The thesis seeks to develop a normatively well-grounded and practically viable framework for the registration of product shapes under EU design and trade mark law, taking proper account of doctrinal overlaps. The institutional challenge is to develop a model which avoids unnecessary duplication of protection while permitting each regime to function in a principled and complementary manner. The thesis adopts a multi-dimensional comparative approach focussing on four central criteria (subject-matter, subject-matter exclusions, protection thresholds and scope). Firstly, US Federal law is employed as a comparator for subsisting legal doctrine and theoretical rationales. Secondly, a comparative analysis is undertaken between the two regimes to pinpoint the aspects which distinguish between a ‘design’ and ‘trade mark’ right vesting in features of product shape. The thesis develops a normative model of protection and advances interpretations which EU tribunals should adopt to give effect to the underlying rationales of both registration regimes, as applied to product shapes, while mitigating against over-protection and 'regime clash'.

The Unfair Commercial Practices Directive has been one of the most significant developments in European Consumer Law. It introduced provisions on aggressive commercial practices for the first time on a European level and provides the key definition of consumer vulnerability in European Consumer Law. This thesis draws attention to the previously overlooked topics of aggressive commercial practices and vulnerable consumers. It shows that the UCPD fails to ensure a high level of protection from aggressive practices for vulnerable consumers. The main reason for that is that the system of the UCPD which focuses on information and the average consumer is not well suited for aggressive practices and vulnerable consumers, which require a broader consideration of factors. Furthermore, it is argued that the vulnerable consumer standard in the UCPD is too narrow to adequately protect vulnerable consumers. A conceptualisation of consumer vulnerability based on the understanding that vulnerability is universal and can be experienced by anyone is suggested. The aggressive practices provisions are analysed and it is argued that inequality of power is at their core. The aggressive practices provisions suffer from lack of clarity that makes their application difficult. A key problem is that the average consumer is unsuitable for aggressive practices. This can be addressed with the introduction of the concept of resilience to pressure. Finally, it is argued that the use of empirical evidence in interpreting the UCPD can be beneficial for the protection of vulnerable consumers.

This research is a response to suggestions by the various European Community (EC) institutions that differences between the property law regimes of the various member states represent an obstacle to further European integration. The EC is itself a legal entity having legislative powers. Within its areas of competence it legislates on many social and economic issues and its legislation is binding in the legal systems of its fifteen member states. However, EC legislative powers are said to be ‘attributive’ in that sovereignty ultimately resides with the members states. The EC is therefore only competent to legislate in areas where the member states have invested it with the necessary powers. Specifically, in the context of this research, the EC has no competence to legislate on matters related to property law. Article 295 of the EC treaty (former Article 222) states that law-making powers in these areas remain with the member-states. The research examines the suggestion that certain features of some national property law regimes are in conflict with the social and economic aspirations of further European integration and investigates the regimes of the fifteen member states in this context. It adopts a comparative law methodology and seeks to identify similarities and differences between the various regimes. The methodology utilises an expert from each of the states to produce a collection of national reports which are then analysed within the thesis.

Since 1993, the European Union has dramatically increased the scope and volume of its procurement regulation; particular increases have been made in terms of the procurement procedures made available, and the obligations that national contracting authorities have in light of EU law. This thesis examines the influence that recent developments in EU public procurement law have had on national procurement regulation in the UK, the Netherlands, and France. To assess this influence, three 'case study' areas were selected for investigation: the new procurement procedure 'competitive dialogue', made available for the procurement of complex contracts; the ability to repeat purchase using 'framework agreements', recently made available for purchasing in non-utilities sectors; and the Court of Justice's use of 'general principles of equal treatment and transparency', which has created new obligations for national contracting authorities. The thesis found that, in the areas examined, the influence of EU secondary legislation is substantial and-in two of the three countries examined-also plays a visible role in national regulation where EU law is not mandatory. The Court of Justice jurisprudence evaluated has had its most significant impact on the national judiciary: courts were found to reinforce the Court's judgments in all countries. Soft law issued by the European Commission had little perceivable influence on the formal legal regulation of the Member States examined, but may have influenced approaches taken to guidance or legislation more generally. The thesis also observed that harmonization of national laws, despite not being an objective of the EU rules, has increased in recent years-but even now, national differences (usually reflective of historical approaches taken to procurement regulation) are visible in those areas where the EU rules are optional, rather than mandatory.

The Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) of the European Union came into being on 1 March 2007 and represents a new institution for human rights protection in the EU. This thesis undertakes a critical analysis of the FRA from a governmentality perspective. Governmentality refers to a particular critical standpoint, inspired by the work of Michel Foucault, which is concerned with power relations as processes of government. The features of the FRA, its structure and functions, are framed using "governance talk". The particular features which this thesis is interested in analysing are: the multiplicity of actors which make up the network structure of the Agency, their classification as experts, and the collection of information and data as statistics. The thesis demonstrates that these features, conceptualised as governance in institutional discourse, are actually features of governmentality. I therefore suggest that the rights discourse of the FRA is a discourse of governmentality. Moreover, I show how governmentality necessarily involves self-government: the actors and experts in the FRA's rights discourse govern themselves. This has significant implications for rights discourse: it reveals processes of governing (through) rights. On the one hand, we witness processes of the government of rights through experts and statistics. On the other, we are alerted to government in the name of rights. The thesis therefore intervenes within the EU's rights and governance discourses: it exposes the relations of power (as governmentality) that conventional "governance talk" tries to hide. It highlights the elusive novelty of theorising, and of critique, in EU legal scholarship on rights. By presenting a new perspective on the rights discourse of the FRA using governmentality, this thesis seeks to contribute to EU legal scholarship on rights, filling a glaring and significant gap in the literature.

The competitive dialogue procedure is a new public procurement award procedure first introduced by the Directive 2004118 for the tender of particularly complex contracts, when contracting authorities consider that the use of the open or restricted procedures do not allow for the contract to be tendered. It is not intended to be adopted freely as the open or restricted procedures, but contracting authorities may use it only when the need arises and specific grounds for its use are fulfilled. The procedure was introduced with the stated objective of increasing the flexibility of procurement, which had been already identified as a shortcoming of previous existing EU procurement framework. This thesis studies how the competitive dialogue has been implemented in Portugal and Spain. It covers both the legal transposition and aspects of its practice in these countries., through the use of empirical research methods. Through his research, the author has found that the procedure was implemented very differently in Portugal and Spain with consequences on its use. This study has tried to highlight similarities and differences in the transposition, illustrate how the competitive dialogue is being used in Spain and explain why it is being used only sparingly in Portugal.

This thesis provides a comparative analysis of the rules governing the admissibility of improperly obtained evidence in Turkish and English law. The main objective is to consider how the issue in question can most appropriately be solved under the different legal circumstances of both countries and how the positive law of each country may benefit from each other on this particular problem. The first chapter, which is the introduction, deals with a brief account of the object, the reasons, the goal and the method of the study. In order to place the issue in the context of the entire criminal justice systems, general comparison of Turkish and English law is subjected to examination in the second chapter. In Chapter Three, attention is turned to the theoretical issues associated with the problem of admissibility of improperly obtained evidence. Obviously, if the nature and justification of possible solutions to the issue is understood correctly, the treatment of improperly obtained evidence may be better evaluated. It is argued that the most appropriate solution is to adopt a flexible approach, which requires a certain amount of discretion to be given to the judiciary, rather than a rigid one. The legitimacy of the verdict principle is argued to be the most appropriate principle to guide the exercise of the discretion. In Chapter Four, attention is drawn to the fact that, with regard to the admissibility of improperly obtained evidence, Turkey and England have shared similar legislative activities in recent years: the 1992 Amendment to the Code of Criminal Procedure for Turkey and the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 for England. Both legislations include two operative provisions; one is a general provision for any evidence and one a specific provision for confessions. As far as the general provisions are concerned, evidence may be excluded in England if it has an adverse effect upon the fairness of the proceedings whereas in Turkey, where evidence is secured "hukuka aykiri olarak" (unlawfully), it required to be suppressed. The amount of evidence excluded under these provisions may or may not be similar depending on how the Turkish and English judges interpret the key words. Although the exact determination of what circumstances must exist before the fairness of the proceedings is adversely affected or before the lawfulness of a procedure is breached will undoubtedly require decades of jurisprudence, it is submitted that they may be interpreted quite similarly. In Chapter Six, it is argued there is a clear consensus between Turkish and English laws as to the fact that involuntariness is the decisive criterion for the admissibility of improperly obtained confessions. In the Next Chapter, the possibility of whether the same amount of evidence will be excluded by the operation of "unlawfulness" and "unfairness" concepts has been tested in the context of evidence obtained in breach of safeguards designed to protect the suspect. In the final chapter, it is concluded that there are, to a great extent, similarities in the ways the two countries deal with the issue, despite the fact that they do not share the same legal tradition. This finding contributes to deepen the belief in the existence of a unitary sense of criminal justice.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) refers to the voluntary integration of social and environmental concerns into business practice. It is of increasing importance to utilities, with commercial pressure to be socially responsible coming from, inter alia, consumers, investors and employees. One way in which utilities can integrate CSR into their business is in their procurement. However, the potential scope for the inclusion of CSR considerations in procurement regulated by the EU is uncertain, with some policies clearly restricted but the legality of others being less clear. This thesis examines the practical impact of the EU procurement regulation on the use of CSR policies in utilities procurement, focusing specifically on the inclusion of labour concerns. The project aims to discover practitioners’ opinions of the EU law in this area and their experience in applying it, looking at positive and negative aspects of the law. In order to do so, a qualitative study was completed, with semi-structured interviews conducted with a sample of procurement practitioners based in UK utilities. The study covers the level of use of labour policies in procurement, the types of labour policy commonly included and the means by which those policies are integrated into procurement, with emphasis on the impact of the EU regulation on each issue. The thesis concludes that the impact of the EU regulation was relatively low, with most practitioners feeling that the procurement rules did not generally restrict their inclusion of labour policies. Instead, practical concerns governed the choice of labour policy and the means by which those policies were integrated into procurement. The major exception to this was in the area of policies which favoured local labour or firms, where practitioners felt that the EU regulation was very restrictive and prevented them from achieving their commercial aims.

