Today slavery is illegal in every part of the world. It has been recognised as a crime against humanity and a violation of fundamental human rights. Nonetheless, the exploitation, marginalisation and degradation of human beings for material profit continue to flourish in 21st-century society. Sophisticated criminal networks and transnational illicit operations, coupled with weak governance and a high demand for slave labour, has allowed modern slavery to evolve and thrive underground, where vulnerable individuals are exploited for a multitude of purposes. Due to the complex nature of modern slavery, not only is a comprehensive approach needed to address its commonalities, but particular attention needs to also focus on the complexities and challenges unique to specific forms of exploitation. Further, due its transnational nature its regulation requires the involvement and co-operation of various actors in the international community. In particular, one area that has been subject to increasing concern is the role of corporate entities in joining the fight against slavery, by ensuring that their operations and supply chain networks are not tainted with exploitative labour and riddled with human rights abuses. The international community has recognised that while corporate entities have the capacity to promote positive effects such as economic development, job opportunities, and technological innovations, that their operations can also adversely affect vulnerable individuals and communities. Thus, through the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR), and various human rights initiatives, businesses have been facing pressure to use their global resources, and power to acknowledge their influence and impact on significant global issues such as human rights, modern slavery, forced labour and human trafficking. Separately, as States are the prime guarantors of international human rights, they have an obligation to establish and enforce effective measures to regulate modern slavery, including the conduct of those who violate human rights and engage in the exploitation of people. Concerning unethical business practices, States then have a responsibility to establish corporate liability for complicity in modern slavery and related issues. Against the backdrop of global contemporary forms of slavery, this thesis aims to understand the extent of corporate obligation to respect internationally recognised human rights in the regulation of modern slavery, and challenge the perceived role of firms in combatting slavery in their operations. Moreover, this study considers the role of the State in enforcing CSR in line with its international obligation to protect human rights and combat modern slavery by preventing and prohibiting the crime, protecting the victims and prosecuting the offenders. This thesis will then conclude with an exploration of domestic level operations in the United Kingdom and evaluate what key approaches mean in the support of victims, the prosecution of offenders, and the responsibility of UK businesses.

The Olympic Movement has a constantly expanding mandate which has seen it venture into many fields other than simple staging of the Olympic Games. For example, it has extended its mandate into the equal representation of women in sport, but more importantly, this thesis examines its new mandate of building peace through sport, which is contained in the Olympic Charter’s 2nd Fundamental Principle of Olympism. It has also indirectly influenced the production of the UNGA Olympic Truce Resolutions, by calling on the UN to revive the ‘concept of ekecheiria’. However, the Olympic Truce Resolutions are frequently flouted, and more often than not, by the Host Nation itself, including the UK and the USA in recent years. This thesis examines a possible solution to this failing, which is the Olympic Truce Resolutions codification into a binding Treaty where states and the entire Movement are party to it. This thesis recognises that there is the inherent problem in this, in that the Olympic Movement is not comprised of states. Its core actors are the International Olympic Committee, National Olympic Committees, and International Sporting Federations (and to a lesser extent OCOGs). Hence this thesis submits the novel concept of Olympic Singularity, eight unusual features that amplify the EU doctrine of the specificity of sport on the Olympic playing field. These eight cumulative features unite to allow the Movement to be co-signatories to the Truce Treaty, alongside states. It also enables the Movement to govern the Truce Treaty and any sanctions thereof. Again, this is because of the features of Olympic Singularity, the most notable of which is that the Movement is unusual because of its universal singular webbed framework which necessitates its consideration as a single powerful organ capable of action on the international stage equivalent to states. Olympic Singularity justifies the Movement’s special treatment before law, in the form of an atypical international law subject, in that it unites independent actors into one organ, enabling them to have capacity on a par with those reserved to states and international governmental organisations. This would only take the form of governing and sanctioning a Truce Treaty. This thesis examines precedent for this in that the ancient Olympic Games were governed by a single state who dispensed real sanctions for the breach of ekecheiria. It also examines in a case study, South Africa which shows that the end of apartheid was assisted by the UN and the Movement uniting and using sport by way of a binding international Treaty, ICAAS 1985. Hence the capacity of the state system was required alongside the recognition of all involved that it was a Treaty.

