I have been invited to talk to you tonight about the Court of Appeal in England, its jurisdiction, procedure and practice, and the first point I would make is that, as was recently emphasised by Mr. Justice Romer, there is no such thing as an inherent right of appeal to the Court of Appeal. That court is a creation of statute and its jurisdiction is limited to that conferred on it by statute. As we now know it, it has power ‘to give any judgment and make any order which ought to have been made and to make such further or other order as the nature of the case may require’. One hundred years ago there was no court which had such wide jurisdiction. Indeed, there was, strictly speaking, no Court of Appeal at all.

The paper I am going to read is a study in comparative jurisprudence. I propose to examine some aspects of Company Law, and especially of the law relating to companies limited by shares. From the many differences existing between French and English Law on this matter, I have selected several points, in the setting up as well as in the management and administration of such companies, which seem typical to me. These are as follows:—

As regards the setting up of companies, I have thought it would be interesting to compare how French and English Law deal with:—

(A) The subscription of share capital;

(B) the prospectus or the other documents designed to serve the same purpose;

(C) the part played by the statutory meeting.

As regards the management and administration, I have chosen to examine:

(D) The powers of directors, and how they are restricted in England according to the doctrine of ultra vires, as compared with the French system of legal personality;

(E) the audit and inspection of companies.

Propositions about law result from thought about law, which is the business of jurisprudence. We shall be concerned with those propositions in which jurisprudence formulates its most general conclusions. Such propositions are expressed in statements or sentences of the general grammatical form ‘Law is “so and so”’, or more briefly, ‘Law is “X”’. By propositions about law we shall mean propositions, statements or sentences in this form. Similarity in form does not, however, necessarily imply similarity of logical function, any more than the use of the same word, ‘law’, is a guarantee that the same ‘thing’ or ‘entity’ is being referred to. Our propositions may in fact have etymological, defining, explanatory and/or emotive functions. To distinguish and to clarify these functions is the purpose of this article.

The object of this paper is to give a general account of the nature and development of the prerogative writs. Of these writs the best known are habeas corpus ad subjiciendum, to bring up the body of a person imprisoned on a criminal charge or in private detention; certiorari, to review orders and convictions of inferior tribunals and to remove indictments for trial; prohibition, to prevent inferior tribunals from going beyond their jurisdiction; and mandamus, to compel the performance of a public duty. All four are of high constitutional importance, and the last three in particular play a central role in administrative and magisterial law. In the common-law jurisdictions overseas their significance is not less than in England, and in some instances it is even greater because of the more extensive spheres of operation conferred upon them. In England an Act of 1938 replaced the prerogative writs of certiorari, prohibition and mandamus by orders of the same names, but the change of designation reflected only a simplification of procedure; the substantive law remains the same, and for convenience they will here be described as if they were still prerogative writs.

It is not easy for students to see the subject of insanity and the criminal law as a whole. There is virtually no difficulty over what happens in court, for lawyers are concerned with that and it is adequately described in law books, notably in Archbold. But that is only part of the business, the other part being the concern of administrators. There is no mystery about what the officials do or about the reasons for their actions, and the application of intelligence to published material would give the student the right answer. However, a student may not get things right that way, as I remember that I failed to do (though whether by insufficiency of intelligence or of application I cannot say). I learned about these things when as a Home Office official I came to take part in working the system. The purpose of this note is to give students the framework of the subject. The Criminal Justice Act, 1948, has made some changes, and it is convenient to consider first the position before that Act and to begin with a trial on indictment.

In this preliminary article it is not intended to deal with the maxim res ipsa loquitur in its manifold ramifications but to consider its origin and development, the requirements for its application, some reasons for its complexities, and its broad effect in English law.