Coral reefs are one of the most beautiful natural habitats found on the Earth and one of the more productive. As a source of food, or as a basis for tourism, these formations support many local communities, industries and economies. Coral reefs also protect shorelines through dissipating the force of waves and act as a catalyst for the formation of land suitable for human habitation. However, like many other ecosystems, humans are increasingly placing coral reefs under intense pressure from pollution, unsustainable practices, and climate change. This thesis considers the measures international law is taking to tackle some of these threats to coral reefs through promoting one conservation strategy, namely marine protected areas. The analysis provided is based upon an investigation into developments under a number of global multilateral environmental agreements and, as such, is the first time treaties like the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the World Heritage Convention, have been considered in detail from this perspective. Ultimately we shall see how a number of initiatives are being pursued under international law which promote such enclave strategies in the marine environment for the conservation of these vital ecosystems.

It is well known that in the early stages of legal development in Commonwealth jurisdictions, when these countries were still colonies of the British Empire, there was uniformity in their laws as the English common law was received by these countries and applied by their judiciaries with little or no modifications. As time passed, with the shift towards independence in these former British colonies, some Commonwealth countries have diverged from the English common law by providing for judicial solutions that are perceived to best fit their individual circumstances, values and needs. In other words, there has been a break up of Commonwealth common law. Whilst there has been much academic discussion on this phenomenon in relation to for example, tort and contract, hardly any has been written on private international law. Accordingly, it is the purpose of this thesis to address the paucity of academic writing on this subject matter by undertaking a comparative study of two areas of private international law, namely the doctrine of forum non conveniens and tort choice of law in Australia, Canada and Singapore, with the relevant English common law positions as the key reference point. Specifically, this thesis began by establishing the existence as well as the nature and extent of the break up of forum non conveniens and tort choice of law in our selected Commonwealth jurisdictions. It is then argued that one reason for this phenomenon is that there are differences in the judicial treatment of policies, concepts and other wider considerations relevant to these areas of private international law in these countries. Subsequently, the issue of how these jurisdictions should respond to this phenomenon was examined and we concluded that the prospects for the harmonisation of jurisdictional and tort choice of law rules at the global, regional and Commonwealth level has been largely unpromising. Accordingly, it is argued that the way forward is for our selected Commonwealth jurisdictions to develop their own rules on these areas of private international law with their own social, economic and political circumstances in mind.

This thesis exammes the interaction of law and medico-psychology in homicide cases, where the defences of insanity and diminished responsibility in particular are raised. If the defendant's mental state is subject to scrutiny through the defences, then expert medico-psychological evidence is required, yet law and medico-psychology have very different understandings on the mind and very different roles with regard to assessing individuals. Expert medico-psychological evidence can be submitted in the consideration of criminal responsibility, when sentencing is concerned with whether prison or hospital is most appropriate, and for release decisions involving judgments about the defendant's potential risk and dangerousness. The examination of the interaction between law and medico-psychology incorporated three dimensions. First, an exposition of the respective theoretical positions of the two disciplines on the mind, detailing the pertinent legislative and common law rules. The second analysed the judicial interpretations of the medico-psychological terms and concepts contained in the substantive law, and in addition, the controls developed through judicial reasoning on the procedural role of the expert and the admission of expert testimony. Finally, the practitioners' perspective is explicated, which was obtained by conducting interviews with lawyers and medico-psychological expert witnesses. There are two facets to the research conclusions, which simplistically stated are: first, in terms of the interaction between law and medico-psychology, the law uses medico-psychological concepts and evidence in a symbolic manner to facilitate legal objectives. Secondly, the examination of the nature of the interaction through the three dimensions exposed the fundamental difference between the theoretical legal debates and the practitioners' perspective. Although the former normally informs legislative and reform discussions, it seems from this research that consideration needs to be given to all the dimensions in future reform debates.

Despite ever growing international trade and dispute settlement, a consistent international methodology of uniform private law has yet to be formed. This is needed in order to encourage the use of existing uniform transnational law rules specifically designed for application to international commercial contracts. This study examines uniform contract law in legal methodology and considers the barriers which exist toward it in modern nation states. It explores ways in which these barriers can be overcome and considers whether it is thereby possible to create a specific methodology of international contract law. Through exploring these three areas, this thesis intends to distinguish and analyse the main obstacles to the application of uniform contract law. The study is therefore organized into three sections, each exploring one of those methodological obstacles and providing solutions for overcoming them. Part One discusses the barriers erected by traditional theories of contract law. Part Two addresses the attitude taken by national lawyers when applying uniform law and enquires how this attitude is formed. This section also asks why this attitude provides an obstacle to the success of uniform law and considers ways in which it could be changed. Part Three, the third and final section considers the treatment of uniform contract law in the context of conflict of laws. This section also asks how seemingly opposite positions in the modern and traditional theory of private international law can be reconciled and considers the ways in which uniform contract law can be applied within a domestic law context as lex contractus. The author argues that the points of resistance identified can be tackled by developing an autonomous methodology of interpretation of transnational contract principles; and, by treating model sets of transnational contract principles as a form of lex specialis. Overall, the thesis seeks to demonstrate that the potential of the UPICC has not yet been fully recognised, and that barriers to such recognition are not insurmountable.