Private equity has been developing as an industry in the UK and the U.S. for decades and at present it is the focal point of regulation for said to be partly responsible causing the 2007 to 2008 financial crisis. However, the situation of private equity in China differs tremendously to that in the UK and the U.S. in terms of every aspect such as investment routes, system of regulation and divestment considering that private equity has only been growing fast in China for merely a decade. The laws and regulations governing each of the aspects in the three countries are on different levels in terms of maturity not to mention the fact that foreign private equity under Chinese law is only a relatively new area. Foreign private equity laws and regulations are gaining attention and need attention as foreign private equity has been developing fast with an enormous amount of capital involved and there is not a well-established system of laws and regulations governing important issues such as its investment and divestment in China. The thesis will look into the legal and regulatory problems encountered in the course of development of foreign private equity in China and it will try to solve such problems by studying the private equity industry in the UK and the U.S. Each chapter of the thesis will land on one problem and all the chapters together will try to solve one question: how to improve the legal and regulatory system of foreign private equity in China? Based on the legal and regulatory advice given in each chapter, the thesis will argue that the most important aspect missing in the current system, compared to its counterpart in the UK and the U.S., is the absolute authority of basic legal principles such as rule of law and freedom of contract.

Children are largely ignored in medical ethics, which concentrates on adults with capacities that children lack (including competence, or rationality). This thesis answers how medical decisions should be made for unquestionably incompetent children. The dominant approach to medical ethics in the West depends on respect for autonomy and this distorts medical ethics for children in two ways. Firstly, parental decisions for children may be taken to have the same authority as respect for autonomy. Secondly, theories of general well-being have focused on adult’s well-being with an endorsement of the components of that well-being by the adult themselves. This has hindered the development of an objective, impartial, conception of interests, arguably, the best fit for making decisions for very young children. I argue that although children are clearly demarcated from adults in medical ethics, there is not a clear explanation of why this is. For young children others must make decisions or be prepared to override the child’s decisions. More recently, the distinction between adults and children have become blurred, exemplified by the use of terms such as ‘young person’. Children’s rights at best draw attention to children and their interests, but do not help in resolving the medical treatment of incompetent children. The most promising approach depends on articulating an account of children’s interests. For several reasons the best interests standard is not defensible. I argue that a reasoned, or reasonable, agreement upon the child’s interests should determine medical treatment. Neither the child’s parents (nor the clinicians) can be taken to have an incorrigible grasp of the child’s interests, all should justify the reasons for their choices.

My thesis consists of two relatively independent topics. In the first topic I empirically inves- tigate the factors that determine the presence of the independent coffee shops in the market of Central London. In the second topic I present a theory of cartel detection. The common feature of these topics is that I investigate the demand side effects on market structure and its impact on competition. To be more specific, in the first topic I build a simple theoretical model of product differentiation in adjacent markets, based on Mazzeo (2002). For the empirical estimation I have constructed a unique dataset of coffee shops in Central London. I further manage to identify differences on demand characteristics across markets by utilizing data on people’s mo- bility from the tube stations and provide evidence for the existence of product differentiation. It is found that residential areas with high employment, areas with small business density and leisure areas increase the profitability of the independent coffee shops. A counterfactual analysis is also presented. In the second topic I investigate the cartel’s strategies and likelihood of collusion when the buyers of the cartel are able to report its existence to the anti-trust authority. I char- acterize the cartel’s optimal behavior when the buyers are actively monitoring the cartel’s members and are able to report a cartel to an anti-trust authority1. I present a simple static model and I show that the likelihood of collusion increases as the willingness of the buyers to report increases (cost of reporting decreases). Furthermore, it is shown that it is optimal for an anti-trust authority to decrease the cost of reporting (a trade-off between price reductions in existing cartels and increased likelihood of cartel formation is identified). Finally, alterna- tive cartel strategies are also explored in this topic. As for the last point, I show that the threat of exclusion (foreclosure) and price discrimination are robust strategies that prevent buyers from reporting.

