In 1677 the Statute of Frauds1 introduced2 formalities for the creation of trusts of land. Section 7 required that,

… all declarations or creations of trusts or confidences of any lands, tenements or hereditaments, shall be manifested and proved by some writing signed by the party who is by law entitled to declare such trust, or by his last will in writing, or else they shall be utterly void and of none effect.

This requirement (or something like it) has been adopted in most common law jurisdictions and remains applicable today in England in the form of section 53(1) of the Law of Property Act 1925. Despite the provision's apparently comprehensive and drastic effect, judicial decisions have reduced its impact. Of most importance is the doctrine which I shall name after the case, Rochefoucauld v. Boustead, in which it was authoritatively described by Lindley L.J. He said this:

Some apparently elementary questions relating to the content of the contract of employment continue to pose problems for practitioners and academics alike, as recent developments show. These developments focus attention on the employee's right to payment of wages, and how and to what extent this right may be qualified or defeated by two fairly common features of industrial life: temporary absence of the employee from work, and defective performance by the employee of the obligations arising under his contract of employment.

The nature of the test of dishonesty in offences under the Theft Acts 1968 and 1978 and in conspiracy to defraud has long been a matter of dispute. There have been several conflicting decisions of the Court of Appeal and of the Divisional Court. In essence, two lines of authority had emerged. Both agreed, following Feely, that, on trial on indictment, the question of dishonesty was one for the jury, and both agreed that the test was, at least in part, one of moral judgement. One line, however, said that the moral judgement was that of the accused himself, the other that it was the moral judgement of the reasonable and honest man (or some variant of this.)

Sir Henry Maine's Ancient Law, first published in 1861, postulated legal development in terms of an evolution from status to contract. Since that time both lawyers and anthropologists have made frequent use of the notion of status in their characterisation of law or society. Although status is a concept well known in social theory whose exponents, independently of Maine, have worked out its content and application, much that has been written about status in a legal or anthropological context owes its inspiration to him. Maine's status to contract thesis has proved of interest both to lawyers studying the history of the common law or modern developments in the law of contract and to anthropologists studying social and legal phenomena in simple or tribal societies.