This study considers the competence of lawyers. in carrying out the work of interviewing their clients and the value of training and experience in acquiring client interviewing skills. Literature on legal skills is first surveyed to assist in understanding the concept and help decide on methodology. Literature on client, interviewing' and the educational value of experiencee reviewed to provide background to subsequent studies. The first study provides an overall framework for solicitors' work and monitors, through observation and questionnaire, the work of a number of solicitors over a four day period. Client interviewing is found to take up a larger proportion of solicitors' professional work than other categories noted, and observation proves to be a more sound basis for studying detail than a questionnaire approach. The second study assesses the competence of 27 new trainee solicitors at interviewing clients through a detailed monitoring of their performance over thirteen tasks using eighteen different techniques and providing thirteen heads of information. Their performance exhibited many of the deficiencies recognised in the literature. The trainees were then randomly allocated to three treatment groups. One group received full training, one received training without audio-visual feedback of first interviews and the third (control) received no training at all. They all then undertook a second interview which was similarly assessed. Training was found significantly to enhance performance over the spectrum of measurement, an audio-visual feedback) especially enhanced behavioral aspects of performance. In the final study, solicitors and trainees ranging widely in experience were videotaped interviewing their clients and similarly assessed. Experience was not found to have- the expected effect of enhancing performance significantly except in some minor respects, but it did increase the feeling of confidence in interviewing ability. In conclusion, suggestions are made for stronger linking of training with experience in the production of new lawyers.

This thesis is concerned with the centrality of the confession as an item of prosecution evidence. It is also concerned with both the structures and strategies that have evolved in the criminal justice system to legitimate the confession and preserve its vitality as evidence probative of guilt. The socio-legal research evaluates the status of records of police interviews within the context of police custodial interrogations of persons suspected of involvement in crime. To this end the thesis examines the extent to which evidence is "constructed"' within a legal framework rather than elicited; how far the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) has affected police-suspect relations in interrogations; the circumstances in which suspects "elect" to cooperate with the police or decline to answer specific questions; and the extent to which records of interrogations can be said to be complete, accurate and reliable. The research comprises a number of different methodologies. The first stage involves a historical and case-based analysis of both the development of the use of confession evidence in criminal cases and of the forms of regulation that have been applied over police access to suspects. The investigation centres upon a structural analysis of the relationship between suspects, the police and the courts and examines the value systems which have conditioned the forms of regulation that have evolved. The next stage of the study involves a comparative analysis of the content and form of police interrogations and of the reporting or recording systems relating thereto in a sample of cases drawn from the period prior to the introduction of the PACE Act and from a sample generated following the implementation of the Act. This aspect of the research builds upon conceptual categories developed by psychologists, sociologists and criminologists. This systematic and comparative examination of the interrogation process of the pre- PACE era and the current PACE era is intended as a contribution to the debate surrounding police interview practices and will help resolve contradictory accounts relating to the police role in the criminal justice process. It is, in addition, also intended as a contribution to questions relating not only to the regulation of police powers over suspects but also to those. concerned with the form, nature and structure of the police suspect dynamic and, finally, to those associated with miscarriages of justice.

This thesis focuses on the privacy interests of those subject to a criminal process. The thesis investigates the extent to which the privacy interests of those subject to such a process are recognised and afforded adequate protection in England and Wales. Over the last thirty years policing has become increasingly proactive and preventive. Advances in technology have given rise to new policing strategies, which emphasise the need to manage ‘risky’ groups and individuals through the collection and retention of disparate pieces of personal information. Whilst there is a significant body of criminological literature documenting this trend, and raising the possibility that these developments could pose a threat to the privacy interests of those subject to such preventive policing measures, criminological theorising alone cannot provide a defensible normative model for assessing the impact of such developments. Moreover, criminal procedure scholarship tends to focus on human rights insofar as they regulate adjudicatory policing measures geared towards the prosecution of suspected offenders. This procedural scholarship does not focus centrally on the wider functions of the police in maintaining order and protecting the public by gathering intelligence on ‘risky’ individuals and groups. This thesis aims to fill this gap in the literature through an assessment of how such policing activities set back privacy related rights. An interdisciplinary method is used, which draws on philosophical literature, European and domestic human rights and criminal procedure jurisprudence, and relevant policing and criminal justice scholarship. The first broad task for the thesis is to develop a normatively defensible model which can identify where privacy interests are set back as part of a criminal process, and articulate why it is important for those tasked with regulating such a process to recognise and appropriately protect these interests. This normative model is then used to assess English law’s response in different contexts to the police use of privacy interfering measures against those subject to the criminal process. It is noted that the European Court of Human Right’s Article 8 jurisprudence has (generally speaking) had a positive impact on English law in this area, but concerns are raised that domestic lawmakers consistently fail to strike a fair balance between the privacy interests of those subject to a criminal process and the legitimate crime prevention goals of the police.

