Cases that reach the Supreme Court are ‘hard cases’ where the result is not clearly dictated by statute or precedent. To reach a decision in these cases, a judge must exercise discretion and the non-legal factors that influence discretion have been the subject of extensive debate. Theoretical and empirical studies examining the influences on judicial discretion have focused on demographic characteristics and facets of the judicial personality including political ideology and attitudes. Personal values are related to these factors and have been demonstrated to play a role in decision making. This thesis demonstrates a relationship between personal values and judicial decision making in the Supreme Court. This thesis translates theories and techniques used in psychological research to examine the role of personal values in judicial decision making. A novel method of assessment of value expression in judgments was developed. This method revealed a different pattern of values expressed in the majority and minority judgments of cases that divided the Supreme Court, demonstrating a relationship between values and judicial decisions (value: decision paradigm). This was confirmed by an empirical study of legal academics. Drawing on this novel method, a series of Supreme Court cases were analysed to develop a theory of discretion, division, uncertainty, and values, suggesting that the influence of values is mediated through largely subconscious instinctive responses in cases where the outcome is perceived as uncertain. The role of values has significant implications in the debates surrounding judicial diversity, which have centred on overt characteristics, how the judiciary are seen. The study of judicial values has revealed tacit diversity in the Supreme Court which is associated with judicial decision making. The value: decision paradigm provides a new framework to analyse judicial decision making, judicial division, and the exercise of judicial discretion and the subconscious influences on these processes.

The thesis critically analyses the legal problems associated with the recognition and enforcement of domestic and foreign arbitral awards in Saudi Arabia. The aim is to illuminate whether or not the new Saudi Arbitration Law 2012 (SAL) and the new Enforcement Law 2012 (SEL) will be able to resolve these problems. In the thesis, we investigate the reasons for the problems with regard to the SAL 1983, and then discuss the SAL 2012 in terms of the possibility of resolving such problems. Moreover, the study includes a semi-comparative study in the light of Sharia Law and international practice. The thesis deals with Saudi judicial practices by looking at a significant number of Saudi judicial cases that relate to the enforcement of arbitral awards. This is what enhances the view that the thesis will make an effective contribution to the field of arbitration. A number of legal problems, such as the lack of identification of the limited grounds for a challenge, the competent court to decide such a challenge, the arbitration having the authority of res judicata, and the potency of the competent court to review the merits of the dispute, should all be considered due to their negative impact on the enforcement process. In this thesis, we have concluded that the new SAL 2012 and SEL 2012 can cope with and resolve many of the legal dilemmas associated with the matter of the enforcement of arbitral awards. These new pieces of legislation will be able, to some extent, to reassure and comfort national and international parties without violating Sharia law. However, some potential legal obstacles may emerge in terms of the enforcement process as it relates to arbitral awards. Therefore, the author of the thesis believes that the level of satisfaction may not be as much as is hoped for.

The thesis focuses on comparative criminal evidence law and sets out to explore whether it is possible to devise rules of criminal evidence that would suit different jurisdictions. This work should be treated as an exploratory project as it aims to find a suitable approach and then test it using three different rubrics of evidence law – evidence of prior convictions, hearsay evidence and standard of proof. Those rubrics in six different jurisdictions will be examined. The thesis first discusses the mainstream dichotomous approach to comparative criminal procedure and evidence, concluding that the inquisitorial-adversarial distinction has by today lost much of its descriptive power and was never meant to be a normative model. Instead, the author finds that all Western style jurisdictions today are concerned with accurate fact-finding and in order to facilitate accurate fact-finding, should take into consideration the cognitive needs and abilities of fact-finders. Since for the most part human cognition is universally the same, this psychology-based approach can serve as a foundation for evaluating the evidentiary regulation – and unless some extra-epistemic factors prevail, should guide legislatures towards optimizing and unifying their evidentiary regulation. Based on the recent studies in legal psychology, the author offers recommendations that would be workable in all sample jurisdictions. This is in part possible because empirical research tends to debunk often-held beliefs about professional judges being far superior fact-finders immune from the cognitive biases and emotional appeal usually attributed to jurors.

