The relationship between the state and citizens can give rise to legal and moral tension when the state interferes into private life in order to fulfil its statutory duties. An important statutory area where the state has such powers occurs in the Children Acts 1989 and 2004. These Acts inter alia confer powers on local authorities to undertake surveillance and assessment of private family life in order to identify and assess children who may be ‘in need’ of services, ‘at risk’, or suffering significant harm. The thesis argues that these powers enable the state to police private family life in order to ensure parents' compliance with prevailing child welfare ideology. Child welfare discourse dominates and mediated debate over the measures used by local authorities to police parents, claiming these state powers are necessary to protect children from harm. The thesis challenges these claims. The justification for 'child protection' and 'safeguarding' is critically examined from post-modem theoretical, statistical and doctrinal law perspectives. Areas of imbalance in current law and practice are identified and these are linked in the conclusion to focus upon the fundamental flaws in the current position. This offers the possibility of more integrated debate that challenges the orthodoxy and suggests fundamental revision of the current policy.

The doctoral research investigates the nature and elements of domestic mechanisms, including public private partnership (PPP) procedures, devised for the management of WTO disputes in selected developed and developing countries. With China, Brazil and India as its case-studies, the research explores various strategies to devise an effective PPP mechanism for handling international trade disputes in developing countries. The research objective is to explore the benefits of engaging the private sector in the intergovernmental process of WTO dispute settlement, and to identify the reforms that will be needed for devising a workable domestic framework for handling foreign trade disputes through PPP arrangements. The research highlights important issues and concerns that need consideration before any legal, institutional, regulatory and procedural reforms are carried out. Moreover, the research seeks to enable developing countries to critically evaluate a diverse range of PPP strategies employed so far, and to determine their individual approaches towards PPP and dispute management. The thesis constitutes a practical guidebook for policymakers in those developing countries which have the motivation to strengthen their WTO dispute settlement capacities. The topical area of research and pragmatic approach towards research questions, together with an empirical research methodology makes this study an original contribution to existing literature and knowledge.

This thesis seeks to examine contemporary factors that prevent an orderly resolution to a sovereign debt crisis. It comprises of five chapters. The first chapter introduces the research and highlights its main contributions. The second chapter narrates the background and motivation for the study. The third chapter studies a related paper on holdouts in sovereign debt restructuring and finds that, under a discrete time version with two creditors, asymmetric pure strategy Nash equilibria exists. This result, overlooked by the original paper, implies immediate agreement as the time between successive periods tends to zero. The fourth chapter investigates the impact of heterogeneous beliefs on delays in sovereign debt restructuring and finds that parties inefficiently delay settlement when their combined beliefs of court-outcomes are sufficiently heterogeneous. The chapter also explores other model expositions and establishes delay conditions. The fifth chapter studies the implied duty on the debtor to act in good faith in sovereign debt restructuring and is divided into two parts. The first part theoretically examines the efficiency and distributional impacts from enforcing a good faith duty on the debtor when bargaining with heterogeneous creditors. Here, good faith is defined as the non-violation of the court interpretation of the pari passu clause. The second part identifies judicial attempts made to enforce the good faith debtor duty to negotiate and proposes a doctrinal threshold that restricts judicial intervention to situations in which there is clear evidence of a failure, on the part of the debtor, to negotiate in good faith.

The public policy towards minimum resale price maintenance (‘RPM’), or vertical price fixing, namely the practice whereby a manufacturer stipulates a retail price floor below which its products are not to be resold, has traditionally been one of the most contentious antitrust issues on both sides of the Atlantic. Economic theory suggests that RPM is capable of producing ambivalent welfare consequences, thus obscuring the intellectual debate as to the optimal antitrust response to the practice. This normative uncertainty is best reflected in the divergent approach taken to RPM under the relevant laws of the United States and the European Union, arguably the world’s two most mature antitrust jurisdictions. In 2007, in its seminal Leegin judgment, the United States Supreme Court abolished the century-old per se ban on vertical price fixing. At the same time, under the European Commission’s recent Guidelines on Vertical Restraints price floors remain subject to a quasi-conclusive presumption of illegality. The purpose of this thesis is to examine whether a more consistent approach through the relaxation of the European Commission’s blanket prohibition on price floors would be feasible and, in effect, desirable. Based on insights from new institutional economics, it will be argued that RPM may on certain occasions be a substitute – however imperfect – for vertical integration, where a merger would be prohibitively costly for the parties, in which case the hierarchical form of organisation will have to be replaced by a hybrid governance structure. Under certain circumstances, a fixed retail profit margin may enhance the self-enforcing range of long-term partnerships governed by relational norms, as well as the manufacturer’s control over distribution by reducing substantially the transaction costs associated with monitoring dealer performance. At the same time, however, the analysis will take into account the various objections to the practice, most notably the horizontal collusion theory, in order to argue that the approach to RPM should in principle be cautious. The discussion will culminate in the proposal for a new, workable analytical framework for the substantive assessment of vertical price fixing under EU competition law, which will be based on a – genuinely – rebuttable presumption of anti-competitive object under Article 101(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

