Law is practical. Legal reasoning is practical reasoning. We could make nothing of a judge who having listened to counsel's arguments and reflected about the law governing his case thought that the state of knowledge that he had achieved was the natural termination of his enterprise and submitted his conclusions to the editors of Halsbury's Laws of England rather than performed the action of giving judgment. The parties would be outraged, and rightly. And if the judge continued to do such a thing he would be dismissed. Legal reasoning is practical in the sense that its natural conclusion is an action (in the judge's case the action of giving judgment) rather than a state of knowledge. This is taking “practical” in a strong sense. By this definition thought is practical whose natural conclusion is an action (or decision against action): its strongest contrast is with theoretical thought whose natural conclusion is knowledge. But it also contrasts with hypothetical thought about action (say, my thinking it would be good to play cricket again). I do not call this practical because it does not conclude in an action or decision against action (others do; for example John Finnis in Fundamentals of Ethics; my reasons for differing in this matter will emerge). A judge's practical reasoning towards the action of giving judgment has priority for our understanding of law over that vast range of practically idle things that lawyers do, from the construction of digests like Halsbury to casual reflection about the rule in Shelley's case (of course there is one sort of doing involved in both these, but not legal doing). It is important here to be clear about this priority. It is a priority of practicality, not a priority of judges or lawyers.

Clear understanding of artificial intelligence (AI) usage risks and how they are being addressed is needed, which requires proper and adequate corporate disclosure. We advance a legal framework for AI Fairness Reporting to which companies can and should adhere on a comply-or-explain basis. We analyse the sources of unfairness arising from different aspects of AI models and the disparities in the performance of machine learning systems. We evaluate how the machine learning literature has sought to address the problem of unfairness through the use of different fairness metrics. We then put forward a nuanced and viable framework for AI Fairness Reporting comprising: (1) disclosure of all machine learning models usage; (2) disclosure of fairness metrics used and the ensuing trade-offs; (3) disclosure of de-biasing methods used; and (d) release of datasets for public inspection or for third-party audit. We then apply this reporting framework to two case studies.

Fifty years ago the rights of a parent were held in high regard by English law. Since then there has taken place a fairly steady erosion of those rights, so that the picture presented today differs quite markedly from that of the early 1920s.

The concept of authority is one which may be explicated in many ways—normatively, psychologically, sociologically, politically. That is to say, one may seek to show how it is used in the contexts of normative justifications or of assertions about psychological, sociological or political phenomena. As a normative concept, “authority” relates to situations in which there is given as a reason warranting that something should, must not, or may be done the fact that a particular individual or individuals has so laid it down.

I argue that process and substance are two aspects of the public law form and that the form conditions the content of the law. The reduction of a political programme to the explicit terms of a statute involves a conversion of policy into public standards, which produces a kind of legal surplus value. It brings into being a particular type of public standard – one that permits the operation of the principles identified by Lon L. Fuller as the desiderata of the inner morality of law, and which enables individual claims of right based on legal principle to be adjudicated.

Christopher Staughton, a former Lord Justice of Appeal, writes of the four principal rules for the interpretation of written contracts. First, there is the exclusion of negotiations and subjective evidence of intention. Secondly he considers what material can qualify as background evidence, or as some would say matrix. Thirdly, there is the rule that a meaning which is less obvious =N but still consistent with the words used =N may be preferred. Fourthly, he deals with the very limited extent to which evidence of market practice is admissible.

The article contrasts recent observations of Lord Hoffmann in two cases in the House of Lords with other authority, both ancient and modern.

The relevance of public interests in private law is at the heart of some central divides in tort scholarship. This paper argues that public interests pervade private nuisance cases. The uncertain and contested nature of public interests, and the absence in both the case law and the scholarly literature of an abstract definition of what is to count as a public interest, do not prevent these matters from playing a significant role in tort. In these circumstances, it is important to reflect on how we might set about articulating the public interest. This paper argues that administrative decisions that are intended to serve the public interest can in some cases provide a defensible vision of public interest for the purposes of private law. An examination of the process by which regulatory decisions were reached can provide indicators to assist in identifying and evaluating the strength of claimed public interests.

INRegulating Contracts Hugh Collins takes up the challenge presented by 40 years of empirical studies which show that business people make little use of contract law in settling disputes, preferring instead to rely on trust and various non-legal sanctions to organise their transactions. Indeed, business parties often actively avoid the use of law because of its expense, inconvenience and tendency to harm business relationships. These findings pose a challenge to traditional doctrinal scholars. If business parties do not make much use of contract law, one has to ask what role it does play and whether the attention that is paid to it by orthodox legal scholars is misplaced. Regulating Contracts takes on this challenge directly and is the most substantial attempt made so far to explain the role of contract law in light of the questions raised as to its usefulness.

When the holders of endowed chairs give inaugural lectures it is common for the lecture to begin with a respectful tribute to the achievements of the distinguished scholars in whose shoes the incumbent now stands. In the case of a personal chair this is obviously not possible. It is appropriate, though, that I should none the less acknowledge here the intellectual debts that I owe to others. But those who might be mentioned are very numerous. And in order to avoid having to draw invidious distinctions and being bound to offend someone, by commission or omission, I will mention only two giants of scholarship who have both had a profound influence upon me. They are both no longer with us but they remain influential in the work of others including myself.