This thesis addresses the legal challenges arising in the context of the ‘fragmentation or unity of public international law’. The question of the so-called fragmentation of public international law mainly refers to the phenomenon of diversification and expansion of public international law. In recent years, the proliferation of international bodies entrusted with the task of monitoring States’ compliance with their international obligations has increased the possibility of conflicting interpretations of similar or identical rules of international law. In this context, it is claimed that international courts with limited ratione materiae and personae jurisdiction fragment international law and threaten its unity. This thesis examines the question of the fragmentation of public international law from the perspective of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). In the view of the present author, the European Court has developed the autonomous interpretative principle of taking cognisance of public international law norms when interpreting the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The ECtHR employs this interpretative principle in a fashion that is distinct from other seminal interpretative principles, namely the so-called comparative interpretation, the dynamic interpretation and the principle of effectiveness. Furthermore, this thesis provides in depth analysis of the ECtHR’s legal reasoning. It reaches conclusions on the type of public international law norms that the ECtHR takes into account and the conditions a norm must satisfy to qualify as ‘relevant’ and ‘applicable in the relations between the parties’. This thesis also provides an overall assessment of the different uses of public international law norms in the ECtHR’s reasoning, when expanding or restricting the scope of the rights and freedoms of the ECHR. It stresses the importance of the ECtHR’s practice of relying upon public international law norms in order to (re-)interpret the ECHR and overrule its previous case-law. Finally, this thesis explores the boundaries that should be set to restrict the impact of other relevant public international law norms on the construction of the ECHR. The study concludes that, in principle, the ECtHR does not threaten the unity of international law, but reads the ECHR harmoniously to public international law. The findings of this thesis also furnish evidence that the ECtHR has competence to pronounce on questions relating to international law and that, on certain occasions, it develops and enriches the scope and content of international law.

The question of whether Nazi law was valid law has been at the background of jurisprudential discourse since the Hart-Fuller debate in the 1950s. The enduring focus of that discourse on the validity question – the conditions of validity for law – and the separability question – the nature of the relationship between law and morality – has consigned the Third Reich to a specific jurisprudential role as a limit case for positivism and natural law. This dissertation elucidates and interrogates that role, using recent empirical and theoretical historical research to challenge its basis and assert the substantive relevance of the Nazi past for present legal theoretical concerns. It argues that the jurisprudential representation of Nazi Germany is flawed. It relies on a hypothetical, superficial, evil straw man version of the Third Reich that bears little resemblance to its actual history. It also treats Nazi law as the paradigmatic, archetypal wicked legal system. This is informed by an underlying narrative of rupture between Nazi Germany, including its legal system, and the contemporary concept of law. The positivism/natural law dichotomy around which the discourse is structured is consequently incapable of adequately explaining and incorporating Nazi law. This dissertation draws on the legal theoretical writing of David Fraser to examine how it might be reimagined to achieve this. The narrative of rupture that informs jurisprudence was constructed at Nuremberg and proliferated into historical understanding, public consciousness and, via the Hart-Fuller debate, jurisprudential discourse. Over recent decades it has been revised within historiography but its successor narratives have not made their way into jurisprudential discourse, which remains largely isolated from the historical discipline. This dissertation shows how the actual, historical case of Nazi law is not – but ought to be – part of the jurisprudential concept of law.