The focus of this study is on the concept and contours of NIAC under IHL. Its purpose is to provide further clarity to the process of identifying NIACs under international law. At its most basic, conflict identification is the real-time objective assessment of prevailing factual circumstances in order to determine the applicable legal regime(s). It is thus an exercise in the classification of armed violence providing a detailed critical examination of the material concept of NIAC, including its threshold of activation and corresponding personal, geographical and temporal scope of applicability under IHL.

The problems which exist for a discussion about the relationship between the so-called mentally-disordered offender or accused and the notion of criminal responsibility and punishment are complex. They can not be fully understood without a consideration of the definition of crime, criminal responsibility, and of theories of punishment. Problems are not simply confined to a theoretical level. Accordingly, there is a need to understand the reality of mental disorder as perceived by psychiatrists and lawyers. This thesis, in chapter 1, looks at the concept of crime and attempts to establish a comprehensive definition. This may specify the circumstances in which the mentally disordered person is likely to become involved with the state and thereby be subject to a particular or special relationship with the law. Accordingly, chapter 1 explores the concepts of crime, its elements, and its limitations. Chapter 2 considers the various theories of punishment in order to seek to establish whether there are sufficient reasons to justify the way we deal with mentally disordered persons and whether they are rooted in concepts of fairness and justice. The next chapter explores the notion of mental disorder and examines the medical basis for understanding the condition. It attempts to examine whether the condition is "medical" and indeed whether it is an "illness". The relationship between the medical model and the legal model of mental disorder is studied in addition to the role played by psychiatrists. Chapter 4 examines the lawyer's approach to the mentally disordered person and seeks to determine whether the legal definition of insanity is in any way different from the medical concept of mental disorder and the consequences that flow from the various defences of insanity. Chapter 5 looks at the reality of the interaction between the mentally disordered person and the various institutions with which he comes into contact. Thus, state hospitals, the disposal of mentally disordered offenders or accused persons and the various sentences or restriction orders are examined. The final chapter considers possible areas for reform, and makes certain recommendations, which if implemented might serve to remove some of the difficulties that have been identified. he investigation includes the situation with regard to mental disorder and criminal responsibility in Iraqi criminal law as wel1. The main purpose of this thesis is to find out the appropriate theory of punishment which might be used to resolve the problem with mentally disordered people (both responsible and non-responsible) in respect of the sentencing process in U.K.

This thesis examines the current Brazilian oil sector's institutional and regulatory governance structure and its impact on four variables: investment, production, technology-innovation and the strategic control of oil. These variables are fundamental for the development of the oil industry and they are mentioned in Brazilian laws as central aspects to be continually developed. A prospective analysis of the 2010 reform in the Brazilian oil regulatory framework is a major part of the thesis because the alterations are relatively recent and have not as yet produced a set of consistent and statistically significant data. The research adopts a multidisciplinary perspective, using the institutional, reflexive and responsive theoretical frameworks and a methodology based on the examination of the legislation, semi-structured interviews and a historical comparative study of international regulatory governance in the oil sector to draw two main conclusions. First, the new Brazilian regulatory framework will have significant drawbacks in three of the four variables: investments, production and technology-innovation, essentially because of its excessively interfering and rigid approach, based on command and control regulations. Second, despite allowing an increasing strategic control over oil in some specific situations, this goal could have been attained in a manner that would have avoided the shortcomings in the other variables. Based on this understanding, the thesis makes recommendations to overcome the identified drawbacks. In line with the responsive and reflexive conceptual frameworks, the proposals consider that regulations in a dynamic and changeable sector as the oil industry should avert intrusiveness and imperative commands. They should rather advocate a versatile and interactive regulatory approach, steering and guiding the different stakeholders to socially desirable outcomes.