There is a tendency in contemporary contract law for judges to “never say never” and permit an open-ended exception from the rule. This nebulous exception is designed to cater for the rare instance where application of the rule would be undesirable in the interests of justice. However, this kind of imprecise exception is deleterious in terms of the unpredictability it generates, as well as the attendant increases in time and costs that result. The “never say never” approach is to be discouraged in contract law where commercial predictability, while certainly not inviolable, nonetheless remains a weighty goal deserving of continued deference.

This article argues that the public figure doctrine is doctrinally problematic and conceptually and normatively flawed. Doctrinal uncertainty surrounds who is affected and how rights are affected. Conceptually it raises challenges for universality, the non-hierarchical relationship between Articles 8 and 10 ECHR, the process of resolving rights conflicts, and the relationship between domestic law and the Convention. All of which necessitate a strong normative justification for the distinction. Yet there is no compelling rationale. The values underpinning the right to privacy of public figures are no different from those of other persons and there are other better mechanisms of accounting for freedom of expression. We should therefore reject the idea that public figures have fewer or weaker privacy rights or that the process of dealing with their rights is different and instead focus squarely upon the relative importance of the rights, and the degree of intrusion into those rights.

In certain circumstances the fact that an agreement is made under pressure is sufficient reason to invalidate what would otherwise be a good contract. The rules providing for invalidation in such cases are found in the textbooks under the headings of duress and, to a less extent, undue influence and unconscionability. That the existence of pressure sometimes is and should be sufficient to invalidate a contract is not controversial. Few would argue that a contract entered at gunpoint ought to be enforced and the law is clear that such agreements are not enforceable. What is less clear are the principle(s) that underlie such decisions and the proper scope or reach of those principles. These questions are important for both the theory and practice of contract law. Theoretically, because any adequate account of contract law—a doctrine that in the orthodox understanding holds out the ideal of freedom as a core value—must explain that part of the lawin which individual freedom is most directly at issue. Practically, because the recognition in English courts over the last twenty-five years that the defence of duress may be invoked in situations other than threats to a person or even threats to a person's goods (in short, the acceptance of “economic duress”), together with the recent near-elimination of the rule that a promise to perform an existing duty is not good consideration, has meant that courts are regularly required to consider how far the scope of duress should extend.

All government is a conspiracy. Each governmental conspiracy has a constitution as its alibi. The constitution describes the way in which the political power of the society is concentrated and places the source of that concentration somewhere other than in the mere fact of power. Because of that dislocation, the constitution is the source not only of political power but also of political duty. The subjection of the organs of government to the constitution runs parallel to the subjection of the people governed to the constitutional power of the organs of government. The constitution justifies constitutional power and constitutional duty by making both of them derivatives from one and the same source.

The prior question of whence the constitution itself derives its authority is, for all everyday practical purposes, answered by the mere fact of the constitution. The constitution is self-proving in practice because it is used as the source of maxims affecting the behaviour of those who exercise physical force with actual impunity, or who control its exercise. To preach or to act against the constitution may or may not be permitted by the legal rules of the given society (themselves derived ultimately from the constitution), but it will in any event be ineffective whenever it comes into collision with power exercised, to the point of physical force, under authority derived from the constitution. A revolution occurs when the exercise of constitutional power, to the piont of physical force, ceases or is overridden by the exercise of unconstitutional power, if necessary by the application of greater physical force.

Stephen J. once said that the drafting of a statute should aim at a degree of precision which a person reading in bad faith cannot misunderstand; and it is all the better if he cannot pretend to misunderstand it. The decision of the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords in Anderton v. Ryanshows how difficult, if not impossible, it is to achieve these objectives.

This article considers prescription as a customary standard of legal validity which enables judges to identify certain customs as law even though the status of those customs as law cannot be ascribed to a law-making authority. Although claims as to customs having prescribed are often bound up with claims as to the quality (as opposed to the validity) of custom as law, prescribed custom is properly conceived to be a feature of the rule of recognition – a criterion by which a court can identify, and declare, a custom as already existing law as distinct from both custom without the force of law and custom turned into positive law.

Why not, we are asked, establish a permanent reconciliation between England and Ireland by the conversion of the United Kingdom into a federalised kingdom whereof England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and, for aught I know, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, Shall form separate states? This new constitutional idea of the inherent excellence of federalism is a new faith or delusion which deserves examination.

The legal régime of the sea has been a persistently important theme of the law of nations from the beginning; but it has probably never been more dominant than it is at the present time, touching as it does so many of the most vital interests of nations, such as the supply of food and of energy; politically sensitive questions like defence and immigration; and some of the most pressing aspects of pollution and conservation problems. With this renewed importance of the law of the sea have come also new doubts about its content and meaning, and even about the underlying legal principles. Half a century ago, the law of the sea was relatively simple, certain and stable, at any rate in time of peace. The classical dispute between the closed sea and open sea doctrines seemed at last to have been finally resolved on the basis of a kind of dualism by which the coastal state was to have sovereignty over a belt of territorial waters, subject to the general right of innocent passage, and the high seas outside that maritime belt were to be res communis, not subject to acquisition by title of sovereignty, but subject to an international régime which was spelt out in terms of the so-called “freedoms” to be enjoyed by the flags of all nations, the most important being the freedom of navigation and the freedom of fishing.

To entitle an article “the future of information technology law” may appear unduly adventurous to those who would argue that the subject has yet to establish a present. The purpose of this contribution is therefore to give some information about the current reach of the subject as well as the directions in which it is likely to grow.