This work examines security interests under the Cape Town Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment. The main purpose of the Convention is to provide a uniform legal regime for the creation, registration and protection of a creditor’s interests held in high value types of mobile equipment, such as aircraft, railway and space objects. The Convention provides for the creation of an autonomous international interest in these types of equipment and establishes an electronic International Registry for recordation of interests in aircraft objects. The international interests are supported by an elaborate system of remedies exercisable in the case of the debtor’s default or insolvency. These features of the Convention are aimed at promoting predictability and transparency in the financing of mobile equipment which should reduce the risks and costs of borrowing to the benefit of all stake holders. The work examines such issues as the problems of the definition and creation of security interests as well as the possibility of the creation of a floating security under the Convention. It also explores the aims and assesses the effectiveness of the registration system established under the Convention. Next, the thesis examines the rules of the Convention on setting priorities between competing creditors. Finally, the work explored the remedies (and their effectiveness) available to the creditor. One of the aims of this work is to examine the provisions of the Convention and to test whether the legal regime created by it can operate successfully and help facilitate financing of high value equipment. In order to test the effectiveness of the Convention, its provisions will be evaluated in the context of various factual scenarios, which, considering the absence of cases under the Convention, were largely inspired by the experience of some major domestic jurisdictions, such as the UK and the US. This exercise may also shed some light on strengths and weaknesses of the Convention in comparison with these systems.

The functions of family courts in England and Wales in making decisions about children are identified as processing disputes and protecting vulnerable individuals, with latent functions of applying and influencing social policy. The thesis explores why family courts have been singled out for particular criticism in undertaking these functions. Two issues are examined: complaints that family court proceedings are held in secret and that a court is not the appropriate place for resolving disputes about children. The methods used are historical analysis, a comparison with courts in Australia, and applying the theories of Habermas. According to Habermas, when systems are maintained for their own sake without being anchored in people's values and needs, or operate without rational discourse, institutions can lose their legitimacy. The historical analysis shows that as social policy developed over the past 60 years, court structures were trapped in a dual jurisdiction which made it difficult to adapt to changing expectations. Since the 1970s, there have been calls for a unified family court to better meet families‘ requirements. However, a comparison with such a court, the Family Court of Australia, reveals another set of dualities which undermine its legitimacy. The claim that family courts do not function effectively because they are closed and secret is examined. The law is set out in the context of concepts of secrecy, privacy, openness and transparency. It is argued that children have a particular right to privacy which is marginalised in the current debate, and that a recent consultation process undertaken to reform the law on media access to court proceedings was not undertaken in a transparent manner. Attempts to introduce alternative dispute resolution and remove disputes about child care and upbringing to mediation and other non-legal alternatives are also shown as likely to fail unless formulated through rational discourse.

This thesis is mainly concerned with the expansion of limited liability within partnerships in the UK, US, and China and the concomitant need to strengthen creditor protection. Limited liability used to be a privilege largely restricted to shareholders of corporations, who are liable for corporate debts only to the extent of their capital contributions in the corporation. Recent years have witnessed an innovative combination of limited liability and the partnership structure. In this thesis, the hybrid entities of limited liability and partnership structure will be referred to as partnerships with limited liability, which include the limited partnership, the limited liability partnership (LLP), and the limited liability company (LLC). As limited liability induces opportunism against creditors, corporate law contains many stringent rules to mitigate risks for creditors. However, despite having the liability shield similar to that of corporations, partnerships with limited liability have a much lighter regime for creditor protection. This allows businesses to utilise limited liability while circumventing the creditor protection rules under the corporate law. This thesis will highlight such regulatory asymmetry of creditor protection between corporations and partnerships in the UK, US, and China and consider whether it is necessary to transpose corporate rules for creditor protection to partnerships with limited liability. Further, this thesis will make an overall evaluation of the creditor protection regime in China and propose further improvements, drawing on the experience of the UK and US. It is worth noting that “UK law” in this thesis refers to the law of England and Wales, excluding law in Scotland unless otherwise indicated.