This thesis is concerned with the legal theory behind environmental rights. There are a number of different approaches that deploy rights as a mechanism to bring about environmental protection within international law, all of which can be termed ‘environmental rights’. These include a human right to a healthy environment and procedural environmental rights. But there are also theories that support a more innovative or extensive use of legal rights for protecting the natural world. Notably, many of these theories concern the introduction of nonhuman rights (animal rights or rights of nature). This thesis investigates the theory behind and the practical structure of these various approaches, as well as analysing the very concept of ‘rights’. The original contribution to knowledge is threefold. I present a case for a human right to a healthy environment to be defined broadly: measured according to human and ecosystem health, and conceived as a right of both individuals and peoples; I rigorously apply both Interest Theory and Hohfeld’s analysis of rights to human rights and thus construct a clear model for the structure of the sort of rights found in human rights (termed ‘vital rights’); and I extend the philosophical theory behind human rights (and in particular the concept of dignity) towards the growing field of rights of nature. Considered holistically, the thesis presents and suggests modes of thinking that seek to soften the divide between humanity and nature. This is done through a consideration of lived experience as always already ecologically embedded. As a result, the subject of vital rights (human rights included) should be understood as ecologically embedded living beings, opening the door to both nonhuman rights and new fields for human rights.

This study examines the criminal liability that may be incurred by participants in contact sports for violence that results in injury to a fellow participant. For these purposes, I concentrate on boxing, rugby and soccer; sports that involve a level of physicality that risks, and regularly causes, injury. The violence that is intrinsic to their practice is in some senses archetypically criminal, and yet, that self-same violence is also constitutive of sports that are perceived to have enormous personal, social and cultural value, and which have been declared by the House of Lords to amount to ‘lawful activities’. A formal account of the criminal law of sports violence posits the consent of the participants as the primary determinant of the imposition of liability for acts of violence committed during the course of contact sports. In this thesis, I examine this formal account and propose that the substance of the lawfulness of sports violence needs to be understood in terms of its socio-historical development, and the sophisticated rule-systems and pluralistic regulatory backdrop against which modern sports operate. This thesis contributes a new understanding of the offences that pertain to sports violence, and the normative role and doctrinal function of the participants’ consent, in order to understand the way in which the criminal law accommodates violent sports practices. The thesis also suggests new ideas in relation to the ‘playing culture’ of sport and its relationship to the criminal law, and the role of prosecutorial discretion in effectively shaping the lawfulness of ‘legitimate sport’.

This thesis explores social workers’ practice and understanding of support for the exercise of legal capacity in adult safeguarding. The impetus for this study was the ‘revolution’ of article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which questioned fundamental and long-held legal positions on the rights of people with mental impairments to make decisions about their lives. This shift is a fundamental one, but there is very little existing empirical evidence of how such a revolutionary change in legal frameworks might actually work in practice, and what the challenges may be. Thus, this thesis aimed to empirically examine existing practice, to explore what the baseline of understanding was, and the difficulties that social workers encountered in using support mechanisms. An ethnographic approach was taken, with participant observation of an adult safeguarding team over a 17 week period, followed by interviews with 7 of the social workers who had been closely observed. The importance of this study is that the focus of the debate on article 12 has been on restoring legal capacity to individuals who had previously been denied it on the basis of their lack of mental capacity. While this is important, and is discussed in this thesis, the empirical work that forms the basis of this study demonstrates that denial of legal capacity affects a much wider group. In this context, ‘support’ may be less about supporting decisions in the particular instance, but rather supporting the individual to effect the decision that they have made, or to continue to be able to make decisions in the future. Using a theoretical framework of relational autonomy and universal vulnerability, the analysis shows that social workers the individual framing of mental capacity in the law means that they struggle accommodate the possibility of support for that mental capacity from a third party. Adults who have mental capacity but are considered ‘vulnerable’ are also significantly disempowered in the safeguarding framework. The social workers see the concept of mental capacity as overly limiting, and that vulnerable adults who are not captured by the Mental Capacity Act 2005 may still lack what this thesis terms ‘relational capacity’. A link made between vulnerability and a lack of relational capacity results in individuals being disempowered, kept as ‘objects to be organised’, rather than agentive subjects. The conclusion of this thesis is that the potential for undue influence in the exercise of support under article 12 is very possible. The data shows that we must consider carefully how we respond to this, building a universally enabling environment, rather than one which reduces agency and legal capacity.

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.