Recent high profile retractions – such as the case of Woo Suk Hwang and others – demonstrate that there are still significant issues regarding the reliability of published academic research data. While technological advances offer the potential for greater data re-usability on the Web, models of best practice are yet to be fully re-purposed for a digital age. Employing interdisciplinary web science practices, this thesis asks what makes for excellent quality academic research across the sciences, social sciences and humanities. This thesis uses a case study approach to explore five existing digital data platforms within chemistry, marine environmental sciences and modern languages research. It evaluates their provenance metadata, legal, technological and socio cultural frameworks. This thesis further draws on data collected from semi-structured interviews conducted with eighteen individuals connected to these five data platforms. The participants have a wide range of expertise in the following areas: data management, data policy, academia, law and technology. Through the interdisciplinary literature review and cross-comparison of the three case studies, this thesis identifies the five main principles for improved modelling of best practice for academic research data re-usage both now and in the future. These principles are: (1) sustainability, (2) working towards a common understanding, (3) accreditation, (4) discoverability, and (5) a good user experience. It also reveals nine key grey areas that require further investigation.

This research is important for the determination of the basis of shipper liability, in particular whether the fault of the shipper is taken into account or whether the shipper’s liability is strict. The research question asks to what extent the mental element of the shipper is relevant to the determination of the shipper’s liability for cargo. The researcher seeks to prove that although the rules seek to distinguish between liabilities which are fault-based and those which attract strict liability, considerations made in the determination of liability results in an unclear line being drawn between the two. The minimal application and the limited existence of fault-based rules would be consistent with the overall nature of the strict contractual liabilities of the shipper.

Assisted Reproductive Technology has, in the last 40 years, raised numerous ethical questions. One of these ethical questions has been whether or not children born as a result of Assisted Reproductive Technology treatments may be harmed as a consequence of being brought into existence in this way. Harm caused to children is quite rightly a serious concern for society and society expects the State to intervene to protect children from parents who pose a significant risk to their children. Towards this end section 13(5) of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 requires licensed infertility treatment clinics to ‘take into account the welfare of the child who may be born as a result of treatment’ when considering whether or not to provide a woman with treatment services. This thesis will argue that section 13(5) of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 should be amended as it is acts as nothing more than an arbitrary and unjustified infringement on an individual’s right to reproductive liberty; is an ineffectual means of promoting the welfare of the child who may be born as a result of treatment; is philosophically incoherent; and is inconsistent with the law as applied in so-called ‘wrongful life’ cases. The argument that section 13(5) of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 should be amended will be grounded upon the contention that an individual’s right to reproductive liberty should be accorded particular respect. This thesis will argue for a right to reproductive liberty which encompasses a negative right of the individual to be free from unjustified interference by the State when making reproductive choices. The pervasive influence of the child welfare principle as applied in the context of decisions directly impacting upon them has, it will be argued, played a significant part in the inclusion and retention of section 13(5) within the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. This thesis will examine the way in which the child welfare principle as applied to children has grown in influence and how an unquestioning adherence to this worthy principle has led to an incongruous version of it being applied at the pre-conception stage. While the State have a solid mandate to protect the welfare of children this thesis will argue that that mandate cannot realistically be extended to apply to future children, when to refuse an individual access to Assisted Reproductive Technology has the effect of preventing the child whose welfare is to be taken into account from being brought into existence in the first place.