2013 marked ten years since the Sexual Offences Act 2003 was passed. That Act made significant changes to the law of rape which appear now to have made very little difference to either prosecution or conviction rates. This thesis argues that the Act has failed against its own measures because it remains enmeshed within a conceptual framework of sexual indifference in which woman continues to be constructed as man’s (defective) other. This construction both constricts the frame in which women’s sexuality can be thought and distorts the harm of rape for women. It also continues woman’s historic alienation from her own nature and denies her entitlement to a becoming in line with her own sexuate identity. It effaces woman’s specificity leaving her suspended in an ahistorical space in which the unique and gendered meaning of rape for women is also erased. This thesis argues that the law is complicit in its own failure because it is structurally invested, for its own survival and coherence, in the exclusion and erasure of woman’s voice, which represents the possibility of a plural form of being and thinking and is thus a fundamental challenge to the legitimacy of law. Using Luce Irigaray’s critical and constructive frameworks, the thesis seeks to imagine how law might ‘cognise’ sexual difference and thus take the preliminary steps to a juridical environment in which women can more adequately understand and articulate the harm of rape. It argues that the prevention of rape is not just about prohibitive laws that fix the iteration of the sex act and of sexed bodies. It first requires an ethics of subject-subject relations and the recognition of two distinct and different subjects. Only then can we hope to generate a minor jurisprudence capable of providing justice owed to women who are raped.

This thesis examines the complex legal framework for admission to hospital and treatment for mental disorder of adolescents. It identifies areas of uncertainty and makes recommendations on how these might be addressed. It does so by mapping the various legal routes for adolescent psychiatric care, including detention under the Mental Health Act 1983, and examining these through a 'human rights lens' which reflects international and European human rights standards, including the European Convention on Human Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The basis of this thesis is an investigation of Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) administrative and criminal enforcement files, relating to UK detentions and prosecutions. It would appear that this is the first time that such an analysis has been made. The thesis is divided into four parts of which Part B and C form the heart of the work. These two consider administrative (Part B) and criminal (Part C) enforcement measures and discusses their legal basis. But before these subjects are dealt with in more detail, enforcement personnel and their roles are analysed (Part A), and their role is compared to inspectors of the Health and Safety Executive and the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB). Human rights and their impact on both enforcement process and inspectors of MCA and MAIB are addressed within the context of the Merchant Shipping Act 1995 and Regulations issued under the Act. The thesis identifies inconsistencies of UK legislation when compared with European law and apparent lack of clarification within UK law. The analysis of administrative enforcement measures focuses on detentions of merchant ships whereas the discussion of criminal enforcement measures concentrates on the areas which the files suggested were the most affected by investigations and prosecutions, namely groundings, violations of the Collision Regulations and pollution incidents. It becomes clear from the research that detentions by far outweigh prosecutions, that MCA policy supports this approach and that enforcement personnel indicate a preference for such administrative enforcement measures. However, a large number of Detention Notices were found non-compliant with legal requirements. Still only one case was identified, documented and discussed where the MCA was taken to arbitration by the owner affected by a detention. The thesis offers suggestions as to how the work of MCA enforcement personnel can be improved and (Part D) what measures would seem to be appropriate for the lawmakers to take in the future. It is suggested that the approach taken in recent European oil pollution legislation to focus on serious negligence rather than on strict criminal liability could offer a suitable way forward. Throughout this work I have endeavoured to state the law as at 31 October 2008. In a number of cases it has been possible to take account of developments since that date as my viva voce only took place in June 2009. I have made reference to new European and UK pollution legislation (see Chapter 13, fn 1) which came into force or will come into force in the course of 2009. I also used the decision in TS Lines Ltd v. Delphis NV (The TS Singapore), [2009] EWHC B4 (Comm) in Chapter 8.6.2. to help clarify the discussion about the quantum of compensation in an arbitration over a detention. But I did not carry out a detailed analysis of the new legislation and that case. The decision in Club Cruise Entertainment and Travelling Services Europe BV v. The Department For Transport [2008] EWHC 2794 (Comm) of 18 November 2008, however, was fully analysed and relevant aspects found their way into the discussion in the thesis.

