and institutional entrepreneurs. Their stories have also revealed new, novel contributions to the professional literature: including focus on the Islamic constructions of motherhood, and the provision of prayer within legal spaces.

Through the figure of the transgender prisoner, this thesis examines both the transformative potential, and the limits, of law and human rights, in redrawing the lines of sex/gender and expanding the possibilities and liveability of transgender lives. The prison, with its sex-segregated estate and binary gender society/regime, is a particularly useful site to examine how transgender people and their bodies are problematised in broader society. It magnifies the challenges faced by law and human rights in attempting to alter certain historically entrenched “truths” about sex/gender and transgender people. Drawing on post-Foucauldian legal scholarship, queer, feminist and transgender literature, and risk theory, the thesis examines the impact of recent human rights-based legal developments on English and Welsh prison policy, and considers the potential of human rights discourse to alter the prison administration’s governance of sex/gender, as it relates to transgender prisoners. It focuses on three areas: prison allocation and segregation, gender presentation and access to medical treatment. The thesis identifies an emerging tension between human rights and risk in the prison’s construction and governance of transgender prisoners. It reflects on a particularly deeply-entrenched anxiety about the gender authenticity and bodies of transgender women prisoners, especially those who transition whilst in prison and wish to transfer to the female estate. It concludes by arguing that there are certain inescapable “truths” that society cannot seem to get beyond, and that, whatever law and policy say, both bodies and normative gender performance still matter in cultural and institutional constructions of “authentic” gender and risk.

This thesis examines the legal responses to child trafficking in Saudi Arabia (SA). It primarily examines whether SA has created a legal response that accounts for all trafficked children regardless of the type of exploitation they experience and whether the enforcement of the law accurately reflects the law. SA‟s response has been influenced by, and created alongside, Islamic, international and regional responses. Therefore, the thesis examines SA‟s legal approach to child trafficking in light of the responses adopted on all three levels. Given that SA is an Islamic State and that its legal system is based on Islamic law, the thesis examines the Islamic law framework in relation to child trafficking in order to determine whether there is support for the prevention and eradication of this crime according to international standards. Findings reveal that Islamic law opposes and prohibits trafficking in children and its related acts of exploitation. Therefore, it is clear that rules of international law and the principles of Islamic law are complementary to one another in effectively and comprehensively combating child trafficking. In relation to the protection aspect of child victims of trafficking, it is suggested that Islamic law can serve as an important vehicle for the enforcement of international human rights law in the Muslim world. Thus, recommendations are advanced to that effect. An examination of the Islamic, international and regional approaches to the trafficking of children, in light of the legal responses and enforcement practices of SA, reveals that, although SA has developed anti-trafficking legislation, it fails to enforce the law in practice. The main conclusion reached is that there is a need for SA to improve its laws and enforcement practices against child trafficking in order to align itself to accepted standards at all three levels. The thesis also examines the legal responses, laws and practices of another Islamic jurisdiction, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), towards the trafficking of children. This is done in order to distil lessons, if any, for SA, from the UAE. The UAE was chosen as a case study for the comparative analysis because of the legal, cultural and religious similarities between SA and the UAE. The analysis of the UAE response to combat child trafficking presents a more progressive and successful approach in comparison with SA. The findings reveal that there are lessons which SA can learn from the UAE.