This thesis analyses “health care litigation” in Brazil and England. By health care litigation I mean those lawsuits in which claimants demand from the State the provision of a certain health treatment based on their entitlement to receive health care from the public health system or funded by it. The question that guides this thesis is whether courts intervening in rationing decisions make the public health system more or less fair. The concept of fairness I use in this thesis draws on the idea of “accountability for reasonableness” developed by Norman Daniel and Charles Sabin. This research will analyse the case-law of courts in Brazil and England, and the impact of litigation on the public health system. Based on this research, I argue that health care litigation in Brazil, where courts interpret the right to health as an individual trump against rationing decisions, is making the public health system less fair. Conversely, in England, where courts mainly control the procedure rather than the substance of the rationing decisions, litigation contributed to make health authorities more accountable and rationing decisions more public and based on better reasons, robust evidence and fair principles. Interestingly, even though courts in both countries have judged their cases in different ways, in the long term, litigation was one of the reasons for the creation of health technology assessment systems that try to legitimate rationing decisions through more public and better reasoned decisions: CONITEC in Brazil and NICE in England. The analysis of healthcare litigation in Brazil and England also contributes to the broader debate about social rights adjudication. These cases provide empirical and nuanced evidence that can be compared with the experience of other jurisdictions to shed light on the potential, risks and limits of courts controlling the allocation of resources in social policies using the language of social rights.

The purpose of this thesis is to study the role of corporate social responsibility (hereinafter ‘CSR’) in corporate governance in the context of employment. This is done through a comparative study of the United Kingdom (hereinafter ‘UK’) and China in which it is determined whether Chinese companies can adopt UK companies’ CSR practices in employment. The thesis begins with an overview of the theory of corporate governance and the necessity of CSR in corporate governance. The different models and principles of corporate governance and CSR, and how the main corporate organs operate in corporate governance and apply CSR in decision-making to meet stakeholders’ needs are introduced. The study then demonstrates the rationale behind the emergence of CSR, the legal impact of CSR on stakeholders and the global application of CSR initiatives, especially the techniques and mechanisms adopted in the UK and China. The research specifically presents CSR practices in employment in the UK and China against a theoretical background. This comparative study is mainly dependent on companies’ information disclosure, since all data were collected from their official CSR reports. The quality of the information disclosure is assured through effective monitoring as stated in the various reports. The implication of the comparative research on the information disclosure collected demonstrates the difference in CSR implementation in employment between UK and Chinese companies. The thesis analyses the possibility of adopting UK CSR practice in employment in Chinese companies in terms of the economic, social and political barriers to, and current situation of, CSR in China. As China has opened up the global market, overseas companies have invested in the Chinese market. This comparative study of CSR implementation in the context of employment in the UK and China, and the analysis of the current status of Chinese CSR practices also provide foreign enterprises experience to relate their CSR policies in corporate governance to Chinese context.

This thesis is concerned with REACH, the EU Regulation on the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals, and its regulator, the European Chemicals Agency (‘ECHA’). It has two overriding objectives. The first is to provide an exposition of REACH. The Regulation is vast and has been called, "possibly the most controversial and complex piece of legislation in European history", by one of the EU Commissioners who oversaw its genesis. Despite (or possibly because of) this, there is comparatively little substantive writing on REACH. The second aim of this thesis is to explore REACH using new governance literature and, in particular, writing which looks at post legislative norm elaboration via the use of guidance. The text of the Regulation stands at more than 130,000 words. The most recent consolidated version of REACH is 516 pages long. The Regulation is complex and dense and lengthy. Accompanying this complex legislation are more than one million words of official guidance produced by ECHA. To date, there have been a small handful of case studies which use particular legislative regimes to explore the challenges posed by post legislative norm elaboration via guidance. The yoking of post legislative soft norms to REACH has seen a complex transformation; one which was only partially foreseen in the Regulation (and likely also only partly foreseen in the minds of the legislature). As such, REACH is a good example of an evolving system of EU governance that is both associated with the Community Method and is also differentiated, new, complex and nuanced. However, REACH also acts as a challenge to a number of assumptions in the new governance literature, including: that new governance is non-hierarchical; that yoked soft norms are complementary and come only from the state; and that soft law elaborates solely on framework norms.

