One often meets the view that economic regulation should be understood in terms of Pareto efficiency. Economic theories of law have traditionally focused on concepts such as market failure, efficiency, and inefficiency. Proponents assume that under the conditions of perfect competition, rational economic actors will enact courses of action that tend to induce Pareto outcomes. The idea of perfect competition means that markets which are competitive will induce efficient outcomes. The perfect competition approach has focused on the conception of market failure as the foundation for designing regulatory policy. Until recently, lawyers overwhelmingly relied upon a model of economic contract, developed over the last two decades in law and economics, as a normative structure to guide efficient decision-making.

The argument of this thesis is that the legal liability of the administration in France and England, at first sight very different, is actually very similar. In France, the existence of a separate system of administrative courts with jurisdiction in delictual actions against the administration haG led to a division between public and private law. In practice, however, the distinction is less clear than might be supposed because the substantive rules of public and private law are very similar, while in some cases the State is answerable to the civil courts. Although French law is drafted in terms of general principle in contrast to the English common law, the existing rules of liability are not in practice dissimilar. Two theoretical bases of liability are, however, relatively novel: the risk principle (which applied to the administration can be used to impose liability for all unlawful or invalid administrative acts) and the principle of Equality before Public charges (which can be used as a theoretical basis for a system of administrative compensation). On examination, the adoption of these principles into English law is seen to necessitate a change in our traditional constitutional balance of power. Nor, in any event, are they actually the basis of the French system. Neither French nor English law is, at the end of the day, coherent and all—embracing. Both need to be buttressed by statutory and extra— statutory administrative compensation schemes. These should be seen as an acceptable and efficient substitute for civil liability and their development, co—ordination and rationalisation encouraged accordingly.

This study examines, comparatively, the effects of Zambia's post-colonial (1975 and 1995) land policy reforms on the urban land market transactions. It focuses on land delivery, land transfer and exchange, and land valuation and pricing. The central thesis of the study is that land policy reforms matter even for the urban land market. Proceeding from this premise, the study conceptualises the effects of land policy on the land market as one set of institutions (namely, land policy reforms) modifying or radically restructuring (and, hence, impacting on) the other set of institutions (viz. property rights and the land market generally). Grounded in the new institutional economics approach, the conceptual framework focuses on property rights, transaction costs and institutional change. The philosophical framework is post-positivist. Methodologically, the research design is largely qualitative and employs a multiple data collection and analysis strategy. Central to this methodological approach are the concepts of critical multiplism and triangulation. The overall research findings suggest, overwhelmingly, that land policy reforms matter to urban land market transactions. More specifically, the study finds that, in so far as land delivery is concerned, both the 1975 and 1995 reforms had a similar detrimental impact. However, their effects differed markedly in specific areas with regard to land transfer and exchange, on the one hand, and land valuation and pricing, on the other. In patticular, the latter reforms were less pernicious than the former. Consequently, the study recommends land policy reforms that minimise the policy-generated detrimental effects identified in the land market operations. The effects in question naturally revolve around property rights and transaction costs.

This thesis argues that contemporary views of the laws of arms among soldiers, and of the laws of war by legal theorists, influenced particular military campaigns and individual actions in a variety of armed conflicts. Elizabeth I’s officer corps were careful to act in wars so that their actions would be seen as honourable by outside observers in the belief that such actions would add to their personal glory. Their individual and corporate perception of the laws of war directly affected military practices. However, the Elizabethan military establishment was engaged in conflicts that did not conform to contemporary views of just war. Catholic popes funded military expeditions against England and its dominion of Ireland, where the leaders were granted commissions to wage holy war not just war. The suppression of armed rebellions in Ireland employed numerous soldiers, and much of the machinery of state was supported by the English military. Holy war and counterinsurgency operations had no parallels in just war theory. The laws of war provided an important new context for re-evaluating military practices. Although legal discourse was predominantly ordered towards fighting regular wars, with careful reading of contemporary sources, there are important indicators that illuminate contemporary justifications for some of the more brutal military actions associated with the English military establishment, particularly in Ireland. By re-examining the discourse on the laws of war, the thesis finds that soldiers took seriously the customs of war and through them, it reassesses the motivations and mentalities of commissioned officers. This discourse was then used as a basis by which the conduct of soldiers can be understood and contextualised within English political and ethical structures.