The purpose of this thesis is to study the role and effectiveness of law and regulation in relation to the problem of financial exclusion. The research was conducted through a comparative study of the United Kingdom (hereinafter ‘UK’) and China, and focuses on whether law and regulation could fulfil a role in facilitating vulnerable consumer’s access to basic banking services. The thesis begins with an overview of the theory of financial exclusion and provides definitions of consumer vulnerability. It reviews the exclusion conditions in both countries in respect of basic payment services and consumer credit, and analyses the reasons for, and negative consequences of, being excluded from such services. The thesis then demonstrates the theory of equal opportunity, and the role of law and regulation in the context of facilitating financial inclusion, followed by an overview of credit regulation from a historical perspective. The main content of this thesis is divided into three major parts. The experiences of the UK, China and the European Union (hereinafter ‘EU’) are analysed, and it is found that the process of financial inclusion could be facilitated by way of regulation. First, commercial banks are at the centre of the mainstream market. However, their role in financial inclusion largely focuses on payment services. Whether vulnerable customers’ access to payment services could be facilitated by regulations is the main content of chapter two. This thesis suggests that without enough incentive, banks can be less motivated in this progress. To accelerate financial inclusion in respect of consumer credit, alternative credit facilities on the consumer market should be supported by law and regulation, available funding should be made available and regulatory barriers be removed. After a comprehensive review of their legal and regulatory environment, the present research suggests that the UK has generally made good progress in this regard, while China is still in the nascent stage of development. The weakness in a ‘one-size-fits-all’ model is clarified through the analysis. Subprime lenders are also essential in the market because they fill a gap. Standards that regulate subprime lenders should be equal for all lenders in the market, but also give consumers in the high-risk subprime lending sector. In the case of detriment, the regulatory regime would be able to provide recovery or simple and easy dispute resolution. This thesis argues for both ex ante and ex post consumer protection.

This thesis investigates in depth the implementation of family planning regulations in China at the grassroots level with a focus on the period from the 1990s to the end of the 2000s, and the social environment in which such implementation takes place. The main evidence sources were collected during 5 months of fieldwork, and include close observation, in-depth interviews, questionnaires, archival records (secondary and official data), statistical data, and internal reports. Since the 1990s, China has experienced rapid economic development and has also introduced a new democratic system into the village: the village committee election. Thus in addition to the resistance caused by the traditional reproductive culture, these new factors also present themselves as obstacles to the smooth implementation of the family planning regulations. By adopting political science institutionalism theory and a socio-legal research method, this research aims to analyse the factors influencing the grassroots level officials’ implementation in a broad social environment. Following an explanation of the formal and informal organizational settings of the town family planning agency, this thesis also explores the town family planning officials’ degree of autonomy in implementation and the criteria they apply to their own decisionmaking. This thesis argues that family planning implementation in the grassroots rural China has been influenced by the following factors: the formal and informal organizational structures, new democratic system influences, the economic development level, employment conditions, culture and convention, the relationships among various interest groups, and family planning officials’ understandings of their work, as well as the imperfect legal environment. All these factors interact with each other to bring about the complexities and discrepancies in implementation.

The thesis examines the nature of the legal interests in emissions allowances (emissions entitlements), the tradable instruments created by the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). The potential categorisation of emissions entitlements as private property impacts significantly on the environmental success of the EU ETS and, more widely, on the conceptualisation and functionality of property rights. The current silence of the EU ETS on the nature of the entitlements has caused problems in the emissions market, as illustrated by a case study and an analysis of the commercial contracts constituting this market. In turn, the public policy goals of the EU ETS depend on the success of the private market. The thesis puts forward an analytical framework designed to articulate a construction of emissions entitlements that reconciles the multiple and potentially conflicting goals of the regime. The framework consists of two parts. The first part examines legal theories of property and establishes that the elements required to constitute a property right are exclusion, transfer and use. The second part examines three legislatively created rights regimes, namely intellectual property rights, milk quotas and spectrum rights, which are compared to emissions entitlements from the viewpoint of the identified requisite elements. This exercise further reveals instructive insights into the evolutionary nature of property rights in a regulatory environment. For private property to act as an effective tool of regulation, it needs to be specifically conceptualised as instrumental property, a new category which is put forward by the thesis. The notion of instrumental property is defined by the public policy goals of the regulatory regime and also by the particular context in which the rights operate. Instrumental property must necessarily be balanced against extraneous public or private interests which the law regards as deserving of protection.

