In 2013, Edward Snowden provided journalists with copies of classified documents detailing the operations of the National Security Agency of the United States and its allies; in particular, the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters. Snowden explained that he hoped to set the conditions for a new technical literacy that would alter understandings of the relationship between digital communications and law. This thesis asks whether or not law is capable of repaying Snowden’s faith. To that end, it offers a media-theoretical genealogy of the interception of communication in the UK. Interception is presented as an effect of different sets of technical operations, mediated and processed by communication devices and networks. The thesis traces interception techniques: from their beginnings in the General Post Office; in their evolution through the operations of technical media; to their reappearance in the operations of digital media that constitute the internet. The authorisation of interception, meanwhile, has always depended upon legal techniques mediated by interception warrants. A genealogy of the interception warrant is presented through an archival study of the distinctly different practices of document production that manufactured and programmed warrants in different media epochs; from the medieval Chancery and paper bureaucracies of state institutions to the graphical user interface, which mediates between interception techniques and law today. Finally, the thesis addresses the function of legislation as it in turn addresses warrants and interception techniques. Law and legislation, it is argued, are incapable of constraining technical operations of interception because, like interception, law is already an effect of media-technical operations. The law operates not by controlling interception, but by processing it, assigning meaning to it, and protecting the secrecy of ongoing interception operations.

In this thesis I critique the modern tendency to construct the legal subject upon a sharp distinction between Reason and body and to ground the normative force of law on an ideal conception of Reason. The legal subject is thereby presented as a disembodied cogitans to the neglect of his corporeality. This disregards both the necessarily material aspect of the legal subject and the necessarily embodied aspect of legal action, and results in an inadequate account of how legal normativity is manifested in material reality. This thesis aims to construct a theory of material legal normativity by re-incorporating the body of the subject into legal action and presenting that as the proper locus of law’s normative force. Although I focus on the material body in favour of Reason or rationality as the locus of action, I do not dismiss the possibility of meaningful normative action which is free from determination by material forces. I aim to construct a theory of action which is both material and normative by navigating the opposition between ideal Reason and material determinism. I do this by proposing an alternative conception of normative action which draws together the mechanism of habit and the manner of interaction with the material world. This theory of normative action will then form the basis for an account of normative legal action which gives due weight to the embodied nature of the legal subject as the proper locus for the material manifestation of the normative force of law.

The thesis has looked at the application of competition law of the European Union to sport. The main objective of the thesis is to understand whether the European institutions have adopted a sport-specific approach when applying competition law, and to identify problems connected to it. Sport presents a number of characteristics that differentiates it from any other industry. It is an area where private and public interests arise and demand protection. These range from private economic interests, to the protection of cultural aspects, health and well-being, and employment. The European Union has moved from an approach according to which sporting rules were not falling under EU law, to one where any sporting rule is capable of having economic effects and could therefore be assessed. In parallel, Sport Governing Bodies have stopped rejecting the intrusion of EU institutions in sport, and have accepted that the role of the authorities could be channelled to guarantee an area of autonomy. The thesis provides an original contribution to the body of knowledge in assessing the intensity of the economic analysis adopted by the EU institutions when examining conduct of Sports Governing Bodies. This aspect is particularly connected to the specific characteristics of sport, and of the sporting market. The research suggests to adopt a system of governance that is more collaborative and inclusive, and that is capable of representing the needs and protect the interest of all the industry stakeholders. This would require a greater involvement of the stakeholders in the rule setting and enforcement procedure, in order to channel the expertise of Governing Bodies and restrict the tendency to abuse of their regulatory powers.

In this thesis I explore how ageing, gender and sexuality intersect to influence equality in later life, in relation to older lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals and non-labelling individuals in same-gender relationships (LGBN). In particular I argue that temporality and spatiality shape uneven outcomes in later life by informing the discursive and performative production of ageing, gender and sexuality, which in turn influence access to resources, recognition and representation in older age contexts. Taking a feminist socio-legal perspective, my thesis addresses four questions: 1) How are the lives of older LGBN individuals framed in regulatory contexts?; 2) How do these regulatory frameworks inform ageing LGBN subjectivities and kinship formations?; 3) What are the main concerns of older LGBN individuals in relation to ageing?; and 4) How are the lives and concerns of older LGBN individuals represented by activists working on their behalves? To address these questions, I analyse the regulatory contexts relevant to LGBN ageing (Chapter Two). Methodologically, I expand understandings of ageing, gender and sexuality in later life through utilising qualitative data from interviews with older LGBN individuals and activists working on their behalves (Chapter Three). I analyse data from these interviews to consider: LGBN ageing subjectivities (Chapter Four), kinship constructions (Chapter Five) and anticipated care futures (Chapter Six), and to explore activists’ representations of older LGBN individuals’ lives, issues and concerns (Chapter Seven). In the final chapter I consider the implications for social policy and future research (Chapter Eight).

