Computer intrusions and attacks compromise individuals, companies and communities. Whilst it is clear that computer and information security studies point to a generalised increase in the number and sophistication of computer security attacks over the past decade and that nations now entirely rely upon computer systems, insufficient attention is paid to the protection of those systems. Computer data and network systems affect our everyday lives, from the supply-chain software that ensures that the shelves are stocked at the supermarket, to systems that manage finance and share markets. Compromises of computer security are, therefore, rightly seen both as an attack on those individual entities whose systems and information are compromised, and as a communal attack upon the people and organisations that rely upon or use computer systems, both directly and indirectly. The aim of this thesis is to give an analysis of computer system security, information protections and the legal ramifications of computer security compromise, notably, data security compromise in Australia. Ultimately, the aim is to address three overlapping questions: what are the ways in which systems are breached, what are the legal consequences of a breach and are those consequences adequate? This paper looks at the underlying technology and relationships between actors involved in the majority of security compromises and looks at the common factors in how systems and networks are attacked and actors damaged. The paper then goes on to look at criminal liability for security compromises and shows how a criminal analysis feeds into the proper civil law consideration of the topic. Finally, the paper looks at data security through the lens of privacy. Ultimately, this paper concludes that Australia is inconsistent in its legal responses to information security incidents. Such variations are based on the area of law being discussed and dependent on the breach methodology and outcome. The criminal law provides the most current and potent legal protection any business or individual has had in this field. This is followed by statutory privacy law which provides a narrow degree of coverage and provides only a weak conciliation process for addressing data security issues. Finally, common law and equity provide the most uncertain commercial remedies for those that suffer data security breach. This paper concludes that present protections are inadequate and uncertain, and that change is required.

The dominant theoretical frameworks that define the ontological and epistemological limits of legal theory have marginalized or excluded alternatives visions on justice and social organization. Moreover, and in spite of being deeply embedded in specific political and ideological matrix, these frameworks have attempted to obscure the role of the political in the definition of its conceptual basis. The theoretical perspective that is developed in this article - and that is part of a long tradition of critical theories (in plural) - seeks to reveal the deep relation between Law and Politics and reformulate it analytically in order to propose a broad vision of the legal theory from Latin America. / Los marcos teóricos dominantes que definen los límites ontológicos y epistemológicos de la teoría legal han marginalizado o excluido visiones alternativas sobre la justicia y la organización social. Además, y a pesar de estar profundamente arraigados a una matriz política e ideológica determinada, estos marcos teóricos han pretendido oscurecer el rol de lo político en la definición de su base conceptual. La perspectiva teórica que se desarrolla en el presente artículo, y que es parte de una larga tradición de teorías críticas (en plural), busca revelar la profunda relación entre el Derecho y la Política, y reformularla analíticamente para proponer una visión amplia sobre la teoría legal desde América Latina.

This thesis explores the imagery of underworld justice, and its associated beliefs and practices, as they developed throughout Chinese imperial history. Certain elements of the Chinese imperial legal system, including judges and trials, and laws and codes, were borrowed by the Daoists and applied to their construct of the afterlife. Underworld justice beliefs and practices flourished throughout China's imperial past, and are still influential to some devotees in today's Hong Kong. Among the various questions that are explored, this thesis examines the place of underworld justice in the legal consciousness, or everyday law, of the devotees in contemporary Hong Kong. There are two dimensions to this thesis: historical and empirical. In the historical part, I trace the development of underworld justice beliefs and practices in imperial China. I analyse some of the characteristics and rituals of underworld justice, and relate them to the imperial laws and procedures upon which they were modelled. Such tracing allows us to discern the considerable overlap between the imperial legal system and underworld justice beliefs and practices. In the empirical part, I present data gathered at mainly three City God temples in Hong Kong. Such data involve conversations with Daoist and Buddhist priests, temple keepers and devotees. The data gathered not only shed light on the general state of City God veneration in contemporary Hong Kong, but also the influence of underworld justice on the devotees' understanding of law. The data reveal that the studied devotees regard underworld justice, which administers the law of karma, as superior to the state legal system. Hence, underworld justice is not considered as an informal dispute resolution process alternative to that of the state, but as a mechanism that can intervene in court cases, due to its being more authoritative.

The passage of Public Law 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, mandates that parents of a handicapped child must be included in the educational planning and placement procedures for their child. The law requires (1) parent counseling and (2) parent participation in the planning of the child’s educational career. Yet almost six years after the passage of Public Law 94-142, the role of parent which emerges today appears to be one of passive involvement in the Individualized Educational Plan (IEP) process. The literature suggests this lack of active participation possibly stems from several sources: the parents’ inadequate knowledge, discomfort when interacting with school personnel, confusion in regard to the educational decision-making process, and school encouraged noninvolvement in the IEP meeting. Thus while Public Law 94-142 stresses active parent involvement, the schools’ discouragement of parental responsibilities along with the parents’ limited knowledge and understanding of the law and their role in the process may combine to actively discourage parental participation in the education of their handicapped child. The literature suggests that limited resources exist for parents of newly identified school-aged educable mentally handicapped (EMH), or mildly handicapped children. In general, parents of these children do not have the necessary information or skills for effective involvement in the educational process nor are they receiving supportive counseling. In order to address the specific needs of these parents, an educational-counseling program was developed. The purpose of the program is fourfold: (1) to inform parents about handicapping conditions, legal issues and mandates pertaining to the education of handicapped children, educational assessment and placement procedures and parents’ role in the education of handicapped children, (2) to develop the parents’ repertoire of communication and assertiveness skills necessary for securing appropriate educations for their handicapped children, (3) to provide emotional support and encouragement to the parents, and (4) to increase the parents’ awareness of available resource materials, organizations, and personnel dealing with the education of handicapped children. Various methods and materials are utilized in the Parent Education-Counseling Program to accomplish its goals. Formative and summative evaluations are incorporated in order to determine the extent to which the program is implemented as planned and to assess its effects. A pilot trial of the program utilizing a single set of parent participants was conducted to determine the feasibility and practicality of the methods and materials. Evaluation of the pilot trial indicated that the parents of a newly identified EMH child were capable of increasing their knowledge bases regarding issues and procedures for educating a handicapped child, learning rules of communication, becoming more aware of their feelings related to their EMH child, and accepting information about available resource materials and organizations. The evaluation information therefore suggests positive results of the program is to help parents become effective advocates for their handicapped child, follow-up of the parents’ effectiveness in future school-based meetings is needed to determine whether these short-term program effects will generalize within the school system.

