Through a series of three papers, this work examines the evolution of the UAE's legal system and its courts. Applying a mixed-methods approach, it makes three main contributions to the literature on an underexplored jurisdiction. First, using a comprehensive dataset of Arabic Dubai Court judgments, together with the Dubai International Financial Centre ("DIFC") Courts and the DIFC Arbitration Centre as case studies, it critically analyses the reception, coordination and competition between the Arabic, civil law legal system created in 1971 and the freezone English, common law legal system carved out some 30 years later. Second, using a selection of DIFC Courts judgments, it suggests that surrounding circumstances emboldened the DIFC Courts to actively adopt an expansionist jurisdictional position. Third, using historical British Foreign Office documents, it traces the trajectory of Abu Dhabi’s unique path away from legal plurality under British extraterritorial jurisdiction.

My dissertation explores the role of courts in making the law respond to the social and economic transformations that have defined contemporary China. In particular, I find that Chinese judges working in the civil law tradition are nevertheless able to effect incremental changes in existing law without having to resort to the formal legislative process.

Part I reviews the theory and practice of Chinese statutory interpretation, paying special attention to the use of sources and methodology. I demonstrate that despite the sometimes overdrawn differences between civil law and common law jurisdictions, techniques of statutory interpretation can and are employed by Chinese judges to give the law a fluid and dynamic character, thereby facilitating its adaptation to emergent societal circumstances.

A legal innovation can spread as a court’s novel reading of a statute is adopted by other courts and becomes mainstream. Part II describes and accounts for the diffusion of judicial innovations in Chinese courts since the 1980s. The confluence of two factors, the norm of judicial openness and the medium of the internet, have made prior judicial decisions readily accessible and a convenient resource for Chinese judges confronting hard cases. These prior judicial decisions serve as a form of political communication between courts that indicates the acceptability and feasibility of policy innovations in the law. Three case studies – the “Guiding Cases” issued by Chinese Supreme People’s Court, and a series of provincial-level cases on driving under the influence (DUI) and ATM Theft – demonstrate how innovative statutory interpretations diffuse through the court system and eventually precipitate legislative amendment of outdated statutes. I supplement these case studies with surveys, survey experiment, and interviews.

Finally, Part III of my dissertation describes the law-making function of the judiciary in other civil law countries, such as Japan and Germany. Drawn from the convergence of judicial roles between common law and civil law systems, it further assesses the social, political, and legal conditions necessary for judicially initiated policy innovations to succeed in China. This chapter demonstrates that judicial innovations in China survive because of their silent and gradual character of their assimilation by the legal system. Some of these innovations fade, however, due to political reasons or the transience of the societal conditions that gave rise to them.

Overall, I conclude that despite their protestations to the contrary, Chinese courts balance the tension between the unchanging code and the changing social and economic conditions in Chinese society by engaging in experimentation through statutory interpretation. In this function, Chinese courts are not that different from their sisters in common law jurisdictions or, for that matter, from courts everywhere.

This dissertation aims at a better understanding of the role of data privacy law in

promoting organization-individual trust relationship. It focuses on data security breaches

in U.S. and Singapore, and the interactions of the regulatory designs, agency

implementations and the emergence of organization’s post-breach responses towards

affected individuals that reflects and reinforces the value of trust in their relationship.

Examining the divergent approaches adopted by U.S. and Singapore provides lessons for

a regulatory design for privacy in Thailand.

Based on the comparative analysis of the selected data security breach decisions from the

key regulators in both jurisdictions—the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the

Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC)—and on the U.S. and Singapore’s

organizational perception of privacy, the study found a divergence as to the U.S. and

Singapore design and enforcement approach to individual-organization trust relationship.

The non-right-based privacy of the Singaporean Personal Data Protection Act, coupled

with the enforcement agency’s interpretation, constructs the direct venue and the gap for

organizations to perform trustful behaviors towards individuals following the breach.

