This paper examines the intervention of the law, and the role of the court, in debt restructuring, both in terms of imposing constraints on creditors and in seeking to ameliorate the potential abuses that can arise from such constraints. Three potential forms of abuse are examined: the imposition of a restructuring on dissenting creditors, which introduces the potential for wealth transfers between creditors; the imposition of a moratorium while a restructuring is negotiated, which might lead to misuse of the process by managers wishing to prop up companies which are not viable, or may allow managers of a viable business to “shake off” liabilities that it is capable of servicing; and the facilitation of rescue finance, which raises the potential for new creditors to be preferred at the expense of existing creditors. It is argued that the court's role in protecting creditors from these three forms of potential abuse is vital, although the nature of that role differs according to the form of abuse. Recent debt restructuring reform proposals in both the UK and the EU, which adopt distinct approaches to the role of the court in this process, are examined in the light of this discussion.

The freedom to criticise government, and even to counsel disobedience or revolt, is widely considered the principal mark of a free society. Where the dissident voice is silenced by laws against sedition, it has been argued, there is no genuine freedom of speech and, accordingly, no real political freedom.2 The force of this suggestion stems from the underlying idea that government, if constitutional and legitimate, should be government by consent: laws against sedition, or which otherwise curtail political debate in order to silence opposition, repudiate that idea by denying the legitimacy of dissent.

A Decade or so since the decisions in Re Furse and Brown v. Browne it is time to return to those intriguing cases and to the test for personal domicile which they employed. Outwardly, at least, little has changed since Fox J. held that Mr. Furse died domiciled in England, making his estate liable for estate duty; or since the Court of Appeal ruled in favour of Mr. Brown, whose domicile for jurisdictional purposes was challenged by his wife in their divorce proceedings. But at a deeper level both cases beg questions of principle which have yet to be resolved. They also sowed the seeds of a better law of domicile which have begun to germinate, if Hoffman J.'s more recent decision in Plummer v. Inland Revenue Comrs. is any guide. The subtle realignment of the test for domicile disclosed by Furse, Brown, and Plummer is this article's concern. Its conclusion is that all three cases suggest how factual connection is coming to replace intention as the touchstone for a change of domicile.

Overreaching, as the doctrine is now understood, is the process whereby a purchaser of property takes it free from any interests or powers, which attach instead to the proceeds of sale. Dispositions of trust property and conveyances by mortgagees, by personal representatives and under an order of the court may all overreach equitable interests. A lease granted by a mortgagor may overreach the rights of the mortgagee. This article is concerned primarily with dispositions of trust property and in particular those by trustees for sale of land. It seeks to demonstrate that the concept of overreaching is wider than is supposed. Two principal arguments are advanced. The first is that overreaching is a necessary concomitant of a power of disposition. A transaction made by a person within the dispositive powers conferred upon him will overreach equitable interests in that property, but ultra vires dispositions will not, and the transferee with notice will take the property subject to those interests. The second argument is that the draftsman of the 1925 property legislation fully appreciated the true nature of overreaching, and attempted to employ it as an essential part of his scheme for the facilitation of conveyancing. His intentions have not been appreciated in practice, and his carefully constructed scheme has been misapplied. The article considers critically recent proposals for reform from the Law Commission, and in particular the emphasis which those proposals give to the protection of the rights of persons in actual occupation. It will be suggested that reform might be more effectively achieved by employing the essentials of the scheme constructed by the draftsman of the 1925 legislation.

In his book, Taking Rights Seriously, Professor Ronald Dworkin has argued that the institution of rights against the state is justified “because it represents the majority's promise to the minorities that their dignity and equality will be respected.” But he also stressed the difficulty of ensuring that these rights are respected:

The institution of rights against the Government is not a gift of God, or an ancient ritual, or a national sport. It is a complex and troublesome practice that makes the Government's job of securing the general benefit more difficult and more expensive, and it would be a frivolous and wrongful practice unless it served some point.

Now Dworkin's book is concerned with the problems presented in a democratic system of law and government by a serious commitment to fundamental political rights, such as freedom of speech and the disputed right of civil disobedience; and Dworkin does not directly consider the interest which the individual may have in the maintenance of good government in matters that affect him. One object of this article is to consider whether it is worthwhile seeking to relate the debate about citizen's rights to an assessment of the Ombudsman system. Another aim, since no-one would claim that the Ombudsman should be the sole protector of citizen's rights, is to examine the relationship between the Ombudsman and other agencies for the protection of the citizen in his dealings with the administration. The material to be discussed is drawn from the experience in the U.K. of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration, the Parliamentary Ombudsman: but aspects of the discussion may be relevant to the experience of ombudsmen in other countries.

