This thesis examines the impact of the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) on work to promote gender equality through case studies of three local authorities. It aims to both provide new empirical evidence on the impact of the PSED on the behaviour of public bodies and to analyse for the first time the relationship between mainstreaming (the approach to equality within the PSED) and reflexive/responsive regulation (the regulatory mechanism used to enforce mainstreaming). I show that the PSED has not led to the ‘transformational’ approach to equality which some hoped it would represent. Practice varies significantly within and between local authorities; while there were examples of changes as the result of the PSED, the duty was often implemented in a minimalist or bureaucratic manner. These findings support the conclusions of earlier studies of mainstreaming which identify the variety of practices described as mainstreaming and highlight the importance of participation by civil society organisations if mainstreaming is to be transformative. I find that in two of the case studies there was little recognition of or action to promote gender equality, contributing to the debate about the practical implications of replacing a focus on gender with a broader focus on equality and diversity. My analysis draws on feminist literature on mainstreaming and legal literature on reflexive and responsive regulation, which are not usually combined. I identify an important relationship between the regulatory means by which mainstreaming is enforced and the forms of mainstreaming that result. I show that although the terms reflexive and responsive regulation are often used interchangeably in analysis of the PSED there are significant differences between the two. I conclude that changes introduced by the Coalition Government reduced responsive elements in the PSED, while making it more reflexive. This increased the likelihood that public bodies would develop a bureaucratic rather than participatory form of mainstreaming in response to the PSED. I call for the introduction of a duty to consult and engage with civil society as part of the PSED. This would make the duty less reflexive, but more responsive and be more compatible with a participatory approach to mainstreaming.

This dissertation examines the effects of neoliberal economic policies in Latin America in 25 years (the 1970–1995 period), focusing especially on macroeconomic stabilization under IMF support and on IMF and World Bank structural adjustment lending, where the debate centers on the effect of these policies on growth, macroeconomic stability, and income distribution. The study includes formal, models on both macroeconomic stabilization and trade liberalization, as well as cross-country statistical tests. In contrast to the predictions of structuralist and dependency critics of neoliberal policies, the statistical results find that neoliberal policies, when supported by the Bank and the IMF, not only help bring about macroeconomic stabilization, but also help to improve the position of capitalist firms and thus act to increase long term economic growth and maintain capital accumulation. However, they invariably do so with a greater degree of economic inequality and possibly increased levels of urban poverty as well. One possible normative conclusion that could be derived from these results is that since state-led import substitution industrialization has also been discredited in the eyes of most economists as a development strategy for Latin America (or has outlived its usefulness, depending on which economist one talks to), any alternative set of policies for the region must focus not just on coming up with non-laissez faire domestic policy alternatives, but also on ending the asymmetric and deflationary bias of adjustment to international macroeconomic imbalances and on redistributing power and economic-decision making to workers and communities at the local level. Making such reforms politically feasible would require a gradualist approach with policies substantially different from both state-led import substitution and from the populist policies associated with governments such as Allende in Chile, Garcia in Peru, and Peron in Argentina, and would require the active coordination of Latin American and other developing country governments in order to push for change in existing international monetary arrangements.