This thesis questions the prospects for the World Trade Organisation, Agreement on Government Procurement. This is the most important international agreement seeking to promote cross-border trade in hitherto closed national procurement markets. For the above threshold goods, services and construction services contracts which it covers, the Agreement's principal objective is to require the non-discriminatory treatment of foreign suppliers. It is because of this general insistence on non-discriminatory treatment that the Agreement's membership is limited to 27 of the 134 World Trade Organisation Members. The first theme of this thesis is therefore devoted to explaining this problem of limited membership, and to proposing possible solutions. While the Agreement's limited membership means that it is not yet capable of liberalising international procurement markets among the general WTO membership, the thesis also considers the Agreement's prospects among the major trading partners which have acceded to date. Our second theme therefore explores two of the problematic areas presenting very different difficulties and challenges, which will impact on the Agreement's success among its present and prospective Members. These distinct areas are, firstly, the use of information technology in public contract awards, and, secondly, the need for an effective system of remedies and enforcement.

This thesis analyses the relationship between tourism and the natural environment and explores ways in which the imbalance between the two may be redressed, with a view to achieving environmentally sustainable tourism. This involves a critical examination of the legal framework currently in place, so as to ascertain the relative effectiveness of presentday structures and organisations. First, both the tourism industry and the natural environment - as conceptual elements - are explored, including a review of their historical and comparative development over recent years. This provides a context within which the thesis can be placed and establishes the foundations upon which subsequent analysis may be built. Next, tourism is assessed in the context of the international legal system, in an attempt to evaluate how the international community has responded to the tourism phenomenon and, moreover, how the international legal system might apply to the various participants within the tourism industry. This provides a platform from which to evaluate, in greater detail, the applicability of international environmental law to tourism, assessing the relevant law currently regulating marine and atmospheric pollution, as well as species protection and habitat preservation. The final part of the thesis recognises the present ad hoc approach of international environmental law towards tourism, and questions whether there might exist some specific obligation for sustainable tourism within the international legal system. In order to assess this theory, the principle of sustainable development is employed as the framework concept from which sustainable tourism emanates, and allows for those various concepts which collectively constitute sustainable development to be analysed in light of sustainable tourism obligations. It is concluded that there are two primary areas where efforts to address tourism-generated environmental degradation should be concentrated. First, the World Tourism Organisation must adopt a stronger leadership position in respect of sustainable tourism and develop its role as a centralised mechanism for coordinating international and regional efforts to regulate and manage tourism activities. Secondly, there must be a concerted effort to further promote and develop the principle of `sustainable tourism', incorporating the legal rights and responsibilities embedded within this concept.

This thesis investigates the extent to which there is an integrated system of prosecution of international crimes, involving the prosecution of international crimes by national and international criminal tribunals operating in tandem. It also seeks to investigate the extent that the values protected by international criminal law have been accepted into the structure of international society and how they have altered it. It does these things by looking at two different aspects of the prosecution of international crimes. First, how international criminal tribunals have overcome the problems encountered by national courts and the structural inadequacies of the bilateral, inter-State model of the nature of the international system. Secondly, it investigates whether or not international criminal tribunals have managed to avoid the criticism that the actual enforcement of universal crimes has been selective, and primarily directed against suspects who are not affiliated with the regime that is prosecuting them. It concludes that international criminal tribunals have, to differing extents overcome the problems of national courts and the supposed bilateral nature of international system. Selectivity, both in terms of who is prosecuted, and what they are prosecuted for, remains a problem. Although the coming into being of the ICC will alleviate some of the jurisdictional selectivity rationae personae, particularly as it creates a powerful national interest for States to prosecute offences by their own officials, nationals, or occurring on their territory, the definitions of crimes in the Rome Statute mean that selectivity in relation to the law applied remains, to some extent, problematic.

