The House of Lords decision in YL v. Birmingham City Council considers the issue of what is a public authority under the Human Rights Act 1998. The question is a critical one as the Convention rights, contained in the Human Rights Act, are directly enforceable only against public authorities. The issue of whether a body is a public authority has proved highly controversial. The hiving-off of many traditional governmental functions through policies such as privatisation, outsourcing and projects under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) has led to a blurring of the traditionally understood public-private distinction. The changed nature in the way that public services are delivered has led to sharply divergent views among the judiciary about which functions are those of a public nature for the purposes of the Human Rights Act. This is evident in the YL judgment itself: a split decision, with two dissenting judgements. The division in the House reflects different understandings of the operation of the Human Rights Act, the public-private distinction and, perhaps more fundamentally, competing ideological stances.

The doctrine of anticipatory breach was officially first established in a famous 1853 case, enabling a party to a contract to terminate it and sue for damages immediately after the other party refused to fulfil its part, despite the fact that the time stipulated for the latter's performance had not arrived. The doctrine has since been employed by counsel as a vehicle to justify a premature termination of contract in numerous legal battles. It was perhaps with the confidence in such vast general judicial experience that Lord Wilberforce once declared that the rules determining the existence of an anticipatory breach constituted “one of the more perspicuous branches of the law of contract”. With due respect, however, his Lordship seemed to be too optimistic on that occasion. When one takes a closer look at decided cases, it is hard to resist the conclusion that this area of law is still plagued with inconsistency, uncertainty and incoherence. Where the existence of an anticipatory breach of contract is in dispute, the courts have been applying two distinct approaches to fact patterns of the same nature. A major cause for this disparity is the courts' failure to realise in some cases that the cases they are dealing with are anticipatory breach cases and should be subjected to a uniform test. This cognitive failure is largely attributable to the fact that, although the term “anticipatory breach” itself was criticised on several occasions, little has been done to illuminate the very nature of an anticipatory breach of contract and what distinguishes it from what we normally conceive of as a breach of contract, namely an “actual breach” of contract. Another cause of the disparity of the courts' approaches is perhaps English law's case-to-case, piecemeal methodology. Pragmatic though this methodology may be, it is sometimes necessary to amass the fragmented pieces and fit them into a clear and stable conceptual structure, thereby bringing the law to a higher level of generalisation. It is the purpose of this article to propose a general legal test for all types of anticipatory breach on the basis of an exposition of its nature and hopefully to bring order, rationality and unity to this chaotic area of law.

Ordinarily, claimants seeking injunctive relief will be able to identify by name the individuals likely to interfere with their rights. However, claimants increasingly anticipate that they will be harassed, their property damaged or confidential information revealed by persons difficult or impossible to identify. In M Michaels (Furriers) Ltd v. Askew the claimant's commercial premises were under sustained attack from animal rights activists. The claimant “had difficulty in identifying all those responsible for these damaging actions” and addressed this difficulty by bringing a representative action against, among others, the national organiser and local contact of Animal Aid as the representatives of all members of that organisation. The Court of Appeal upheld the interim injunction granted against these representative defendants restraining them, and therefore all members of Animal Aid, from, inter alia, damaging, injuring or trespassing on the claimant's premises. In Hampshire Waste Services Ltd v. Persons Intending to Trespass and/or Trespassing Upon Incinerator Sites the four owners of a number of incinerator sites faced a similar problem. Incinerators had been targeted for protest, sometimes on a predetermined and advertised day described as a “Global Day of Action Against Incinerators”. Evidence suggested that such a protest was planned but the claimants were “unable to name any of the protesters who might be involved” and their claim was brought against “Persons intending to trespass and/or trespassing upon incinerator sites” at six locations. Morritt V.C. made an order binding “persons entering or remaining without the consent of the claimants ... on any of the incinerator sites ... in connection with the ‘Global Day of Action Against Incinerators’ (or similarly described event) on or around 14 July 2003”.

On 6 December 2006, the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property unveiled its much-anticipated report investigating whether intellectual property law was still “fit for purpose in an era of globalisation, digitisation and increasing economic specialisation”. The Review, which had one year in which to cover the entire field of intellectual property law, concluded that there was no need for radical overhaul of the system. However, it did make a number of recommendations for reform and one area it considered to be particularly important was strengthening enforcement of IP rights. In recent years, concerns about the inadequate enforcement of intellectual property laws have focused mainly on copyright law and the entertainment industries. More specifically, they have centred on the opportunities for copyright infringement offered by digital technology and the internet. The music industry was the first to find itself out of its depth in the brave new digital world, and the film industry quickly followed. “Piracy”, we are told, is now rife and must be fought at every opportunity.

We live in “an age of increasingly multicultural societies”. This multiplicity of cultures brings with it diversity and differences: religious beliefs form one, but arguably an increasingly important, point of distinction within our societies today – both between religious and non-religious people and between people of different faiths. Recent and current events – local and global – emphasise the importance for society of maintaining adequate means of mediating between different and divergent interests in matters of faith.

The debate about distinguishing public law and private law has been wide-ranging and variously focused. It has contributed to a paradox (or contradiction) in legal thinking, described by Peter Cane in his contribution to Public Law in a Multi-Layered Constitution. On the one hand, Cane stresses that the distinction between public and private “seems alive and well”––manifest, inter alia, in judicial review procedure and the establishment of an Administrative Court in England, in EC law (demarcating the scope of directives with direct effect), in the provisions applicable to public authorities in the Human Rights Act 1998, in the “state action” doctrine of the US Supreme Court, and in the statutory demarcation of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal's jurisdiction in Australia. On the other hand, he stresses the extent of scholarly criticism of the distinction––that it is outmoded, descriptively inaccurate or normatively undesirable. In his view, the resolution of the paradox lies in recognition that “the supporters and the opponents of the public/private distinction are talking about different things”. He concludes that, for its opponents, as a result of institutional and functional hybridisation, “the distinction misrepresents the way power is distributed and exercised” but that, for its supporters, “it embodies an attractive normative theory of the way power ought to be distributed and its exercise controlled”. In his presentation of the paradox and its resolution, Cane thus brings together various views and distinctions––English, American and Australian––and suggests that a contrast between descriptive criticism and normative evaluation is crucial to understanding the public/private debate. By the breadth and inclusivity of his analysis, however, he also brings into question the desirability of unitary analytical treatment of various distinctions in various contexts, supported and opposed by people talking about “different things”.