This thesis explores the use of equity and its principles in the field of public law. It asks whether the relationship between local authorities and their service users can properly be understood as being a fiduciary relationship. In considering this question the thesis examines the extent to which the relationship is analogous to trusteeship or whether it is some other sui generis category. This requires exploration of core elements of trust and loyalty and analysis, within a local government context of the debate as to whether fiduciary duties are confined to having a proscriptive role or whether, as some advocate they have a wider prescriptive function. The relationship between local authorities and their service users is not considered to be a fiduciary relationship within the traditional class of relationships so classified. Notwithstanding, there are instances within that relationship where the characteristics resemble in part application of a sui generis label. For example, in the realm of local authorities and their interaction with the elderly, child care and youth counselling services it is possible to apply a quasi - trusteeship role. This categorisation cannot however be extended to the majority of interactions between local authorities and their service users which usually fall within a contract or tortious setting. The main reason in not being able to identify the relationship between local authorities and their service users as fully fiduciary is the inability to point to a central core of loyalty between the parties which is so necessary for a finding of the existence of a fiduciary relationship. The loyalty inhibitor is the polycentric essence of much of local authority decision making, which is made in a very diverse community group often with different complex needs and aspirations all clambering for attention. Further, as local authorities are public bodies they must accommodate the ‘public interest’ in any decision making process and outcome. These factors combine to make a very different decision making environment than the way fiduciary obligations can be exercised in private law and makes the hurdles higher for an exercise of translation to the public law sphere. The purpose of this analysis is to explore whether the roving commission of equity has any application to the public law field. Has equity died and shrivelled, or does equity still have the ability to flourish and accommodate new situations and changes in social morals and norms, ‘yet maintain its core values and norms, without which no society can survive, let alone flourish.’? Notwithstanding, these hurdles this author considers that equity still has a role to play in public law, none more so than in the day to day decision making of local authorities as well as in judicial review proceedings. Equity can bring a contextual approach so necessary when substantive review is applied. Equity has proved to be a robust flexible adaptable tool, even in a complex modern environment. For example, the remedies it has fashioned of injunctions, declaratory relief and freezing orders to mention a few , as well as aiding the common law in its application of trust principles to a deserted wife’s equity, where the title was in one party’s sole name. This author espouses a principle of stewardship which can be applied as an additional substantive review tool in the judicial tool box, along with Wednesbury and proportionality. Structuring substantive review is a major current debate in public law both judicially and academically: there is no valid reason why ethical principles such as stewardship-of person, place, property and purpose should not be a valid contributory player.