The present thesis is not a mere overview of the existing legal literature bearing on choice of law rules for marriage, nor is it a simple survey of the whole range of arguments endorsing one approach over another with regard to this issue: it rather puts forward a sustained argument towards a more appropriate way of looking at the conflict of law problems in marriage. Though choice of law rules for marriage has long preoccupied scholars and judges alike, the ever increasing antagonism between the preponderance of conflict values [predictability, certainty] and the growing concern to guarantee ajust result in individual atypical cases makes the continuous exploration of this particular topic both necessary and of significant legal interest. The study seeks essentially to establish that, contrary to what most scholars would have us believe, the intractable conflict problems in marriage are not inherent in the inefficiency of the traditional general choice of law rules, nor simply in the interrelation between different social, religious and legal cultures. Rather,they are attributable to the structure of a seemingly modem methodology that focuses more and more on the the attainment of ajust substantive result, the astonishing lack of consensus among legal systems, the disregard of coordination of policy considerations relevant in marriage, the parochial and nationalistic focus in choice of law, as well as in the application of the rule that lex fori is the only source of conflict norms. Further, the inappropriate application of the general choice of law rules, and the lasting antinomy between the international objectives [the attribution of an international relationship to the relevant system] and the national sources of conflict of laws are at the heart of the choice of law problems in marriage. The emerging academic movement to modernise choice of law rules for marriage, with a view to guaranteeing desirable results in hard cases, defeats the very essence of conflict of laws, and renders illusory what little certainty and predictability the normative criteria of the com1icts orthodoxies may provide. The underlying reason lies in the inherent disregard of the practical difficulties facing the officials who have, outside the courts, to apply the law and to reconcile the competing goals of predictability and flexibility. The present writer's objective is the development of a more appropriate approach which can establish an equilibrium between the much needed certainty in the present subject and judicial appreciation of the difficulties presented in the individual atypical cases, without scuttling the established conflicts orthodoxies, and at the same time to eliminate the social evil termed "limping marriage". Finally, the domestic and intemationallaw reform agencies should avoid the parochial and nationalistic focus in choice of law, and the rule that lex fori is the only source of conflicts norms if they wish to make a claim that their aim is the attainment of a universal uniform body of rules which will ensure the universal validity of a marriage, and the maximum harmony of decisions.

Enforcement of international judicial decisions of the International Court of Justice has suffered serious negligence in public international law. Thus, the first significance of this thesis lies in dearth of the authoritative legal literature on this topic. Bearing in mind the unprecedented increase interest in international dispute settlement which can be explained by the phenomenon of proliferation of international judicial bodies and in the qualitative and quantitative nature· of contentious disputes brought before the ICJ, non-compliance with the judicial decisions of the Court is definitely to increase. This study has explored the problem of non-compliance with and enforcement of the judicial decisions of the ICJ; a problem that now exists beyond any doubt as Chapter 1 of this study exposes. However, enforcement cannot be directly made without some initial and critical scrutiny into the legal foundations of the bindingness and enforceability of these judicial decisions normally the rules of pacta sunt servanda and of res judicata, to which Chapters 2 and 3 are devoted. Similarly, the problem of non-compliance with and enforcement of judicial decisions should not usefully be considered in the abstract. Thus, Chapter 4 elucidates the legal nature and the scope of judicial decisions that are subject to enforcement. Article 94 (2) of the UN. Charter provides no exclusive authority for the Security Council to be the ultimate and sole enforcer of the judicial decisions of the I CJ decisions nor is there a straightforward and independent enforcement means of international obligations especially those derived from international judicial decisions. Hence, this study explores and involves various players and invests various means to establish a network of enforcement mechanisms available to all States regardless of their position in the international community. In so doing, the rest of the thesis is devoted to judicial enforcement and institutional enforcement respectively. Chapter 5 examines judicial enforcement through the ICJ itself, while Chapter 6 examines the role of domestic courts of States in this process. Injured State could also seek institutional enforcement. Chapter 7 examines the role of the United Nations, while Chapters 8 and 9 deal with the role of regional organisations and specialised agencies in this process respectively. Notwithstanding the indispensability of judicial and institutional enforcement, they are not always successful or predictable or independently adequate. They may fail to be effective or incapable of inducing a defaulting State to comply with its international legal obligations under the judgment of the ICl So, proposals have been advanced to mitigate or to contain this problem. These proposals, however, have suffered from a lack of support in law and practice, and thus other alternative recommendations and suggestions are provided in Chapter 10, which presents also the final conclusions of this study.

This thesis is divided into three parts. Part I provides a critique of the dominant approach to the analysis and examination of evidence in Anglo-American writings. The critique consists in showing that the dominant approach, on account of its atomism, does not capture the complexity of judicial fact-finding tasks or codify intuitive judgments about them. Recent attempts offering either mathematical or inductivist structures for the analysis of judicial evidence are explained and criticized as a resurgence of interest in atomistic analysis. Part III identifies a non-atomistic body of thought outside the mainstream of the dominant tradition. This body of thought is used as the starting-point for developing a holistic approach to the examination and analysis of evidence in Anglo-American judicial processes.