Desirable post-breach responses from organizations are consistently witnessed from the

PDPC decisions such as voluntary and prompt notification and remedies provided to

individuals, and the Personal Data Protection Commission’s interpretation covers

individual interests informed by values in the society. The regulatory design aligns its ‘no

ideal of privacy’ with the organization’s perception and more established practices based

on trust relationship on the ground and the PDPC mitigating criteria applied to induce

organization in initiating voluntary post-breach responses towards better protection of

individual privacy interests.

Despite more established culture of privacy among U.S. corporations, the integrated

practices on the ground, and the long-standing enforcement against unreasonable data

security practices under Section 5 of the FTC Act, its current mechanism does not

facilitate a venue for trust relationships that drive organizational post-breach responses

towards individuals. Unlike the PDPC, the FTC enforcement does not formally recognize

post-breach responses of organizations consistently. In a small number of cases where

those post-breach responses were recognized, only limited normative implications can be

inferred from those contexts. Much ambiguity and uncertainty due to the unclear

boundary of liabilities set under Section 5 has left organization actors with high risks,

without adequate assurance for organizations to perform desirable post-breach behaviors.

The legal ideal of U.S. privacy rightness, as exemplified by Section 5, is based on the

notions of self-control, independence and informational duties, and does not cover

broader individual privacy interests, which could be promoted through trust relationships.

The U.S.’s consumer protection approach, in tandem with Singapore’s trust relationship

based approach of Singapore provide a great lens for Thailand to meet the dual legal

ideals of privacy rightness and promoting trust relationship. Thai specific conditions and

this hybrid iteration have led to the implementation in a complementary ways. The

pending Personal Data Protection Bill of 2018 and regulatory oversight should allow

organizations with some limited space to practice exercising discretion towards desirable

post-breach responses, alongside mitigating penalties imposed by the regulator to

encourage these desirable practices. Rather than treating the breach notification and

post-breach responses as reporting duties, the Thai Bill could offer an opportunity to

cultivate privacy awareness and enhance an organization’s trustful behaviors towards

affected individuals. The consumer protection provisions regarding advertisings could be

interpreted by the Thai consumer protection agency to trigger investigations against

unfair and deceptive data security practices, and regulate consumer contracts in

businesses involved in handling sensitive personal data. This consumer protection-based

model would provide a readily available means to protect consumer privacy interests,

engage media and public vigilance to uncover breach incidents and increase individual

and organizational awareness of privacy and data security.

Arbitration is a popular dispute resolution method. It is distinct from a typical proceeding in that it is a consensual procedure in which the parties select individuals or institutions to render a judgment in a dispute. Thus, parties enjoy a certain level of autonomy in the arbitral settlement proceedings. arbitration is preferable in international commerce because it enables parties to avoid the risk of different national legal cultures that might prevent them from transacting with one another.

When a dispute arises, in the light of the complex nature of international trade, question may arise as to whether a dispute is an international or national one. But this is a secondary point. The more critical issue is that an arbitral award is enforceable in different jurisdictions.

For a long period, the lack of public interest and lack of a strong judicial enforceability kept international arbitration unpopular and thus negatively impacted international commerce. To promote arbitration and thus international commerce, the international community began ratifying international conventions to improve arbitration perception. In that regard, a watershed moment was the adoption of The Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (the “New York Convention”), which took a pro-enforcement stand. Many countries adopted the New York Convention. This in turn created predictability in the enforcement of arbitral awards, which in turn began to engender more and more confidence in international arbitration.

But the New York Convention did provide a framework for national courts to refuse enforcement of arbitral awards based on “irregularities” related to the status of the award, the conduct of the arbitral proceedings, and validity of the arbitration agreement.

Public policy is also one of the irregularities that the New York Convention lists as a manner of denying the enforcement of arbitral awards. It allows national courts not to give effect to an award that contradicts the fundamental principles of the forum state’s legal system. The public policy exception is the focus of this study.

