This work aims to be part of the developing body of public law which seeks to combine empirical research with a theoretical framework. It uses the example of the privatisation of the rail network and the deregulation of the bus industry to this end. Each phenomenon is examined through both library research and direct interview. Throughout this reference is made to the overall framework of public law and the essential concept of accountability. The work concludes by drawing the two processes together and putting forward the thesis that in the sphere of public transport for public lawyers the question of public accountability cannot be separated from ownership. Chapter 1 is an examination of public law and the theoretical assumptions behind it. It explores how the subject has developed since Dicey and the competing frameworks which now exist amongst public law academics. Chapters 2 and 3 are general studies of nationalisation and privatisation in the twentieth century. They show how using different mechanisms the British State could claim to be enhancing accountability. Chapter 2 explores the public corporation in particular and how that phenomenon coincided with the general development of the state and a system of administrative law. Equally in the following chapter it is shown how privatisation coincided with a disenchantment as to the arrangements of the state especially on the right. The contradictory rationale behind each concept is also explored. Chapters 4 and 5 study bus deregulation. This includes a study of how bus transport was regulated, how deregulation came about and what the consequences of this were. It explores both the experience of public ownership and privatisation and how both were unsatisfactory in delivering accountability. Chapter 5 concludes with a case study of the Glasgow bus market which is seen as a microcosm for broader developments in the bus industry.

This thesis begins by considering that modern medicine as a profession has tremendous scope for both good and ill, and as an enterprise consumes a vast amount of the national wealth. Against this background, the thesis considers how and why medicine is regulated, and what the effects of this regulation are. The study aims to assess the regulation of the medical profession against the interests of the state, the profession, and the consumers of health care, to see whether the regulatory mechanisms adopted adequately safeguard the interests of all parties concerned with the practice of medicine. The methodology chapter spells out the analytical techniques which the bulk of the thesis utilises and delimits the scope of the research to cover only bodies having a legal genesis and which are universal in application. A series of "core evaluation criteria" are identified against which the four regulatory mechanisms are assessed. Chapters 3 to 6 contain the bulk of the actual research into the four main areas of regulatory endeavour which the study considers; each is analysed in turn in terms of the purpose, mechanism and effect of the regulatory machinery being considered and then assessed against the core evaluation criteria. Finally, the conclusions chapter draws together the different threads which the sector-specific analyses have identified as being points of concern, and the system as a whole is evaluated to see whether the interests of the relevant stakeholders are adequately safeguarded, to identify any regulatory gaps which exist in the present system, and to point out the direction which anyone seeking to improve the system should consider

The post-war evolution of the constitution of Poland as well as several other Central and East European countries is characterised by a marked departure from the national traditions towards a form of Government known as the "People's Democracy". This state of affairs resulted from the interplay of alliances during the last war and the political expansion of Soviet Russia. Notwithstanding the treaty obligations and declarations such as the celebrated Atlantic Charter, the Western Allies, in face of protests by the Polish Government in Exile, agreed on an arbitrary fixing of the Polish-Russian frontier along the lines of Soviet demands, and the abrogation of the existing Polish constitution. Parallel to this reversal of the international situation developed the Soviet-sponsored nucleus of the post-war Polish political regime. Upon the advance of the Red Army this body established itself on Polish soil and was recognised by the "Grand Alliance" as the basis of the Polish Provisional Government. Before achieving this position the Soviet-sponsored regime effected a considerable amount of "legislation", which purported to preclude any other body from attaining power, and determined the future constitution to be based on Marxism-Leninism- Stalinism. General Elections were delayed for two years, but they did not bring any change in the regime. In such conditions the Constitution of 1947 was. nothing else but an interim measure designed to serve as a device to facilitate transition from the parliamentary "capitalist" state into the "socialist" state as understood in Soviet Russia. For this purpose the whole authority of the state became concentrated in an unprecedented body - the Council of State, Parliament declined and the position of the individual became circumscribed by the ideas of the so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat". The Constitution of 1952,modelled on the pattern of the Soviet Constitution of 1936, transferred the point of gravity from the Council of State onto the Government and proclaimed a "State of People's Democracy governed by the working people of towns and villages". The Polish People’s Democracy only during its infancy showed signs of originality, the later development faithfully following the pattern of the Soviet state evolved during the Stalinist era. The doctrine of the People's Democracy as well as its practical features represent, therefore, an application of the Stalinist Marxism on the institutions of the former Republic of Poland.