Inaction by UN peacekeeping troops in the face of the commission of genocide in Srebrenica and Kigali raised significant questions regarding the duty owed by UN peacekeeping forces to those under their protection. Recent court judgments have recognised that the Netherlands and Belgium were to a certain extent legally responsible to protect those under the care of each state’s peacekeeping troops, and that also the role of individual peacekeeping commanders may be questioned. While peacekeeping commanders may have a moral responsibility to act, it is not realistic to argue that peacekeeping commanders have a legal duty to do so. As a result, the use of the existing options to establish criminal liability for a failure to act under domestic and international law would not be justified in relation to the conduct committed. This thesis argues that alternative options to the existing forms of criminal responsibility for military commanders should be considered, possibly focusing more clearly on failing to fulfil a norm of protection that is specific to peacekeeping and distinct from protective obligations under international human rights law and international humanitarian law. Establishing law tailored to the context of peacekeeping would be an important step towards clarification of the obligations and responsibilities held by military commanders in UN peacekeeping missions.

This thesis examines the nature of the framework for corporate governance with reference to the roles of the general meeting and the board of directors, and suggests that despite numerous reforms of Company Law and the changing nature of business enterprise in general, the framework for corporate administration has undergone little structural change. It discusses the extent of shareholders' involvement in the control of their companies and directors' participation in company management, and argues that the da facto roles of these two corporate organs is not quite to the same extent as is presupposed in legal theory, and that more effective participation may be achieved through certain changes in the existing framework for participation. To this end suggestions are made for increased shareholders' control through shareholders' committees and institutional shareholders acting individually or by collective action, sometimes as representatives of private shareholders. In respect of the board the thesis proposes a greater supervisory function for boards of directors which presupposes an increased use of non-executive directors (some of which would be special shareholders' nominees) under a unitary board structure. This work has involved very little empirical research of its own but by drawing on empirical and theoretical materials (original and secondary) from economics, business, politics, sociology, etc., literature, a wider dimension is given to the discussion than would normally be the case in a "hard law" thesis. As the need for a modification in the framework for corporate governance becomes increasingly recognised and debated, it is hoped that lawyers, businessmen, legislators and all concerned would find this "law in context" approach to the twin-problems of improving shareholders' control and the board's supervisory functions more convincing.

This socio-legal thesis has explored the factors responsible for explaining whether and how redress mechanisms control bureaucratic decision-making. The research considered the three principal institutions of administrative justice: courts, tribunals, and ombudsman schemes. The field setting was the local authority education area and the thesis examined bureaucratic decision-making about admissions to school, home-to-school transport, and Special Educational Needs (SEN). The thesis adopted a qualitative approach, using interviews and documentary research, within a multiple embedded case study design. The intellectual foundations of the research were inter-disciplinary, cutting across law, socio-legal studies, public administration, organization studies, and social policy. The thesis drew on these scholarly fields to explore the nature of bureaucratic decision-making, the extent to which it can be controlled and the way that learning occurs in bureaucracies and, finally, the extent to which redress mechanisms might exercise control. The concept of control was studied across all its dimensions – in relation both to ex post control in specific cases and the more challenging notion of ex ante or structuring control. The aim of the thesis was not to measure the prevalence of bureaucratic control by redress mechanisms, but to understand the factors that might explain its presence or absence in a particular area. The findings of the research have allowed for a number of analytical refinements and extensions to be made to existing theoretical and empirical understandings. 14 factors, along with 87 supporting propositions, have been set out with the aim of making empirically derived suggestions which can be followed up in future research. In terms of the thesis’ contribution to existing knowledge, its comparative focus and its emphasis on the broad notion of control offered the potential for new insights to be developed. Overall, the thesis claims to have made three contributions to the conceptual framework for understanding the exercise of control by redress mechanisms: it emphasizes the importance of ‘feedback’ in relation to the nature of the cases referred to redress mechanisms; it calls attention to the structure of bureaucratic decision-making as well as its normative character; and it discusses how the operational modes of redress mechanisms relate to their control functions.

