In recent years, an increasing number of personalised services that require users to disclose personal information have appeared on the Web (e.g. social networks, governmental sites, on-line selling sites). By disclosing their personal information, users are given access to a wide range of new functionality and benefits. However, there exists a risk that their personal information is misused. To strike a balance between the advantages of personal information disclosure and protection of information, governments have created legal frameworks, such as the Data Protection Act, Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA) or Safe Harbor, which place restrictions on how organisations can process personal information. By auditing the way in which organisations used personal data, it is possible to determine whether they process personal information in accordance with the appropriate frameworks. The traditional way of auditing collects evidence in a manual way. This evidence is later analysed to assess the degree of compliance to a predefined legal framework. These manual assessments are long, since large amounts of data need to be analysed, and they are unreliable, since there is no guarantee that all data is correctly analysed. As several cases of data leaks and exposures of private data have proven, traditional audits are also prone to intentional and unintentional errors derived from human intervention. Therefore, this thesis proposes a provenance-based approach to auditing the use of personal information by securely gathering and analysing electronic evidence related to the processing of personal information. This approach makes three contributions to the state of art. The first contribution is the Provenance-based Auditing Architecture that defies a set of communication protocols to make existing systems provenance-aware. These protocols specify which provenance information should be gathered to verify the compliance with the Data Protection Act. Moreover, we derive a set of Auditing Requirements by analysing a Data Protection Act case study and demonstrate that provenance can be used as electronic evidence of past processing. The second contribution is the Compliance Framework, which is a provenance-based auditing framework for automatically auditing the compliance with the Data Protection Act's principles. This framework consist of a provenance graph representation (Processing View), a novel graph-based rule representation expressing processing rules (Usage Rules Definition) and a novel set of algorithms that automatically verify whether information was processed according to the Auditing Requirements by comparing the Processing View against the Usage Rules Definition. The third contribution is the Secure Provenance-based Auditing Architecture that ensures any malicious alteration on provenance during the entire provenance life cycle of recording, storage, querying and analysis can be detected. This architecture, which relies on cryptographic techniques, guarantees the correctness of the audit results

In World War II, millions of men found themselves at one time or another in war captivity. Their daily lives in captivity have been documented in memoirs and historical studies, but despite the abundance of detail, the experience of war captivity as an experience of exclusion remains in-theorised. Western POWs held by Germany in particular were excluded not only from further involvement in direct combat, but also from the states of exception associated with the foreign slave labour and the racial persecutions particular to Germany at the time. While all around them people were killed for a number of reasons, their lives were protected – and in the case of Jewish soldiers extraordinarily so – for no other reason than to keep them alive. The first part of the thesis uses Carl Schmitt’s work on sovereignty and nomos to situate the POW camp within the framework of an international order where war is bracketed – gehegt. This order reveals itself as an order of war, in which law takes the role of the sovereign in guaranteeing the order. The second part then turns to the exception to this order, the POW camp, analysing its juridicopolitical situation on the example of Jewish POWs from Western forces held by Germany in the Second World War. The third part of the thesis looks at the wartime experiences of Emmanuel Levinas, who spent five years as a POW in Germany. The struggle Levinas’s work exhibits with the experience of captivity exemplifies this experience’s ultimate meaninglessness, and raises questions about the possibility of subjectivity without engagement.

In this thesis I consider the interface between copyright law and cultural practice. I argue that the protection of folklore through copyright obfuscates the status of folklore as a generative resource for derivative works in favour of its status as a carrier of national identity, over which states can exercise property rights. Specifically, I analyse the significance of folklore within the playwriting culture of Ghana and discuss how, within this specific context, the introduction of the 2005 Copyright Act (which requires nationals to seek permission and pay a fee to use folklore), rather than incentivising artists to create derivative works from folklore, significantly disrupts the ability of playwrights to continue to create work that reflects the codified theatrical practice established in Ghana post independence. As such, the Ghana Copyright Act, 2005 threatens to jeopardise the fundamental balance in copyright between protection and access, and so the purpose of copyright as a mechanism for incentivising artists. Through exploring the development of the relationship between folklore and copyright and how protection for folklore interacts at the international, continental and sub-regional levels, this thesis examines both the potential impact of the copyright law in Ghana and the efficacy of protecting folklore through a copyright paradigm at all.

