It is an essential aspect of the English legal tradition in public law that judicial review should be based upon procedural standards. Lord Brightman has recently insisted that judicial review involves simply an appraisal of the manner in which an administrative decision is made. However, judicial attitudes during the last three years indicate a changing philosophy which appears to admit of greater scope for substantive review. The principle which is referred to succinctly in modern law as Wednesbury unreasonableness has proved, in the hands of some contemporary judges, a uniquely effective instrument for the exercise of this extended jurisdiction. The central problem posed by recent developments relates to the danger of a “surrogate political process” which may erode the foundations of legislative supremacy and political responsibility. Unbridled judicial review, in accordance with some emerging approaches, has basic implications for the future of the relationship between the administration and the courts.

It is the purpose of this article to demonstrate that Lord Herschell's famous statement in Makin of the law relating to similar fact evidence was and is valueless, that it continues to exert a baneful influence both upon the cases and upon much of the academic commentary on them, and that it is overdue for commitment to the scrapheap. The essence of my argument is that English law does not, in truth, regard reasoning from disposition as illegitimate. Hence, there is no negative principle from which positive exceptions need to be carved out and no rational basis for applying different law according to whether or not the prosecution seeks to place reliance on the nature of the accused's disposition. An attempt will be made to explain why, even after Lords Wilberforce and Cross had, in identifying some or all of these truths in Boardman, made the crucial “intellectual breakthrough,” they have not been grasped by the rest of the judiciary.

To re-open problems of the past and to rake up arguments long since laid to rest may seem a singularly pointless exercise for a family lawyer of the late twentieth century. Yet the controversy which raged in the 1840s over the requirements for common law marriage was never satisfactorily resolved; and even today the question could still arise and an authoritative answer be required.

When “ratification” is raised as an issue in relation to directors' breaches of duty, the difficulty which is most commonly discussed is how to draw the line between ratifiable and non-ratifiable breaches.

What has received considerably less attention is the meaning of “ratification” itself. This is evidenced, not the least, by the variety of other names attributed to the process performed by the general meeting when it “ratifies” a breach of duty. This has variously been described as “adoption,” “confirmation,” “affirmation,” or mere “approval.” Ironically, it is clear that the concept has nothing to do with “ratification” as it is understood in the law of agency, though this is the name most widely used.