This thesis will consider UK labour law’s role in promoting fairness for carers. Building upon Fineman’s work, I will argue that caring relationships are of vital importance to society and should be supported by the state. The principle of justice as fairness, substantiated by the capabilities approach, will underpin this argument. I will focus upon modifying the workplace through care centric labour laws to achieve fairness for carers. Care centric legislation, developed by Busby, focuses upon promoting carers’ rights to work, rather than workers’ rights to care. Much of the analysis will focus upon reconciliation legislation, which aims to support people providing care within the paid workplace. This is because it has been the main way successive UK governments have aimed to help people reconcile these competing commitments. Although this body of legislation has gone some way towards achieving this, I will show that it could have done more. To make labour law care centric, something more radical is required. In this regard, I will analyse a right to care. To conclude, I will highlight the need for more empirical work in this context to further understand how fairness for all carers could be achieved.

Child imprisonment has a long history, one that predates the formal creation of juvenile justice. However, the continued use of prison establishments for children, known as young offender institutions (YOIs), remains a controversial issue. This thesis seeks to advance the debate regarding the abolition of child imprisonment by drawing on empirical research conducted in an English YOI accommodating teenage boys. In so doing, the thesis contributes to the established prison ethnographic literature by developing an understanding of the attitudes and lived experiences of child prisoners, a typically overlooked dimension of prison ethnography. The thesis critically analyses three key themes that emerged from the empirical research: surviving life inside; interpersonal victimisation; and, the nature of the staff-prisoner relationships and the use of power. It is argued that imprisonment is far from a neutral experience. The stark similarities between the lived experience of adult and child prisoners illustrate the futility of attempting to create a distinct secure estate for children whilst retaining the use of YOIs. The differences that do exist only serve to demonstrate the inappropriateness of detaining children in the prison environment. The recent fall in the youth custody population presents an opportunity to finally abolish child prisons.

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.

Chapter 1 introduces the topic of third party funding of litigation which is a recent phenomenon in academic circles. Few of the existing papers on commercial litigation funding are empirically based and those that are, with one exception, use surveys and interviews to collect data. Within the legal boundaries of litigation funding, economic theory predicts that in perfectly competitive markets consumers control what is supplied, prices cover costs without excessive profits and inefficient producers are eliminated. However reality rarely conforms to prediction, and regulation may be appropriate in the public interest to overcome market failures arising from information asymmetries. The research focus is: ‘How effectively are commercial third party litigation funders governed and/or regulated?’ Chapter 2 proceeds to consider the literature on regulation, it’s applicability to litigation funding and the interests of stakeholders. A major concern is the ability of a litigation funder to pay the costs of a winning defendant. The conclusion reached in Chapter 3 is that litigation funders have too much choice in the way they report and disclose information and what they actually report and disclose is deficient in meeting the needs of investors. In Chapter 4, using single firm event study methodology I discover that the stock exchange market does not always react as predicted to disclosure by litigation funders and consequently the market is not an adequate proxy for a regulator. Chapter 5 extends chapter 3 on the solvency issue and also considers other stakeholder issues e.g. ethical ones which may require regulation. The conclusion reached is that a light touch independent regulator overseen by the legal services board would be appropriate. This work narrows the literature gap for empirically based economic research and augments and extends the existing literature by examining third party funding of heterogeneous high value, low volume cases in contrast to homogenous, low value, high volume cases. It is the first work on the accounting regulation of litigation funding. This work will also assist investors, the judiciary and other stakeholders to better evaluate the risks of this new industry.

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.

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.

Community policing is one of the more significant recent developments in policing and the notion has been widely discussed and applied around the world. This thesis examines its various conceptions as discussed in the literature and in practice, with particular emphasis being given to the role of trust between police and citizens in this context. The investigation adopts a constructivist and qualitative comparative analysis based in two countries: Mexico and the UK (with two case studies in each country) and with data primarily collected through interviews with samples of police and citizens. Key findings are that: The variety of conceptions about community policing highlight the complex nature of the notion and the many factors shaping its varied practices. Police assumptions as to what constitutes good practice in community policing and what success might look like, deserve to be re-examined. The social constructions that police and citizens hold about community policing provide valuable sources of insight which challenge some of the conventional understandings regarding policing priorities. Trust is a vital ingredient for successful community policing and needs to be based as much on the police trusting citizens and communities as the other way round.