This thesis articulates a normative theory of international law based on new natural law theory. New natural law theory is a theory of ethics, politics, and law that is based on the classical natural law doctrine of Thomas Aquinas. The primary reference point of the thesis in relation to new natural law theory is the work of John Finnis, who in Natural Law and Natural Rights and subsequent writings elaborates the theory in the consideration of fundamental concepts in political philosophy and legal theory. The thesis examines the tenets of new natural law theory regarding the common good, authority, law, justice, human rights, and legal obligation, and uses these to formulate normative claims regarding the moral purpose of international law and the moral standards that international law should satisfy in light of its purpose. The thesis posits the existence of an ‘international common good’, encompassing a set of supranational conditions that are instrumental to human welfare and that require international cooperation for their realisation. The thesis claims that the primary moral purpose of international authority and international law is to further the international common good through resolving the coordination problems of the international community of states. Identifying ‘principles of justice’ for international law, the thesis asserts that positive international law should promote and demonstrate respect for human rights, and should also promote and protect the international common good. The thesis further argues that states have a general moral obligation to obey international law, based primarily on the necessity of state compliance with international laws in order to facilitate the effectiveness of such laws in promoting the international common good. These claims are elaborated with reference to existing features of international law, and through comparison with existing normative and non-normative perspectives in international legal theory on the concepts considered.

This thesis is aimed at solving this puzzle: If the rules are the same, how do regulatory authorities compete for business firms to come to their jurisdictions? I suggest that it is better to think of regulatory competition in terms of regulating and regulated sides finding a partner to form a marriage. I argue that an important dimension to regulatory competition is competition between different types of microlevel enforcement regimes for different types of firms. Assuming the rules stay the same, depending on the match or mismatch of regimes’ and firms’ preferences, enforcement regimes have differential results in business attraction, enforcement effect and regulatory advantage. This argument is elucidated by a so-called ER (enforcement regime) Framework that uses the cultural institutionalist approach – a fusion of historical institutionalism and Mary Douglas’ grid-group typology. The framework is used to interpret the empirical findings about regulatory competition for foreign investment in China. The thesis adds to our knowledge about the dynamics both of regulatory competition and of enforcement regimes, and helps to fill the gap that exists between the literatures in these two areas.

The aim of my thesis is to investigate the relationship between legal protections of minority shareholders – ‘on the books’ and ‘in action’ – and the development of equity markets. In this regard, there is a general consensus that Russian legal measures adopted to protect minority shareholders are strong. The failure of the judiciary to enforce these measures is the principal focus of the academic criticism and has been frequently cited to explain the underdevelopment of the Russian equity market. Notably, the criticism of the judiciary persists despite the market’s marked improvements over the last decade. And yet there has been little empirical analysis of enforcement of the minority shareholder protections by Russian judiciary. This thesis examines private enforcement of corporate law in Russia focusing on the lawsuits to impugn transactions with corporate insiders and the outcomes of those suits. Drawing on a dataset of 170 cases decided by the Federal Arbitrazh Court for the Moscow region in 1999 – 2006, the thesis finds that a large proportion of claimants are unsuccessful. Relying primarily on the law and economics literature and theoretical accounts of the relationship between the law and market development, the thesis develops an analytical framework (for convenience termed judicial bias hypothesis) against which it evaluates case outcomes. The evaluation suggests that in a substantial fraction of the cases the outcomes were justified by legislation or by efficiency, casting doubt over the criticisms of Russian judiciary. While cautious in drawing causal links between the enforcement and markets, the thesis suggests that marginalising legal institutions’ role in Russia might be premature. Their role in fostering the market might be greater than anticipated particularly in incentivising disclosure if not in deterring overreaching.

This thesis is about the origins and development of freedom of information laws. The number of countries with these laws has risen dramatically in recent decades, and now stands at around ninety. This is widely taken as evidence that governments across the world are converging in their institutional arrangements because they face similar challenges and demands. Access to information is increasingly claimed to be a human right, essential to the effective functioning of democracy and fundamental to legitimate public administration in the information age. This thesis seeks to challenge this assumed causal homogeneity by explaining why countries in which these principles were well-entrenched legislated at different times. The explanation offered here emphasises institutions: the manner in which important political actors are organised, and the structure of authority and accountability relations between them. It shows that differences in these institutional arrangements meant access laws were introduced at different times in different countries because they were introduced for different reasons and in response to different pressures. It supports these claims by conducting a comparative historical study of freedom of information in Sweden, the USA, France, the UK and Germany. This thesis contributes to empirically-oriented scholarship on a prominent aspect of contemporary government. It provides a framework for further rigorous comparative scholarship. It also provides detailed accounts of how access developed in two countries which have not received much attention in English-language scholarship, France and Germany, and original insights into three others about which more has been written. Whether one is interested in improving actually-existing laws or understanding democratic government in the information age, this study is valuable because it complements visions of why transparency laws are desirable with historically-informed comparative knowledge about why they are introduced at all.