This thesis explores both the utility and effectiveness of psychological interventions in addressing fire-setting behaviour amongst adults. Chapter one explores the heterogeneous nature of this population in terms of the behaviour, the personal characteristics, and the motivations. By outlining multi-factorial theories, it explores why adults intentionally set fires and the implications that this has on the development of psychological interventions. Chapter two provides a critical appraisal of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (3rd Edition) as an assessment of personality disorder and psychopathology. This chapter explores the psychometric properties of the tool, both in terms of the reliability and validity of its use amongst adults within forensic settings. This was deemed important given its typical use with mentally disordered offenders, including those with a history of fire-setting behaviour. Chapter three contains a systematic review exploring the effectiveness of psychological interventions for adults who set fires, and highlights the shortage of available research. Although interventions have evidenced some promising findings in relation to recidivism and improved psychological well-being, limitations were recognised in relation to the quality of articles reviewed, and the generalisability of such findings. Chapter four explores the experiences of service users within a structured fire-setting treatment programme specifically designed for mentally disordered offenders. Using an Integrative Phenomenological Approach, insight is gained into the service users’ perceptions of the programme and its utility in addressing fire-setting behaviour. Six themes are identified and discussed in length offering a rich understanding into the most salient aspects of the intervention from an inpatient service user’s perspective. Finally, theoretical and clinical implications of the findings from the previous chapters are discussed in Chapter five.

In response to the fact that academic projects on lay participation in China written in English have been very scarce, and also the views of the three schools of Chinese scholars, this thesis will conduct a thorough review of lay participation in China. Chapter 1 of this thesis firstly outlines the worldwide situation regarding lay participation. Chapter 2 sets out the historical background to the growth of lay participation in China, by recounting the various forms of and experiments with lay participation during China’s history. Chapters 3 and 4 study the status quo of the sole form of lay participation in China today, that is, the mixed tribunal system. Chapter 5 looks into the contribution that lay participation could potentially make to Chinese society. Chapter 6 offers some proposals with regard to the prospective direction for developing lay participation in China, from a realistic perspective. The thesis finds that lay participation has been neither declining worldwide, nor has been absent during China’s history. It also finds that although the mixed tribunal system in China today faces an array of problems, lay participation may potentially contribute to Chinese society in terms of a better justice system and improved democracy. After clarifying the prospects for continuing lay participation in China and proposing possible reformative measures, my thesis concludes that the system, with careful reconstruction, deserves a position in China’s future legal system; and that the leftist proposal, to abolish lay participation in China, should be rejected.