This thesis examines the history of murder by poison in Scotland during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in the context of the development of the law in relation to the sale and regulation of poisons, and the growth of medical jurisprudence and chemical testing for poisons. The enquiry focuses on six commonly used poisons. Each chapter is followed by a table of cases and appendices on the relative scientific tests and post-mortem appearances. The various difficulties in testing for these poisons in murder and attempted murder during the period are discussed and the verdicts reached by juries in poisoning trials considered. It is argued that murder by poison during the nineteenth and early twentietrh centuries raised particular legal and medical problems, as not only were symptoms often not recognised by doctors, but chemical testing was inadequate, and juries as arbiters of fact often did not understand the evidence that was presented to them in court during trials for poisoning. Further, the ease with which these poisons could be purchased for very small sums of money, the rise of the insurance industry, and the prominence of burial clubs all contributed to providing opportunity and motive for murder. Since poisons were easy to obtain and difficult to detect, it seems probable that poisoning was much more common than is usually accepted.

In both the 1936 and 1977 USSR Constitutions conscientious labour in socially useful activity was decreed to be a "duty and matter of honour" for every Soviet citizen. This study examines the various approaches adopted by successive Soviet leaderships in their determined efforts to reinforce that ethos. It focuses, in particular, on the so-called "anti-parasite" laws dating back to 1957, when as a part of Khrushchev's attempt to revive popular justice, several smaller republics experimented with enactments that permitted peer justice institutions in the form of amorphous social assemblies to exile "parasites" via a procedure which bypassed the existing court system. Special attention is devoted to the criticism lodged against the laws (during their adoption and spread to the other union republics in 1961) by members of the legal profession, who complained that the wide punitive given to the extra-judicial bodies and the attitudes and behaviour encouraged in them would erode the respect for "socialist legality" which they had been charged with enhancing in the minds of the mass public. Although as a result of such criticism, the Khrushchev regime modified the peer justice institutions in the early 1960's, and even though his populism was absorbed by or subordinated to the normative sector of social control in Brezhnev's legal policy, the study highlights the fact that complaints of abuses and inconsistencies in anti-parasite proceedings continued to be levelled against the prosecution process. This, it is contended, was due in large part to the extreme vagueness of the notion of social parasitism itself, although the lack of a precise and consistent definition of this peculiar offence (and of the key elements which were deemed to constitute it) was actually seen as necessary and even desirable since it allowed the authorities to use the anti-parasite legislation as a weapon of suppression against a broad spectrum of socially, politically, and economically inconvenient groups within Soviet society.

The thesis endeavours to show the interdependence of political theories, the social sub-structure, and the formal structure of the legal system in competitive society.