This thesis aims to examine the complex relationship between Sharia law and the Saudi Arabian copyright law. It focuses on the implications of the inconsistencies between the law governing intellectual property rights imposed by the TRIPs agreement and Sharia law in Saudi Arabia, specifically as regards copyright law. Original sources from the different schools within Sharia law are analysed in depth to assess their perspectives on conceptions of property, ownership, selling, punishment, grievances, legislation, the role of the judiciary, theft, piracy and how laws should apply to individual countries and obligations as regards international treaties. The compatibility between Sharia approaches to these topics and the TRIPs derived laws protecting copyright in Saudi Arabia is compared to reveal significant inconsistencies. The thesis argues that unique difficulties arise in applying TRIPs related laws in Saudi Arabia, where Sharia law is theoretically the sole source of law. TRIPs related laws which are almost identical in many areas to those in Saudi Arabia apply in Lebanon and Jordan, where, as the thesis shows, these difficulties do not arise as Sharia law is only one out of several sources of law. Thus the demonstration of the inconsistencies between Sharia and TRIPs imposed laws in Saudi Arabia provides a basis from which to demonstrate and explore the unique difficulties associated with applying piracy enforcement measures in Saudi Arabia which arise from these disparities. Questionnaires were handed out to different segments of the Saudi Arabian society addressing public perceptions of the adequacy and appropriateness of both Sharia and TRIPs related laws governing copyright in hindering piracy and whether having both laws could incur a negative impact. The findings derived confirm the argument of the thesis that given the inconsistencies between them, the application of both laws leads to undesirable consequences. Some suggestions to address these issues are put forward.

In 1933 Canada enacted the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act with little consultation. Parliament described the CCAA as federal ‘bankruptcy and insolvency law’ but the Act provoked constitutional controversy because it could compulsorily bind secured claims, which fell under provincial jurisdiction. Even after the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the CCAA, the intended beneficiaries of the Act preferred not to use it. In the 1950s the Act fell out of use, and by the 1970s commentators considered it a ‘dead letter.’ But during the 1980s and 1990s recessions, courts ‘revived’ the CCAA through progressive interpretations of its few ‘enabling’ provisions. This helped justify debtor-in-possession reorganisation as a policy objective of Canadian bankruptcy and insolvency law. This thesis attempts to understand why this occurred. This study provides a theorised interpretation of CCAA history. I rely on concepts such as path dependence, interest groups and institutions to shed light on periods of stability and change in CCAA law over time. I bolster this with a socio-legal analysis that takes account of gradual changes in practice that often preceded and gave shape to formal reforms. This thesis shows that large secured creditors have been major drivers and beneficiaries of CCAA law. The Act originally extended provincial receivership reorganisations into federal law. In the 1980s-1990s courts facilitated ongoing access to the CCAA by recasting it as a debtor-remedy. In both instances the solvency of large secureds (financial institutions) highlighted the necessity of restructuring corporate borrowers, and prevailing social, economic, and political factors influenced the substance and mechanisms of legal changes. Despite its public stature as a ‘debtor-remedy,’ CCAA law continues to advance the interests of large secured creditors.

The recently institutionalised global Performers’ Rights Regime (PRR) aims to improve the economic position of those performers whose work can be audio-recorded and reproduced. This thesis asks whether the PRR achieves this aim. The thesis investigates this question through a case study of Sri Lankan vocalists. Vocalists in Sri Lanka are a significant constituent within the music industry, and they had hoped that the PRR would make their work more economically secure. However, this thesis finds that the PRR, as developed internationally and implemented in Sri Lanka, is predicated on a particular understanding of the role of performers and their relationships with other actors in the music industry; that this understanding of performers’ roles and relationships does not reflect established practices and relationships within Sri Lanka’s contemporary music industry; and that consequently the PRR fails to deliver the improved economic security that Sri Lankan singers had sought.

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.

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