In the contemporary political world order that continues to be structured by the principle of national sovereignty, states remain the most important instrument for the delivery of rights. If we want to understand how human rights can be realized in practice, we therefore have to study the conditions and processes of their institutionalization on the state level. While the United Kingdom was relatively slow, compared to other western European democracies, in the domestic institutionalization of international human rights norms and standards, governments in Britain have between 1998 and 2008 created a complex human rights regime that still awaits a comprehensive analysis and assessment. This thesis fills that gap. Focusing on the Human Rights Act as the legal centerpiece, the Joint Committee on Human Rights as the parliamentary scrutiny body, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission for Great Britain as the largest human rights commission, this thesis examines the extent to which the British Human Rights Regime has contributed to the institutionalization of human rights in the UK. To that end, it develops and deploys the sociological ideal type of the human rights state as a qualitative analytical framework and as an external benchmark that is able to integrate the legal, political, and wider societal dimensions of effective human rights institutionalization. Based on the thematic analysis of case law, official documents and elite interviews with public officials, this thesis argues that the Human Rights Act, the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Equality and Human Rights Commission have contributed to a significant institutional change in the domestic recognition and protection of human rights. They have introduced new rights norms and safeguards into British law, established new mechanisms for judicial and political rights review, and brought about important legislative and policy changes. Yet, their efficacy suffers from structural limitations that have been imposed so as not to fundamentally disturb the concentration of political power in the executive which is preserved by the constitutional doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. In the Westminster system of parliamentary government, this doctrine continues to allow the executive to dominate the legislative process without strong constitutional human rights safeguards that would be domestically enforceable against primary legislation. While the preservation of parliamentary sovereignty was a key political requirement that enabled progress to the present state of domestic human rights institutionalization, it also prevents the sustainable entrenchment of human rights as fundamental and universally binding norms for the legitimate exercise of all juridical, legislative and executive state power, thereby leaving the British Human Rights Regime at permanent risk of abolishment or degradation.

The Donovan Report (1965-1968) is often seen as one of the great failures in the overall attempt to deal with the thorny problem of the contentious nature of industrial relations in post-war Britain. This thesis re-examines that report and subsequent governmental responses, using numerous sources, many of which have barely been used by previous authors, in order to establish where it all went wrong. Such an examination is important to inform future governments on some of the problems of trying to legislate on industrial relations matters. This thesis addresses the central question addressed by the Report – the validity of employing legislation to deal with the problems within industrial relations, asking what contribution had legislation made to the ordering of industrial relations in the past, and what lessons future governments could take from that? Why did both the Labour Governments under Harold Wilson and the Conservative Government under Edward Heath choose to go beyond Donovan in their attempts to alter the role of the state in industrial relations Finally, could the Industrial Relations Act 1971, had it survived, have been to the benefit of trade unions in time? This thesis suggests that legislation had an important role to play in the ordering of industrial relations, and that collective bargaining alone, although effective in many areas, was unable to address issues which had wider implications, such as those relating to health and safety or the reconciliation of differences due to the laws’ interference with trade unions’ rights to defend their members and their own collective rights. Both the Labour and Conservative Governments chose to go beyond the measures proposed by Donovan because economic and political necessity demanded a greater measure of control over strike action. However, the inquiry had undoubtedly focused the debate on whether or not legislation could ever be the most appropriate tool for controlling industrial relations, and therefore acted as a catalyst for the reforms that followed. The Industrial Relations Act 1971 failed to bring about the hoped-for industrial peace. Its repeal in 1974, however, did nothing to prevent further rises in strikes after 1974. Piecemeal legislation in the 1980s and 1990s did bring about a greater level of industrial peace, but this suggests that it was not legislation per se that was the wrong strategy for controlling industrial relations, but rather the method and pace of implementation. Other means of maintaining industrial peace were experimented with and could have been successful if the political will had been there and the unions and employers had engaged more fully,but the seeds had been sown for legislative control and it was impossible to hold back the tide of restrictive legislation which followed these early forays into the concept of law as a means of controlling industrial relations. The Donovan Report did indeed represent the thin end of the legal wedge and opened the floodgates to the many enactments designed to control and emasculate the trade union movement which the Conservative governments of the 1980s and early 1990s were able to introduce. The collective failures of the Donovan Report, In Place of Strife and the Industrial Relations Act to bring about industrial peace were, however, only indicative that legislation was not the most appropriate means of achieving this goal at this particular point in time. Alternative attempts to reduce strikes and engage trade unions in closer working relationships with employers and their associations, and with the government, did meet with some success in the 1970s and may be usefully attempted again in the future. This will, however, depend on whether government is able to keep an open mind on the utility, or perhaps futility, of legislative controls such as those attempted in the years between 1965 and 1975.