The emergence between 1965 and 1973 of a crisis of over-accumulation and over-capacity, rooted in international manufacturing yet affecting the overall private business economies of the advanced capitalist countries, inaugurated a developmental context whose profound contradictions were brought home by the Great Recession of 2008-9 and the continuing Long Depression. The intervening period has seen profound economic, political and social crisis in the advanced capitalist world and has simultaneously been treacherous for under-developed economies forced to navigate rocketing energy costs and international commodity price and currency exchange rate turbulence under the continual threat of debt-levered expropriation. The struggle to locate the causes – proximate and ultimate – of the present crisis is at the same time a battle to map the basic economic and political coordinates of the continuing long downturn. In this connection it is contended that efforts have been undermined by the epistemological underdevelopment conditioned by a crisis of knowledge-formation which has unfolded in parallel with the long downturn. The dominance of neoclassical economics (‘unworldly’ since the marginal revolution) on the right and the displacement of Marxism on a structurally weakened and autodidactic left in the context of the ascent of postmodernism as an intellectual and cultural dominant has opened a space between the material and discursive realities of global capitalist development. This work is an attempt to deploy the method developed by the classical Marxist tradition to approach the significance of the state and law in the historically-conditioned reproduction of capitalist social relations. It is contended in the first place that the dualism which obtains between national and global spheres in much theorisation of neoliberal ‘globalisation’ obscures the dialectical interrerelation of state and world market – the institutional and regulatory environment of international trade, money and finance being both the creation of states and the developing context which frames their – necessarily path-dependent and reflexive – projects of domestic economy making. As against popular notions of state decline, following Gowan the state-political content of the centring of private financial markets in the mediation of international monetary relations is recalled, while the embeddedness of the state in circuits of capital accumulation is emphasised (Tony Smith), the concept of ‘regime of accumulation’ being deployed to capture the nexus of monetary, fiscal and regulatory policy which articulates historically-conditioned development strategies. In this respect, we depart from the work of the Bolshevik jurist Pashukanis, who despite significantly advancing the materialist analysis of the juridical form, identified in his most significant work a largely derivative role for the state. It is argued that the methodological weakness represented by Pashukanis’ disproportionate emphasis on commodity exchange – his failure to proceed from the basis of the capitalist economy as a contradictory unity of production and circulation – prevents him from fully apprehending the role of the state in the production and reproduction of capitalist social relations. As the discussion unfolds, there is developed in conversation principally with Gramsci an understanding of the state as the specific material condensation of a relationship of forces among classes and class fractions. Upholding the notion of the ‘integral state’ as a differentiated unity of civil society and political society upon which terrains the capitalist class forms alliances with proximate classes as the prerequisite for and correlate of its domination of labour, the developmental context represented by neoliberalism is conceived in terms of the transition of interest-bearing capital from leading to dominant fraction of the capitalist class in parallel with its tendential contradictory disaggregation from productive capital. Such a process has necessitated a transformation in the character of bourgeois political supremacy involving a dismantling of the civil rights and social protections accumulated during the period bookended by Americanism and the welfare state and increasing dependence upon an expanded machinery of coercion. Proceeding from this basis, it is considered how in specific developmental contexts the state by way of the legal form maps the social totality, achieving distinctive couplings (and de-couplings) of wealth production and social reproduction. There is asserted the second-order integration of public and private spheres in terms of the fundamental unity of capitalist reproduction, the first-order public/private metabolism being evaluated in view of the facilitation and rationalisation of social reproduction in the context of a productive economy structured around dissociated private producers. The legal form is further interrogated in view of its role in structuring the productive antagonism between capital and labour, a relation which on the basis of its form comes to expresses various contents – from consensual integration to casuistic assimilation – as domestic social relations are (in-)validated by the operation of the law of value at the level of the world market. In this connection, the unproductive theoretical polarisation obtaining between approaches which consider law to be epiphenomenal and those which pursue its relative autonomy is enriched by a historicised conception in terms of which law, concretising specific relationships of forces within particular regimes of accumulation, appears as ‘sword’, as ‘shield’ and as ‘fetter’. This framework is particularly useful for evaluating the opportunities for the deployment of legal strategies by labour and groups oppressed under capitalism – a question in relation to which Pashukanis, following Lenin, demonstrated a remarkable political astuteness.

The documentary credit has for a long time served as a very reliable form of financial instrument in the trading of international goods. The certainty of payment guaranteed under the documentary system is attributed to the autonomous nature of the credit contract, which is that it is independent of and unaffected by the contract of sale which it supports. So long as the documents which are presented strictly comply with the terms of the credit, the paying bank will be under an obligation to pay. However, documents which are non-compliant are also frequently presented in practice. The autonomous characteristic of the instrument also gives rise to problems because there are circumstances where, even though compliant documents are tendered, payment made under the credit would be unfair. This thesis attempts to investigate the various grounds which could provide a basis for withholding payment under a documentary credit. From the perspective of all the main parties involved in a documentary credit transaction, issues relating to payment are of utmost importance. Discrepant documents and fraud, which are well established as valid grounds, will be examined. The thesis will also explore other possible grounds to withhold payment such as illegality, nullity, unconscionability and breach of negative stipulations which exist in the underlying contract connected to the credit. The parameters of these grounds will be identified and where appropriate, recommendations will be made.