Since the New York Convention entered into force, national courts have formulated wide-ranging interpretations of public policy. The public policy exception presents a safety zone in which the national courts can decide whether an arbitral award and its recognition or enforcement is contrary to the public policy of the forum State where its enforcement is being sought. The New York Convention’s language allows state courts to enjoy wide discretion on the application of public policy. Public policy is subject to moral, cultural, economic and social essentials of each state. However, as social construction of nations has inevitably changed extremely in the last century, the criteria of public policy is subject to the same progressive manner. But the realities of today’s international transaction require a fully functional arbitration system and the finality of an arbitral awards. The more ambiguity there is in the ability to enforce an award based on various states’ public policy, it creates the more uncertainty it pertains to the law.

This study preliminary focuses on the concept of public policy, whether its application has contravened the New York Convention’s pro-enforcement stance, and how the exception has impacted international arbitration and international commerce. This paper also looks into whether there is a standardized application of the public policy globally.

By studying the social media apex court news in Taiwan and the United States, this dissertation aims at providing new evidence to the institutional legitimacy literature, specifically, whether the existing legitimation such as legal language is still relevant, and to what extent do competing themes of political wrangling challenge the procedural fairness models of judicial legitimacy in the current social media culture.

The dissertation consists of two main parts. First, drawing upon topic modeling techniques, it will review the topics on social media news outlets to see how the traditional legitimacy factors —the powerful symbols of justice and procedural fairness come into play. Both Twitter and Facebook data confirm the procedural fairness models are still relevant. Nevertheless, the justice confirmation procedures in the United States involve considerably more political wrangling themes.

Second, this dissertation studies the judicial legitimacy affect in social media news coverage. It tests whether the judicial language styles in networked news coverage are associated with positive affect more often than with negative affect, and finds quite opposite results in Taiwan and the United States.

The dissertation thus intends to make the following contributions. Methodologically, it ties a variety of tools, including topic modeling and sentiment analysis, to the measurement of legal language, positivity bias and judicial legitimacy affects. In so doing, it debunks the processes of contemporary judicial legitimation, and lays out the vital communication process of judicial information.

The reform is an ongoing process in any society. It is the sign of the development in different areas. It is not only the technology that is rapidly changing societies, but it also changes the societies, which use these technologies. With the rapid change in the structure of social and economical changes in the world, the question of the reform of social and economical institutions is also rapidly demanding. These institutions are varied. There are private and public institutions. Within the public sphere, the judicial system is comes on the top of institutions that require continuous reform than the two other braches of the government. They are facing the development with their political agenda that change every term (whether five or four years in office). On the other hand, it is hard to find a judicial system develop as fast as the development of the legal system or its politics. In Egypt, the judiciary did not witness any serious reform since 1949. During this period until the present day, the country witnesses several social and economical developments. Monarchy system, Socialist system, social-democratic system, capitalist system and Islamic system are political and social systems apply in Egypt in the last sixty years. In the past two decades, there was a great call and debate about the necessity of a new reform of the judiciary to face the rapid social and economical change in the country. This reform takes only one shape, which serves the economic development and the foreign investment.

On the other hand, the social reform was a secondary. After the 25th of January Revolution, the debates about reform reaches its uttermost. The main argument was whether to reform or to maintain the current form of the judiciary. In case of maintaining the call for a reform, what are the issues that need to be reformed and what is the other that cannot be reformed. However, after the Military Coup of 3 July 2013, the debate settles down with maintaining the status quo of the current form of the judiciary. This dissertation argues that the reform shall take place in Egypt. The current status of the judiciary is not the best for any political, social and economical development.

The dissertation is divided into six chapters, and introduction and conclusion. The first chapter is a historical background of the judicial development since 1949, which is the end date of the mixed courts in Egypt. The second chapter tackles the question of why is it important to have a reform. This chapter introduces political, economical, and social reasons to introduce a reform to the judicial institution. The last four chapters deal with four of the contemporary issues. These issues are judicial independence, judicial accountability, judicial appointment and judicial unification. Each chapter introduces the current status of the certain issues and the pending problems that need to be reformed. It, then, presents the solution to these issues in five countries, which are the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Russian Federation. After presenting each of these jurisdictions, each chapter offers an assessment to each solution offered from these different jurisdictions. Finally, each chapter offers a certain form of reform and the reasons to adopt such reform.