This thesis examines the relationship between the private enforcement of EU competition law and forum shopping with a particular focus on cross-border collective end-consumer redress. There is no coherent framework across the EU for these types of cases. This lack of uniformity has the potential to create recourse to different national courts. Lawyers may engage in forum shopping when filing lawsuits on behalf of the victims of mass torts. Such practices can provide Member States with incentives to amend their laws to attract collective proceedings and create competition between national judicial systems. However, forum shopping is not the only concern. There appears to be a paucity of cross-border collective claims. This is coupled with an apparent lack of motivation for end-consumers to seek a remedy, particularly if the only choice is to litigate outside their own legal regime. Addressing this situation is vital given that end-consumers regularly suffer harm in the form of higher prices, lower output, reduced quality and limited innovation as a result of antitrust infringements but they are rarely compensated due to legal and practical obstacles. To each end-consumer the harm may indeed be de minimis. However, the aggregate harm can amount to a considerable sum. In the absence of effective redress procedures, infringing undertakings retain the spoils of their unlawful conduct. Against this background, this thesis examines the extent to which the conflicts-of-laws rules encourage forum shopping and considers the appropriate forum and the appropriate procedural measures that need to be adopted in order to facilitate effective and equal access to justice for end-consumer victims of EU competition law violations.

This thesis considers how the law should manage conflicts between religious freedom and the prohibition of sexual orientation discrimination. It starts from the basis that both these rights are valuable and worthy of protection, but that such disputes are often characterised by animosity. It contends that a proportionality analysis provides the best method for resolving these conflicts. In particular, it argues that proportionality is a conciliatory method of reasoning because it provides context-dependent and nuanced answers to these issues, providing scope for re-­assessment in future cases, and because it accepts losing claims as in principle as worthy of protection. It is also argued that proportionality is advantageous because it inherently demands justification where rights are infringed. The thesis takes a comparative approach, examining the law in England and Wales, Canada and the USA to demonstrate the clash of rights and to compare how these issues have been dealt with by courts and legislatures. It considers these issues with reference to four areas of law. The first assesses how far employees with discriminatory religious beliefs should be accommodated in the workplace, including whether they should have a right not to perform aspects of their work that are contrary to their beliefs and whether they should be permitted to share their discriminatory views at work. The second considers whether and when religious organisations should be permitted to discriminate in their employment decisions. The third examines how far religious organisations should be permitted to discriminate in providing services, such as charitable services or when hiring out premises, and the fourth whether religious individuals should be allowed to discriminate in the secular marketplace.

The focus of this study is the property rights theories tested in the context of Modern China’s rural areas. It is divided into three parts: Part I presents the theoretical framework, concepts. These form the analytical tools. Part II briefly describes the three big transformation of rural arable land ownership in modern China. This is a particular case in which the theoretical framework can be tested. In Part III of this study I apply the analytical framework developed in part I to understand the puzzles and problems described in part II. This is the application of theory to the history and reality. In this research, I show that the change of property rights is central to political, economic and social change in that particular society. As a formal institution, property rights provide an incentive or disincentive structure for a particular economy. The contrasting economic performance in modern China’s agriculture can be well explained by the underlying force— the property rights institutional arrangement. The stagnation and decline of Chinese economy and universal poverty is conditioned by the disincentive structure of the Commune System. While the specular economic growth and its relief of poverty is driven by the incentive structure of the Household Responsibility System (HRS). The success of the HRS is in that it is not only a government institutional arrangement but also a communal institutional arrangement in its origin. The rules created by the peasants themselves are legitimized by the central government as property rights. It really matter who creates the property rights and for whom. This research attempts to enrich our knowledge in social science. It challenges the conventional and standard political and economic theory used to explain Chinese puzzles in its economic growth and social development. In the theoretical sphere, it contributes mainly to the literature of Marx’s theory of property, Honoré’s concept of ownership and Ostrom’s theory of common-pool resources and institutional change. In the practical sphere, it contributes to our understanding of the radical and complex change in Modern China’s rural areas.