It is the purpose of this Thesis to start an analysis of metaconstitutional review, understood as the process through which an entity such as a Constitutional Court or Supreme Court reviews the compliance of the acts of the Constituent with superior values or fills constitutional gaps with such values. This, in order to explain its separate nature from constitutional review, to determine whether it is compatible with the traditional conception of popular sovereignty as the ultimate source of power and the legitimizing element of the constitutional system and to determine whether or not metaconstitutional review could prevent social change by entrenching certain values.

It is the purpose of this Thesis to start an analysis of metaconstitutional review, understood as the process through which an entity such as a Constitutional Court or Supreme Court reviews the compliance of the acts of the Constituent with superior values or fills constitutional gaps with such values. This, in order to explain its separate nature from constitutional review, to determine whether it is compatible with the traditional conception of popular sovereignty as the ultimate source of power and the legitimizing element of the constitutional system and to determine whether or not metaconstitutional review could prevent social change by entrenching certain values.

The pure theory of law is a positivist legal theory put forward by Hans Kelsen. Recently there have been two attempts to understand democracy as a source for the normativity that the pure theory assigns to law. Lars Vinx seeks to understand the pure theory as a theory of political legitimacy, in which the normativity that the pure theory assigns to the laws of a state depends on the state’s adoption of certain legitimacy enhancing features, including being democratic. Uta Bindreiter argues that, in the case of European Community law, an additional criterion of democracy must be added to the criteria that the pure theory normally requires of legal systems before the pure theory can presuppose the normativity of European Community law. This thesis will argue that neither of these two accounts succeeds in demonstrating that the normativity of the pure theory can be understood to depend on democracy.

The pure theory of law is a positivist legal theory put forward by Hans Kelsen. Recently there have been two attempts to understand democracy as a source for the normativity that the pure theory assigns to law. Lars Vinx seeks to understand the pure theory as a theory of political legitimacy, in which the normativity that the pure theory assigns to the laws of a state depends on the state’s adoption of certain legitimacy enhancing features, including being democratic. Uta Bindreiter argues that, in the case of European Community law, an additional criterion of democracy must be added to the criteria that the pure theory normally requires of legal systems before the pure theory can presuppose the normativity of European Community law. This thesis will argue that neither of these two accounts succeeds in demonstrating that the normativity of the pure theory can be understood to depend on democracy.

O presente estudo procura estabelecer, a partir de uma reavaliação e atualização dos estudos de Jürgen Habermas sobre esfera pública e direito, os fundamentos teóricos e práticos do Direito da Comunicação, uma teoria crítica do direito que restabelece o vínculo interno entre direito e esfera pública política, e com isso fornece um modelo complementar a teoria procedimental de Habermas, fortalecendo as condições para a produção de uma legitimidade democrática do poder em sociedades pluralistas. / The present work aims at establishing, through a reevaluation and actualization of Jürgen Habermas studies on public sphere and law, the theoretical and practical grounds of Communication Law, a critical theory of law that recovers the internal relation between law and the political public sphere, and in doing so, provides a complementary model to Habermas procedural theory, enhancing the conditions for the production of a democratic legitimacy of power in pluralist societies.

O presente estudo procura estabelecer, a partir de uma reavaliação e atualização dos estudos de Jürgen Habermas sobre esfera pública e direito, os fundamentos teóricos e práticos do Direito da Comunicação, uma teoria crítica do direito que restabelece o vínculo interno entre direito e esfera pública política, e com isso fornece um modelo complementar a teoria procedimental de Habermas, fortalecendo as condições para a produção de uma legitimidade democrática do poder em sociedades pluralistas. / The present work aims at establishing, through a reevaluation and actualization of Jürgen Habermas studies on public sphere and law, the theoretical and practical grounds of Communication Law, a critical theory of law that recovers the internal relation between law and the political public sphere, and in doing so, provides a complementary model to Habermas procedural theory, enhancing the conditions for the production of a democratic legitimacy of power in pluralist societies.