Elderly care is one of the more high profile contemporary issues that confronts care professionals, the Government and its citizens. Central to these are concern how care is best regulated and the cost effectiveness of decisions to cut care delivery across the public and private sectors. Defining what constitutes good care delivery is a continuing challenge to health care managers and staff, as the benchmark is in constant flux due to advances in modern medicine and the progression of new and dangerous ill-health conditions. Culture, personal values and expectation changes from generation to generation also blur the definition of what constitutes good care. This thesis offers a contemporary analysis of care and examines how regulatory systems have been too ad hoc and often retrospective; leading to deficiencies in the pro-activity and holistic response elderly care requires to tackle its issues. This is one of the most rapidly evolving areas of regulation in a period of intense media attention and public concern over elderly care. A considerable degree of permanence can be identified towards the action plan of the Government in engaging a variety of reactionary regulatory strategies. In the later analysis in the thesis, it is suggested that additional specialist and dedicated regulation may still prove to be necessary to secure care quality and undertake preventative measures against the abuse of this vulnerable section of the community. Public concern and medical interest continues to reveal cases of severe neglect of the elderly in many private care homes. The Care Quality Commission, the main regulator since 2009, undertakes inspections and reports on care quality, but doubts remain as to how effective the measures in place guard the quality of care in practice. The second Francis Report on the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation (5th February 2013) highlighted many failings in the National Health Service and showed how the most vulnerable and elderly to be particularly at risk. Reports of poor care of the elderly continue to confirm that stricter monitoring and inspections are needed. The aims and objectives of this thesis, are to understand how elderly care regulation has addressed systemic regulatory failures and provides a case study of lessons learnt from past omissions and mistakes. At the time of writing, the Care Quality Commission has undertaken tougher inspection regimes by currently adopting a system of special measures, and new regulations are being considered. Over its approximately six years of activity since it ‘plugged a regulatory hole’ it’s now progressively much improved inspectorate function has even just embraced ‘whistle-blowing’ as part of its ‘work in progress’ profile. There is continued pressure on the regulator to meet expectations of ensuring high quality care, and it is also a response to the changing role of care homes; reflecting the diverse range of care and the ageing population. This thesis provides an analysis of how elderly care has evolved over many centuries and varied in its standards of delivery. Defining appropriate levels for care standards is one approach, adopting a holistic approach is another, but the culture of care is one that needs to be fostered through family members who are often engaged in the delivery of elderly care, as well as the community at large. Developing care through purely legal mechanisms, such as the setting of care standards has its limitations, but will undoubtedly also feature as part of any perceived solution. There are signs that the changing culture in care homes and those that provide care, is a recent and most welcome shift in regulatory goals and objectives. It is argued that this change reflects positively on the current care system which has been driven by some better education of care workers and greater empathy with the elderly; an empathy which is driven by the growing reality with every new generation that most of us will live well into our elderly years due to the advancement of modern medicine. Reflected also is increased lack of trust in people, where in the past assumptions about care delivery standards by individuals were relied upon instead, and how to engage with the continuous re-design of oversight regulatory structures issues of legitimacy and increasing public trust. The Care Quality Commission is developing its own identity and offers a form of social regulation that is set apart from the main economic regulators. There are many lessons which can be learnt when working from within the National Health Service through the use of internal networks, access to current government policy and funding arrangements. Despite strong ministerial engagement in this area, the Care Quality Commission has been able to maintain its own voice and, in recent months, has developed its expertise to address public concerns about elderly care. Despite this, the statistics show that at least one third of care homes are regarded as less than satisfactory, suggesting that much work remains to be undertaken. Co-ordinating clinical and social care of the elderly is part of patient safety. It also connects with regulating the professional standards of health and social care professionals.

The most recent international legal definition of „trafficking in humans‟ is provided within Article 3 of the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, and is reproduced verbatim in Article 4 of the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings, and almost verbatim in Article 2 of the recent Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings and protecting its victims, 2011. This definition has taken significant and at times controversial steps in clarifying what human trafficking is in a legal sense. The definition is comprised of three elements – the „action‟, „means‟ and „purpose‟, all of which must be present in order for the activity in question to constitute human trafficking. The definition goes on to state that consent is irrelevant where any of the listed „means‟ such as force or coercion have been employed by the trafficker(s). The „lack of consent‟ element has the potential to be problematic, due to the elasticity of the notion of consent. If it is to be accepted that consent (or lack thereof) is relevant in the context of human trafficking – and therefore sexual exploitation – then this renders it difficult to determine who are, and who are not, victims of human trafficking, and leaves those who have „consented‟ in a state of limbo – they have been less than trafficked, but more than smuggled. This thesis aims to explore the nature and role of consent in the transnational trade in women for sexual exploitation, and what the ramifications of inclusion of this controversial element are for the putative victims.

The main aim of this research is two-fold; firstly, these chapters will seek to demonstrate the unreliability of theoretical or abstract approaches to legal reasoning in describing the law. Secondly, rather than merely providing a deconstruction of previous attempts to classify private law, the chapters attempt to construct an overlapping approach to classification. This represents a new way of classifying private law, which builds on the foundations of the lessons of legal realism and explains how classification can accommodate overlaps to assist in identifying the core elements of private law reasoning. Following the realist tradition, the thesis argues for narrower formulations of the concepts of property, contract and tort. It is then argued that within these narrower concepts, the law is made more predictable and clearer. Importantly, adopting the overlapping analysis, we can explain the areas that we have removed from property, contract and tort as overlaps with these core concepts. The purpose is to recognise that legal concepts can be best understood as links between facts and judicial decision making, and the best way to achieve this is to reject discrete categorisation and, instead, to recognise the overlapping of legal concepts.