This thesis consists in a critical analysis of international law’s traditional historical narrative about the prohibition of the use of force. Most contemporary textbooks teach that this prohibition was a creation of the twentieth century, and that beforehand States were free to resort to armed force against each other unconstrained. Positive international law, the story goes, was ‘indifferent’ to the use of force – it did not prohibit it but did not authorize it either, which meant that, in practice, States could do as they pleased. ‘Reality’ as it stems from historical sources, however, appears much more complex. In fact, not only did the vast majority of nineteenth century authors claimed war and measures short of war to be strictly ring-fenced by international law, but it also seems that States quasi-systematically felt the urge to justify their actions when they employed force against another nation. Starting from the observation of this discrepancy and using tools of history, sociology, anthropology and social psychology, the present research seeks to understand the roots of the ‘indifference’-narrative and how it became the commonly accepted version of the history of the use of force in international. / Doctorat en Sciences juridiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Peace bonds are a legal tool of governance dating back to 13th c. England. In Canada, a significant change in the application of peace bonds took place in the mid-1990s, shifting their purpose from governing minor disputes between individuals to allowing for persons who have not been charged with a crime to be governed as if they had. Given the legal test for a peace bond has always been the determination of ‘reasonable fear’, the advent of these ‘specialized’ peace bonds suggests that the object of reasonable fear has changed. Despite their lengthy history, peace bonds have limited coverage in academic literature, a weakness compounded by a predominant doctrinal approach based in a liberal framework. The central inquiry of this thesis moves beyond this predominant perspective of ‘peace bonds as crime prevention’ by developing a governmental criminology, which deepens our understanding of the role of specialized peace bond law in contemporary society. Specifically, governmental criminology takes a Foucaultian critical legal studies approach, which acknowledges legal pluralism and sets out the historical context required for analysis. Ultimately, by unearthing underlying social, economic, and political power relations it is possible to critique the accompanying modes of calculation of fear and risk, thus challenging the regimes of practices that make specialized peace bonds possible. Specialized peace bonds merely manage the consequences of a criminal justice system limited by social, political, and economic circumstances, in a broader biopolitical project of integrating risky populations.

Dans ce mémoire, nous proposons d’observer la réception de l’ouvrage Force de loi – le « fondement mystique de l’autorité », du philosophe Jacques Derrida, dans la pensée juridique nord-américaine. Dans un premier temps, nous nous attardons au contexte de production de cet ouvrage et en proposons une analyse détaillée. Nous tentons également de définir sommairement les concepts clés de la pensée derridienne mobilisés dans Force de loi, principalement la déconstruction, laquelle a suscité l’intérêt des juristes. Dans un second temps, nous proposons de retracer la trajectoire de Jacques Derrida en Amérique du Nord, sachant que sa pensée y a été reçue selon des termes bien précis, qui ont influencé l’inscription de ses travaux dans la pensée juridique. Dans un troisième temps, nous proposons de poser un regard critique sur la réception de la déconstruction derridienne dans les Critical Legal Studies. Nous soutenons que la pensée derridienne a été mobilisée par les critical legal scholars avant tout comme une technique servant à alimenter leur critique politique du droit. Or cet usage technicien de la déconstruction se serait fait au détriment de sa véritable substance éthico-politique. Nous proposons donc finalement de réfléchir à ce qui pourrait constituer un usage de la déconstruction en droit qui permettrait d’actualiser son plein potentiel critique, en conviant les juristes à élargir le champ épistémologique de leur discipline. / This essay considers the reception and interpretation of Jacques Derrida’s Force de loi – le « fondement mystique de l’autorité » in North American legal theory. In the first chapter, we examine the context in which Force de loi was written and pronounced, provide definitions of the key Derridean concepts mobilized in Force de loi and offer a detailed analysis of the text. In the second chapter, we argue that Jacque Derrida’s work was read and interpreted by American and English-speaking scholars in a very specific way, which shaped its reception in legal thinking. In the third chapter, we look at how Force de loi and “la deconstruction” were mobilized in the Critical Legal Studies. We argue that the critical legal scholars coined a “technical” use of deconstruction that did not fully integrate its ethical and political potential. Finally, we reflect on how deconstruction could be mobilized by legal scholars and jurists to open epistemological and political horizons that Derrida himself had not envisioned.

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