This dissertation examines the ongoing problem of business actors violating human rights and the regulatory attempts to deal with the problem at the international level. In particular, it considers the work of the UN Secretary- General’s Special Representative on Business Human Rights, John Ruggie and the ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ framework as elaborated in the 2011 UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. It also critically analyses the UN Global Compact, the OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises as well as developments in the European Union in this area. Each of these regulatory mechanisms demonstrates elements of new governance, hybrid or third way models of regulation such as voluntarism, wide participation through multistakeholder structures and subsidiarity, all of which are useful soft law techniques that contribute to a culture of human rights or human rights norm internalisation. Nevertheless, they fall down in failing to provide a normative regulatory framework which would address human rights abuses by business actors which remain unresponsive to soft law models of regulation. Specifically, there is a lack of redress for the victims of human rights abuses by business actors and the current regulatory models do not offer a deterrent to or punishment of such abuses. This dissertation argues that the international community must thus re-conceptualise the business and human rights problem and move towards a mandatory international legal paradigm. New governance models have emerged from a changing international legal paradigm and they represent a move away from State-centric regulation towards the complementary co-existence of hard and soft rules in one domain. While many of the new governance techniques offer useful means of internalising a human rights culture within the business community and thus helping to prevent human rights abuses, nevertheless, the lack of normative rules means that no binding redress mechanisms or remedies are available. A true new governance approach allows both normative and non-normative standards to co-exist. Given that the voluntary business and human rights initiatives alone have failed to address the problem adequately, a new international normative approach is necessary. This thesis posits that re-conceptualising business actors as human rights dutyholders does not require a major paradigm shift. International law has always recognised business actors as subjects of international law, or alternatively, participants at minimum, and there is no good reason why they cannot be subject to human rights obligations. This thesis advocates the application of a horizontal approach to human rights which encompasses human rights violations by business actors. At present, a conservative, positivist and State-centric perspective of international law prevails, which prioritises the maintenance of State sovereignty over the rights of individuals not to be abused by business actors. The law is correct as of October 2011.

In one sense, the Palestinian problem dates back to early history when the Canaanites, Israelites and Philistines contended for the territory and its resources. However, the modern Palestine problem dates only from the Balfour Declaration in 1917, and yet has proved to be more deadly, with six wars if one includes the Gulf War, and more intractable, with attempts to create a state of Palestine for nearly three-quarters of a century. A recent attempt to solve the problem was the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty of 1979. If that had been the only purpose of Presidents Carter and Sadat and Prime Minister Begin at Camp David and of the last two in signing the Treaty in Washington, their efforts could only be described as futile. But more was at stake: the ending of a state of war and the resolution of outstanding territorial claims. In that regard the `Camp David process' was successful - indeed successful to the extent that an issue not resolved during the process, the question of Taba, was amicably settled by Egypt and Israel through arbitration. This thesis seeks to analyse the `Camp David process' and the terms of the Treaty in an attempt to answer the question of how the state of war, equally important for Egypt and Israel, could be satisfactorily ended for both parties, how the territorial claims, equally important for both Israel and Egypt, could be resolved, when the issue of Palestine, the source of virtually all the present conflicts in the Middle East and essential for the Egyptians as part of the Arab nation, should remain unresolved, despite the provisions of the Camp David Accords and the Treaty.

The trend in development discourse is to explain underdevelopment in terms of bad governance which lack of rule of law brings about. Development in this sense is understood as economic growth while rule of law is limited to an institutional version which is market-oriented. In this thesis, development is examined from a people-centred perspective. Abject poverty, dysfunctional educational and health systems sitting side by side with reasonably sufficient oil wealth is the problematic premise which the thesis seeks to explain. While acknowledging that it could be explained from a range of disciplines and perspectives, this thesis offers a socio-legal explanation in terms of public corruption spurred by absence of rule of law in practice. Corruption is high in Nigeria though national law has criminalised it and the country has ratified international law frowning at it. Among its myriad upshots is depleting resources for development. It is a dependant variable; and this thesis links it to absence of rule of law in practice. But because the orthodox rule of law privileges the market, it is inappropriate in explaining corruption in the public realm. The thesis therefore departs from it and instead proposes a rule of law version which would ensure management of resources for human development. It constitutes the following elements: supremacy of the law; equality before the law, trusts over public funds; code of conduct for public officers; and restraint on executive powers. The thesis argues that the Constitutions in Nigeria have made adequate provisions for this version of rule of law. However, the provisions have either been suspended or substantially breached over the years. For a large part of its existence, Nigeria was under military rule which is antithetical to rule of law through its subordination of the constitution, sacking of the legislature, and muzzling of the judiciary. Despite the existence of the Constitution and democratic institutions during civilian regimes, the rule of law provisions remained largely unimplemented. In both regimes, the executive arm of government, unto which public funds are entrusted, enjoyed absolute powers. This situation, the thesis argues, explains the development-impeding corruption.