This thesis is a contribution to the body of literature which aspires to solve the global problem of collective wrongdoing. This collective wrongdoing is committed by individuals, social groups and corporations which includes (to name a few) environmental damage, the violations of human rights, political rights, animal rights and the socio-economic rights of people. The discussion is focused on the solutions for the violations of the socio-economic rights of people who are affected by the business practice of outsourcing (i.e. stakeholders of businesses). It advances the argument that the imposition of legal, social and moral responsibility on those individuals, social groups and corporations which contribute to collective wrongdoing is not an effective method. It suggests departing from this method of holding these individuals, social groups and corporations accountable for their contributions to collective wrongdoing. It advances the argument that collective wrongdoing can be regulated and controlled by the participants who are engaged in a multilateral agreement to practice business sustainably. It suggests that collective obligations (as opposed to responsibility) are contained in multilateral agreements. It is therefore argued that the protection of the socio-economic rights of stakeholders by a theory of collective obligations is plausible and practicable.

This thesis examines the law applicable to unmarried couples on relationship breakdown through the lens of vulnerability theory, developing a framework of 'relational vulnerability' which argues that as a result of the state's expectation of and preference for economic self-sufficiency, the homemaker becomes vulnerable. Relational vulnerability is defined as the broad susceptibility to harm that arises as a result of an individual existing within an uneven or unequal relational framework. Firstly, I argue that relational vulnerability is primarily caused by the way that the state, through law, prioritises autonomy and rationality at the homemaker's expense. Her inability to live up to the economic ideal causes her harm on economic, emotional, and spatial levels. Secondly, I argue that legal understandings of homemaking (i.e. care and domestic work) are influenced by myths of altruism and domesticity, labelling it as gendered, sentimental, and privatised. As a result of this, the homemaker struggles to assert an interest in the family home on relationship breakdown. Thirdly, I argue that the state owes an obligation to redress relational vulnerability by promoting resilience. In the final chapter, I examine three hypothetical responses to vulnerability, evaluating the extent to which these are able to make the homemaker resilient.

This thesis critically analyses the English choice of law rules for testamentary trusts. After outlining the research context (Chapter 1), the key concepts and terms for testamentary trusts in cross-border estates are introduced (Chapter 2). The dual system of choice of law rules (one for testate succession and the other for the trust) are discussed with reference to reads 'rocket and rocket-launcher' illustration that has been favoured by legislators and commentators alike. Thus, the current choice of law rules for testate succession matters are analysed in Chapter 3 and the choice of law rules for trusts are examined in Chapter 4. This leads to Chapter 5 concluding that the choice of law rules for the creation of testamentary trusts (the rocket-launching aspects) are particularly problematic. The discussion thereafter focuses on how the choice of law rules for the rocket-launching aspects of testamentary trusts could be improved with reference to the international and European reform attempts to legislate on succession and trusts, including the Hague Succession Convention and the European Succession Regulation (Chapter 6). Moreover, the limited UK reform attempts relevant to the choice of law rules for testamentary trusts are discussed in Chapter 7. Chapter 8 proposes recommendations for reform.

Since the enactment of the Human Rights Act 1998, discussions have developed concerning a judicial ‘dialogue’ taking place between the UK courts and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) over the interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and its application to UK law. This thesis contributes to these debates by offering a judicially-informed account of the dialogue between these courts based on in-depth interviews conducted with eight Justices of the UK Supreme Court and four judges of the European Court of Human Rights. It combines these insights with analysis of case law, extra-judicial commentary and contributions from political and legal theory to explore the role of judicial dialogue in legitimising the judgments of these courts. In this way, the thesis offers a unique methodological approach to a highly topical area of constitutional discourse in the UK. The thesis argues that dialogue has arisen in response to legitimacy challenges facing these courts based on concerns over the extent of the ECtHR’s influence in the UK. Both at the level of judgments and through informal meetings, dialogue responds to these challenges through the participation of the national courts in the jurisprudential development of ECHR rights, the accountability of the ECtHR to domestic judicial concerns, and the ongoing revision and refinement of the Convention rights at the supranational level to accommodate for legal and constitutional diversity. To this extent, dialogue is part of a wider effort to legitimise the Convention system and the courts charged with upholding it by strengthening the role and identity of the domestic courts in human rights adjudication, as reflected in the reemphasis on subsidiarity and the common law ‘resurgence’. However, the thesis also observes that a significant part of the dialogue resides in an increased willingness by the UK courts to refuse to apply parts of the ECtHR’s case law, and a tendency by the ECtHR to accommodate that refusal. On this basis, it argues that the process also carries the risk of delegitimising the ECHR system by promoting a disposition to disobey on the part of national authorities across the Council of Europe.