The focus of this study is on the public procurement law applicable where UK contracting authorities seek to adjust the provisions of existing contracts. This study aims firstly to identify the law applicable to contract adjustments and secondly to establish how that law is applied in practice. In order to achieve the first objective, chapter 2 of this study set out the substantive law applicable to contract adjustments (including that arising from the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union , the Public Contracts Regulations 2006 and 2015, and case law) and chapters 3, 4, and 5 consider respectively the content of that law specifically in the cases of review clauses, adjustments upon operation of law, and other adjustments. The second objective is met through considering the findings of relevant case law and also through undertaking empirical research. Chapter 6 set out the empirical research method, which focuses on adjustments to public private partnership contracts in the health, secure accommodation and education sectors. Data was collected through semi-structured questionnaires from private practice lawyers who advise contracting authorities on adjustments to those contracts within the scope of this research and contracting authorities themselves. Chapter 7 then sets out the findings of that empirical research. In the concluding chapter 8 the findings of the research are set out including an explanation of the ambiguities identified in the existing legal framework, and an articulation of the overall approach taken by contracting authorities when adjusting contracts, which suggests that a pragmatic approach (including assessment of likelihood of successful procurement law challenge) is taken to best enable the attainment of the contracting authorities’ procurement objectives. The study closes by setting out ways in which the law on contract adjustments could be clarified or improved.

On 25 October 1855 Lord Cardigan led the Light Brigade in a fateful charge against a Russian artillery battery. Poet Laureate Lord Tennyson immortalised the cavalry’s valour in verse. Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do & die, Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred Since then, British soldiers, sailors and pilots have been engaged in countless wars, conflicts and peacekeeping missions across the globe. Many have died in defence of the United Kingdom and her interests. What obligations do states have to armed forces personnel who lay down their lives? This thesis is about guaranteeing armed forces personnel’s right to life. It asks about the obligations states owe to their own armed forces under the European Convention on Human Rights. Military service exposes individual servicemen and women to countless dangers – the risk of being killed in enemy attack, friendly fire, the risks from hostile environments and infectious disease, difficult training exercises and the inherent risks surrounding weapons. This thesis examines whether states are under a duty to protect servicemen and women against such risks. These risks are inherent to military service. Some, such as enemy attack, are virtually impossible to predict and guard against. The focus of this thesis is to establish realistic, practical and effective expressions of the right to life that fulfil states’ obligations under human rights law, whilst also maintaining military efficacy, discretion and decision-making authority. In order to be effective human rights law must not impose unrealistic burdens on states. This thesis considers how to provide effective, balanced legal protection for servicemen and women that makes allowances for the realities of military service.

This thesis provides an English law analysis on collaboration and contract management in the context of offshore upstream oil and gas contracts in light of the Maximising Economic Recovery [hereinafter ‘MER’] Strategy. The predominant subject of the thesis is the impact on offshore contracting of the MER Strategy. The thesis firstly considers that the Strategy is not merely another statute to regulate the offshore sector – its impact is of paramount importance because it sets a comprehensive framework for the coming decades until the cessation of operations in the North Sea. The MER Strategy seeks to address the field ‘maturity’ in the North Sea, which causes high extraction costs and questions the current business and contracting model. Secondly, the thesis focuses on the contracting model and relationship among operators and contractors, i.e. oil and gas companies and the supply chain. This niche area of contract law has been in the spotlight of academics and practitioners for many years, and abundant literature exists focusing on so-called ‘risk allocation’ clauses. However, the thesis approaches the subject in an original manner: looking beyond the traditional legal standpoint, it introduces the element of ‘contract and commercial management’ and focuses on the potential of ‘collaboration’. It argues that these two elements are key to the future of offshore contracting in light of the MER Strategy. The explanation of where these two terms ‘sit’ from an academic, practical and taxonomic standpoint is not an easy task. Contract and commercial management is a management-based discipline that goes beyond certain limitations imposed on the role of contract, championed by ‘strict’ school of thoughts on contract law. It perceives the contract to be mainly a device of ‘problem solving’ rather than ‘failure management’. Collaboration is a notion with great potential for contracting in general – and offshore contracting in particular – which nevertheless brings with it substantial challenges that need to be addressed. Collaboration is a crucial concept in the MER Strategy, and the thesis seeks to ascertain its meaning both within and beyond the context of the Strategy. Most importantly, the thesis explores the legal meaning and ramifications of collaboration, since although it is not a legal term of art, it is ‘reflected’ on existing doctrinal notions.