Culture is all around us, it is the glue that holds us together as a people. Through history, cultural heritage has been deliberately targeted in attempts to eradicate all traces of the targeted people. This thesis analysis the normative evolutions of the concept know as Cultural Genocide through history up till today. The first part of the thesis deals with the understanding of culture and the importance of culture for the surviving of a people. Since culture in large involves identity, the chapter looks at the various definitions of identity through various aspects. The chapter also address the various values that culture incorporates; such as group or community, nationalism or humanity. The second part explores the normative evolution of the legal protection of cultural property and cultural heritage and will show how such protection has developed through time. It will conclude that the normative evolution regarding the legal protection of cultural property and cultural heritage has been following the thoughts of its time and society – always reacting to make the protection even better for the future. The third part will take a similar look at the normative evolution of genocide and especially cultural genocide. Through addressing the historical development up till the 1948 Genocide Convention, including an analysis of the drafting of the Convention and the reason why cultural genocide were left out. In conclusion, this part argues that, in regards to genocide, the normative evolution has not been in any way progressive after 1948. Finally, the thesis evaluates whether international law, at both its normative and enforcement level, deals with the concept of cultural genocide; especially in the context of deliberate targeting and destruction of cultural property. By examine the correlation between the 1948 Genocide Convention and the 1954 Hague Convention, the thesis will argue that that cultural genocide today can be argued to act as a 'autonomous' category side by side with genocide, so that the 1954 Hague Convention and its Protocols serve to complement the 1948 Genocide Convention rather than be considered under International Law as one distinct category of genocide.

This thesis examines gender differentiation in prosecutions for minor offences in local secular and ecclesiastical courts in Kent from 1460 to 1560. Chapter one explains the need for research on gender and crime in local courts, and for studies bridging the historiographical gap between medieval and early modem England. Chapter two examines crimes against property, arguing that reasons other than gender may explain the apparent lenience towards female thieves. Women were disproportionately prosecuted for small thefts and peripheral offences like hedgebreaking and receiving: this could indicate, not that they lacked initiative, but that they were more likely to be prosecuted for offences which were overlooked when committed by men. The reverse appears to be true for physical violence, the subject of chapter three. Here the evidence suggests that men were charged for very minor assaults, whereas minor violence by women was only prosecuted in special circumstances. Almost equal numbers of men and women were prosecuted for verbal offences, the subject of chapter four, but the women were accused mainly of scolding or quarrelling with their social equals, and the men of insulting or slandering their social superiors. Chapter five deals with prosecutions for sexual misconduct. Thechurch courts were relatively lenient towards females accused of fornication or adultery-, both ecclesiastical and secular jurisdictions, however, prosecuted `bawds', who were mainly female, and prostitutes, but rarely the men who used their services. Chapter six is concerned with alleged sorcerers (mainly women), and with sabbath breakers, illegal games-players and vagabonds (largely men). The concluding chapter discusses the similarity of the policies of the ecclesiastical and secular courts, and the tendency for charges against women to be vague and generalised while those against men were specific. It then focuses on the different crimes for which men and women were typically presented, particularly sexual and verbal offences for women and physical assault for men. These and other gendered offences reflect contemporary assumptions and fears about femininity and masculinity: women were expected to be quarrelsome, malicious gossips and sexual delinquents, while physical violence was expected and feared in men. It is suggested that the way local courts exercised their considerable discretion over what, and whom, to prosecute reflected and reinforced these preconceptions, and operated both to control women and to minimise men's fears about them.

In recent years, Malawi has received global attention as a global hotspot for human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity since the arrest of Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza for holding a wedding ceremony in 2009. The violations are a result of negative attitudes against ‘homosexuality’, and the application of anti-gay provisions of the Penal Code and the Marriages Divorce and Family Relations Act, which outlaw consensual adult same-sex relationships and non-conforming gender identities. Malawi’s failure to protect queer persons amounts to the violation of its domestic and international human rights obligations. Paradoxically, the Malawian Constitution and international human rights obligations (to which Malawi subscribes), guarantee equal and effective protection against discrimination, which I have argued that it includes discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. This interdisciplinary study explores the life stories of 44 queer Malawians examining how the lack of human rights protection affects their daily lives. I have found that the majority of queer Malawians are unlikely to come out due to fear of stigma and discrimination. As a result, they are unable to claim the full status necessary to enable them to formally assert their identity, citizenship and relationship rights. Drawing from social construction theories, this study will show that local meanings regarding human rights and sexuality include a misinterpretation of SOGI-based human rights as ‘the right to conduct mathanyula’, which is locally (mis)understood to imply permission to engage in sexual activities between men and young boys. I have recommended a radical shift in the articulation of SOGI-based human rights so that it is understood as the equal entitlement to protections in accordance with Malawi’s domestic and international human rights obligations. If understood as the latter, Malawians are likely to endorse human rights protection based on sexual orientation and gender identity.