This thesis is a study of the relationship between deontological liberal principles and consequentialism in legal rhetoric. The argument developed is that these supposedly separate bases for judgment are actually mutually defining in cases involving an apparent ethical dilemma. The content of a principle cannot be known a priori, since its interpretation gains its persuasive force from a calculation of the benefit and detriment of a potential decision. We argue that, in order to prevent the deontological authority of liberal principles from being undermined by such a mixing, consequentialist calculations are themselves made by appealing to an interpretation of principled arguments. The effect of this symbiosis of principle and consequential ism is that ethical problems are resolved in legal rhetoric by assigning conflicting parties a higher or lower status within a moral hierarchy that prioritises those that assimilate more closely to the liberal ideal of the reasonable, responsible individual. This assignation itself requires the weighing up the possible consequences of this or that interpretation of the relevant Principles and the 'facts' of the parties' moral status. The characterisation of judicial rhetoric as a narrative of what we might call moral consequential ism leads on to a deconstructive turn in the second half of the thesis. We seek to show that the relationship between principle and consequence is not simply one of binary opposition, but rather of undecidability. The implications of such a destabilisation of the line between apparently distinct concepts for political and ethical theory is recognised and addressed in the final chapters. We consider how deconstruction both poses dangers and also creates new possibilities for critique. The final move of the thesis is to consider the ethical implications of our critique of law's moral hierarchy. We argue that emphasising the undecidability of law's moral hierarchies allows for new perspectives on ethical problems.

This legal study identifies through a case-study of Zimbabwe the range of essential legal reforms an emerging market should implement to establish financial infrastructure that enables the structuring of securitization transactions and the prevention and management of risks – such as those highlighted by the 2007 global financial crisis – that can arise from securitization transactions. The study analyses: (i) laws regulating or relating to prudentially regulated firms that typically use securitization to refinance; (ii) corporate and trust laws to identify legal structures which can be utilised as securitization special purpose vehicles; (iii) the Roman-Dutch law of sale to determine whether it permits the true-sale of financial assets; (iv) various legal risks, including substantive-consolidation, veil-piercing, foreclosure, insolvency and tax risks; (v) the dispute resolution framework; and (vi) the structured finance risk mitigation properties of Zimbabwe‘s financial market regulatory framework. The study concludes that Zimbabwe‘s legal system permits most of the contractual arrangements that constitute a basic securitization transaction. However, its financial services regulatory and gatekeeping framework - which must be reformed - is rudimentary and ill-suited to preventing and managing systemic risks that can arise from securitization. This is the first comprehensive academic study which investigates the extent to which the Roman-Dutch legal system enables the various contractual arrangements that constitute a securitization transaction. It also presents an analytical model for reviewing the securitization-enabling characteristics of emerging markets‘ legal systems and the securitization risk mitigation properties of their financial infrastructures.

This is a study of Human Rights Education (HRE) discourse in community-based settings. It is a critique and analysis of the ways that HRE discourse is shaped by power and culture between the global and the local. It aims to fill a gap in the current research in a number of ways, by examining both the theories of human rights and education, as well as the practice of HRE. The aim of the thesis is not only to show how it has and is used, but also whose interests this serves. The research was carried out using mainly qualitative methods, but also some quantitative methods. In order to make connections between the global and local HRE discourse it included twelve months of fieldwork in Tanzania, where data was gathered from NGOs working in HRE explicitly. It also linked stakeholders, such as international organisations, other NGOs and individual community members such as paralegals and participants in HRE processes. The thesis has three parts which each deal with the language and texts, social practice, as well as, socio-political and cultural influence of HRE discourse. The first part outlines the sheer variety of content that inform various conceptions of HRE and shows how HRE is both plural and complex. It examines the historical and sociopolitical construction of HRE. The second part of the thesis examines the local context of HRE using the data gathered from twelve-month’s empirical fieldwork in Tanzania between 2009 and 2010. The third part of the material analyses the way that social relations both construct and are constructed by HRE discourse, the unintended consequences, and suggestions about possible ways forward.

This research aims to investigate the Saudi Competition Law (2004) and its regulations and rules. It investigates whether the Saudi Competition Law guarantees protection for fair competition. . It looks into the defects in the Saudi Competition Law and its enforcement. The research also explores reforms needed to improve the Saudi Competition Law and how such reforms can be achieved. The study employs two broad approaches to answer the research questions: the black letter and socio-legal models; and two particular methods (as well as analysis of legal material and existing related literature), i.e, interviews, and two case studies in communications and civil aviation sectors. The findings show a conflict between the principles underlying Competition Law and currently implemented government policy. Barriers to entry, public and wholly-owned state companies’ immunity, the government’s privatisation policy, and the government role in the market contradict the general principles of the competition law. There is evidence of monopolistic practices, a lack of neutrality, and insufficient implementation of the law against government-owned companies. There also seems to be jurisdictional conflicts between the Council of Competition Protection (CCP) and authorities with similar functions. Critical assessment of the Saudi Competition Law revealed a number of problems in four areas: anti-competitive agreements, abuse of dominant position, mergers, and enforcement. Examining several cases showed some deficiencies in enforcement. The study suggests some recommendations for policy reform and modernisation of the Law and its regulations. The Shariah Law adopted general rules for regulating competition issues. It prohibits two main practices: monopoly and damage. Since this study is the first to address competition law in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it is hoped that the research findings and outcomes will add to knowledge in this field, enabling greater understanding and leading to better application of the Saudi Competition Law, and thus be of benefit to both law researchers and to practitioners, investors (domestic and foreign), and consumers. This study is hoped to provide a framework for the countries of the Middle East, particularly the Arab countries, which are seeking to move toward more competitive markets, whether they have already adopted or are planning to adopt competition law.