The relationship between the jurisdictions of local courts and central courts in late-medieval and early-modern England remains largely unexplored. It is nevertheless important to an understanding of the development of the common law, because of the prevailing notion that the great increase in litigation in the royal courts in the early Tudor period was connected with a decline in the use made of local courts. A massive transfer of business to the centralised royal courts might have affected the common law in ways other than the purely numerical, in that it could have brought a reception of legal ideas and remedies already well known out in the country. On that footing, the appearance of new kinds of action in the central courts at this period may represent transfers of jurisdiction rather than changes in legal thinking.

This article examines the backgrounds of a sample of 77 English and Welsh judges in an ambitious research project sponsored by the Nuffield Foundation, in which I work-shadowed and interviewed a core sample of 40 judges at every level of the court structure, in 2003–5, with the aim of finding out what modern judges do and what they are like. I interviewed a further 37.

The law has long recognised a right to recover an enrichment transferred on a consideration which has failed. However, the consideration has to fail totally. Much ink has been spilled arguing that the limit is a bad one. Less has been written about quite what a total failure of consideration actually is. In this paper, it is argued that the best understanding of the total failure rule is that it prevents restitution when the failure is insubstantial; only substantial failures justify restitution. This shows that the limit is integral to the justification of the award of restitution.

IS the mass collection of communications metadata legally equivalent to surveillance of the content of those communications? If so, does EU fundamental rights law have any bearing on its application? If it does, what is the appropriate relationship between the Court of Justice of the European Union and Member States’ courts in balancing in the competing interests at stake? These questions came before a Grand Chamber of the CJEU in Joined Cases C-203/15 and C-698/15, Tele2 Sverige AB v Post- och telestyrelsen and Secretary of State for the Home Department v Tom Watson and Others ECLI:EU:C:2016:970 (Watson).

This article explores the process and impact of liberalisation on the legal profession in England and Wales. Liberalisation brings a tendency to consider the profession in market-focused terms, with the professional–client relationship reconfigured in overtly economic fashion as constituting the interaction of supply and demand. The article examines the past and present structure of the profession, arguments for liberalisation and manifestations of liberalisation efforts. Having identified the distinctive dynamics of supply and demand within legal services markets, the article considers the potential implications, both immediate and in broader societal terms, of reconceptualising the legal profession in this manner.

Negative attitudes towards litigants in person (LiPs) are long-standing. But despite their persistence, no study has ever considered: how did we get here? This is what this article sets out to do, analysing when the term LiP first appears, and the context in which this occurs. I argue this moment is a by-product of broader changes taking place for the legal profession in the nineteenth century. Drawing on Larson's “professional project” I argue the new county courts become a battleground for attorneys to distinguish themselves, and it is the introduction of certain kinds of distinction that undermines the self-represented party. This article ultimately argues that the LiP role is not simply self-representation, but is rather self-representation that can only occur in the latter stages of the professional project. This means, perversely, that the creation of the term LiP does not indicate the facilitation of lay participation in legal forums; it marks instead the moment when they are displaced. As I conclude, this displacement has profound consequences for LiPs to this day.

It may be of interest if, after the lapse of fifty years, I record my memories, now dim, of the birth of the Cambridge Law Journal in 1921. Credit for the initiation of the venture belongs to the Committee of the Cambridge University Law Society, an undergraduate club founded in January 1901. In the academic year 1920–21 I was treasurer of the society and the junior officers were A. T. Harries of Emmanuel, R. Branston of Christ's, R. M. Hughes of Downing, and T. Simpson Pedler of Queens'. This group came to see me and propounded the proposal that the society should publish an annual magazine. T. S. Pedler was the most active spokesman, and I have always regarded him as the ultimate founder of the Journal. The original idea of the group was to publish a magazine containing an account of the doings of the society and of other matters relating to the law school in general. My contribution to the venture was to persuade the officers that if the society was to have a magazine it should be a scholarly production edited by a law don and embodying some of the features of the Harvard Law Review.

THE main facts of Blackstone's life are well known, and so are the qualities of his Commentaries. I do not intend to add to the number of Blackstone's biographers, nor to give an exhaustive account of his Commentaries. But I must begin by stating shortly some of the salient facts and dates in Black-stone's life in order that my remarks upon some aspects of his Commentaries may be the better understood. Then I shall say something, first, of Blackstone's intellectual characteristics; secondly, of the manner in which these intellectual characteristics have worked together to make the Commentaries a classical book; and, thirdly, of certain alleged defects in the Commentaries.

In November, 1921, Lord Haldane delivered to the Cambridge University Law Society an address on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (Cambridge Law Journal, vol. i, p. 143). He was then an ex-Lord Chancellor and for thirty-eight years had had experience of that tribunal-for twelve years as one of its judges. If it seems unnecessary and even unfortunate that the same subject should be given to me, I may point out—though only by way of confession and avoidance—that Lord Haldane on that occasion insisted that ‘You cannot learn much about it from documents’—‘unless you have lived in it and in the atmosphere you do not know what happens there’—‘the only way to study it is to watch it’.