This thesis investigates the role of technology designers in regulation. Emerging information technologies are complex to regulate. They require new strategies to support traditional approaches. We focus on the use of technology design as a regulatory tool. Whilst this solution has significant conceptual traction, what it means in practice is not clear. Deeper investigation of the role of the design community in regulation is necessary to move these strategies from theory into practice. We structure our analysis by asking: how can we understand the role of designers in regulation of emerging technologies? We answer this question from four primary perspectives: conceptual, legal, practical and design. We situate our investigation within the context of the domestic internet of things and information privacy by design. We adopt an overtly multidisciplinary approach, critically assessing how to bring together the human computer interaction and information technology law communities. To do this, we utilise a range of qualitative methods, including case studies, documental and legal analysis, semi structured expert interviews, questionnaires, focus groups, workshops, and development, testing and evaluation of a design tool. Our contributions are as follows: Conceptually, we provide a critical investigation of the role of technology designers in regulation by consolidating, evaluating and aligning a range of theoretical perspectives from human computer interaction (HCI) and information technology (IT) law. We draw these together through the concept of user centric regulation. This concept advocates a user focused, interaction led approach to position the role of designers in regulation. It draws on the turn to human values and societal issues in HCI, and the increasing reliance in IT law on design for regulation of emerging technologies. Legally, we present two detailed case studies of emerging technologies (domestic internet of things and smart metering) mapping the emerging legal landscape and challenges therein. We situate the role of designers, as regulators, within this space, and show how they can respond accordingly through their user centric focus. Practically, we analyse experiences from leading experts in technology design and regulation to understand the challenges of doing information privacy by design (PbD) for the IoT. We present our findings within the framing of technological, business and regulatory perspectives. Lastly, we present a design tool, ‘information privacy by design cards’, to support designers in doing PbD. This tool has been designed, tested and refined, providing us with a practical approach to doing user centric regulation. Based on our findings from using the cards, we provide the concept of regulatory literacy to clearly conceptualise the role of designers in regulation.

Globalization has become one of the defining features of the contemporary world, and is, no doubt, having some impact on human rights. In examining the nature of the impact with particular reference to Africa, this Thesis challenges the conventional scholarship which has so far concentrated on the impact of globalization on human rights, ignoring the possible impact of human rights on processes of globalization, and argues that in order to obtain a holistic view of the relationship between globalization and human rights, sufficient attention must equally be given to the corresponding impact of human rights norms on processes of globalization. In support of this formulation, three levels of analysis are adopted in the Thesis, namely; international, regional and national systems. It is argued that at the international level, the impact of human rights norms on processes of globalization is evidenced by the fact that international economic institutions such as International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and World Trade Organization (WTO), which initially ignored human rights norms in their policies, programmes and operations, have now embraced such norms. At the regional level, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, embodying human rights norms attentive to the African condition, has been used to constrain processes of globalization. Finally, using three African countries, namely, South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya as case studies, it is demonstrated that at the national levels, human rights norms are also impacting on processes of globalization, as the activities of transnational corporations, and those of governments based on the dictates of economic globalization, are being challenged by human rights NGOs and other social movements. It is on this score that the ‘Mutual Impact thesis’ is formulated, the contention being that for a proper understanding of whether the impact of globalization on human rights is positive or negative, a debate that has engaged the attention of some writers, the preliminary issue of the corresponding impact of human rights on globalization must also be taken into account.

One of the striking features of modern globalization is the rising prominence of international law as governing institution for state-market relations. Nowhere has this been as pronounced as in the international investment regime. Although hardly known to anyone but specialized international lawyers merely 15 years ago, bilateral investment treaties (BITs) have today become some of the most potent legal tools underwriting economic globalization. This thesis seeks to explain why developing countries adopted investment treaties as part of their governing apparatus. The study combines econometric analysis with archival work as well as insights from more than one hundred interviews with decision-makers in the international investment regime. On this basis, it finds ‘traditional’ explanatory models of international policy diffusion insufficient to account for the BIT-movement. Instead, both qualitative and econometric evidence strongly indicates that a bounded rationality framework is best suited to explain the popularity of BITs in the developing world. Although careful cost-benefit considerations drove some developing countries to adopt investment treaties, this was rare. By overestimating the benefits of BITs and ignoring the risks, developing country governments often saw the treaties as merely ‘tokens of goodwill’. Many thereby sacrificed their sovereignty more by chance than by design, and it was typically not until they were hit by their first claim, officials realised that the treaties were enforceable in both principle and fact. The thesis is relevant to a wide range of literature. Apart from being the first comprehensive international relations study on investment treaties, its multimethod approach provides a robust and nuanced view of the drivers of international policy diffusion. Moreover, the study is the first major work in international political economy literature applying insights on systematic – and thus predictable – cognitive heuristics found in the behavioural economics discipline.