This thesis explores the pivotal place of the 1885 Labouchère Amendment and the 1967 Sexual Offences Act in the discourse of homosexual regulation presented by 20th century homophile histories. These twin events of ‘criminalisation’ and ‘decriminalisation’ are revisited to explore how and why they occurred and how they came to assume such a central position in both academic and popular understanding. The thesis draws on two streams of evidence. The literature on homosexual regulation is examined to establish the claims that are made about Labouchère Amendment and the Sexual Offences Act and the place that they are accorded, and the relationship that is established between them, within widely accepted homophile histories of the UK. Alongside this, primary sources – in the form of parliamentary debates, government papers, newspaper archives, and biographies – are interrogated to unpick the motivations and intentions of those involved in these pieces of legislation and to position them within a wider historical context. The thesis argues that this literature on homosexual regulation contributed to and institutionalised a homophile discourse geared especially towards establishing a history of what specific events might mean for political imperatives of the time and future prospects of homosexual communities. I will suggest that this led to uncritical acceptance of particular interpretations of the Labouchère Amendment and the Sexual Offences Act, which were reproduced over time and thus established as ‘truths’ within academia, the gay community and the wider public. Whilst some authors have recently subsequently questioned the importance of the Labouchère Amendment in the process of criminalisation (e.g. Cocks, 2003:17) these accounts have by-passed this event altogether, rather than offering an alternative account for its passage. Consequently, they have not supplanted earlier public, academic and political understandings of Labouchère. Specifically they have not explored how earlier understandings informed the debate about decriminalisation which, as this thesis will show, was premised on these historical interpretations. More broadly, the thesis argues that the over-concentration and mistaken interpretation of the Labouchère Amendment, which has misinformed understandings of the SOA (1967), has prevented the development of a more thorough, genealogical analysis of simultaneous sexual regulation more generally. In turn, developing a combined analysis of heterosexual as well as homosexual regulation contributes to the critique of existing interpretations which uncritically present certain events as homophobic rather than part of a more encompassing punitive heteronormativity. Part One critiques homosexual regulation’s historiography, before exploring theoretical and methodological issues raised in my thesis. Part Two then questions the Labouchère Amendment’s status as a fundamental adjustment in homosexual regulation making private homosexual acts short of sodomy illegal for the first time (Weeks, 1977). I provide an alternative history showing all homosexual acts were previously punishable and show that Labouchère’s Amendment was not homophobic but a measure for the protection of male youths from sexual exploitation and as such part in keeping with the wider punitive heteronormativity. I achieve this through analysing the primary sources on Labouchère’s Amendment from that period alongside the genealogical contextualization provided by contemporaneous heterosexual regulation. This establishes the foundations for Part 3 to repeat this methodology in analysing the decriminalisation process, this questions the centrality ascribed to the 1957 Wolfenden Report. I establish that this concentration ignores that decriminalisation was a highly politicised and negotiated process reliant upon the same social and political transformations that also re-ordered heterosexual regulation. This radically changes the interpretation of the how and why decriminalisation occurred and what had been possible.

This thesis comprises three studies that explore the attitudes and beliefs of prison staff and prisoners towards HIV and hepatitis B and C prevention policy in prisons. Analysis of the factors that influence the way prisoners and prison staff view prevention strategies highlighted some important issues from the perspective of the people most closely involved with implementation of prevention policy. The exploration of these issues was complex due to the security, legal, cultural and ethical issues that had to be considered. A case study approach incorporating qualitative and quantitative methods was used to try to embrace the complexity of the research aim. A qualitative foundation for staff and prisoner interviews was used for two reasons; firstly, so that the views of the researcher were not imposed and secondly because there were few prior research studies to base the current study on. In addition, as prisons differ in security category and in the types of prisoners held, it was presumed that developing the research to give a wider representation of the issues would be valuable; this overview was achieved by questionnaire. Data were collected from ten prisons, there were fortyone in-depth staff interviews from three types of prisons; data from 182 questionnaires from 7 prisons and 18 in-depth interviews with prisoners from the three prisons where staff were interviewed. The results show that the predominant concern of staff is that the prevention policies discussed in the study are to do with sex and drug misuse; activities considered illegal within the prison environment. Staff believed that some of the prevention measures concerned with reducing the risk associated with injecting drug use conflict with their discipline and security role and also conflict with the drug strategy policies that focus on eradicating drug use in prisons. Opiate detoxification programmes, abstinence based therapeutic programmes and drug-free areas were viewed most positively by staff and were portrayed as most closely aligned to their security and discipline role and the role of prisons in society. Most staff believed that providing condoms in prisons would also act against their discipline and security role. This is principally because of the potential to conceal or smuggle drugs using condoms and also because the stigma of same sex relationships in prisons may lead to aggression and bullying from other prisoners. Prisoners described a hidden culture of same sex relationships in prisons and generally did not completely welcome policies concerned with improved access to condoms. However, some of the prisoners highlighted a moral imperative to distribute condoms in prisons. Prisoners stated that they would view suspiciously any change in prevention policy concerned with injecting drug use, which ran counter to the current policies of intolerance to illicit drug use in prisons.