Professor Williams has done much to explicate and defend the subjectivist account of mens rea, which makes conscious risk-taking central to the idea of recklessness. It is thus not surprising that he should be critical of the rulings in Caldwell and Lawrence; nor would I quarrel with many of his objections to those decisions. My concern here is with his own views on the proper definition of “recklessness,” and on the proper use of that definition, in the criminal law: for his Textbook of Criminal Law suggests, and his discussions of Caldwell show, that he is willing to extend the concept of recklessness beyond the strict limits of subjectivism. Such an extension is indeed warranted: but I will argue that it can be explained and justified only by a more radical revision of subjectivism than he seems to allow (I ignore Lawrence and reckless driving here: Professor Williams is willing to accept an objectivist account of recklessness as gross negligence in the context of reckless driving, so long as it retains a suitably subjective meaning in other criminal contexts (R.R. 273–275)).

In Flannery v. Halifax Estate Agencies Ltd. [2000] 1 W.L.R. 377, the purchasers of a flat in Manchester sued a valuer, on whose report they had relied, for negligence. At the trial there was a conflict of expert evidence. The judge preferred the evidence of the defendant's experts and dismissed the claim. It was accepted that the judge's conclusion was one that was open to him on the evidence. The Court of Appeal set aside the judgment and ordered a new trial.

The EEC rules concerning restrictive business combinations are sanctioned not only by the imposition of substantial penalties in the event of intentional or negligent infringement but also by depriving offending agreements of their validity in civil law. Thus Article 85 (2) of the Treaty provides in uncompromising terms: “Any agreements or decisions prohibited pursuant to this Article shall be automatically void.” This is a directly effective provision which has become part of the law of the member states and must be applied as such by their courts. It must be stressed that the nullifying force of the Article operates automatically, rendering agreements void without the need for a decision by the Commission or by a court. This contrasts with the position under United Kingdom legislation where agreements within Part I of the Restrictive Trade Practices Act 1956 only become void following a decision of the Restrictive Practices Court that the provisions in question are contrary to the public interest.

A Case which will be of interest to students of medical law, public law and human rights, North West Lancashire Health Authority v. A, D, & G [1999] Lloyd's Rep. Med. 399, concerned three transsexuals who wanted “sex-change” operations. The health authority's policy was to give low funding priority to procedures it considered of little or no clinical benefit; the authority would not fund “gender reassignment” except in cases of “overriding clinical need” or other exceptional circumstances, though it would fund psychotherapy.

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 the year 1908 Professor W. W. Buckland published his book on The Roman Law of Slavery. There existed in England, before that time, no Roman legal studies in the modern sense; and it is no exaggeration to say that it is he qui fundavit ius civile. To-day every scholar in Roman Law or History, whether English or foreign, is acquainted with Buckland's Equity in Roman Law (1911), Elementary Principles of Roman Law (1912), Text-Book of Roman Law (1921, 2nd ed. 1932), Manual of Roman Law (1925, reprinted 1928, new edition to appear 1939), and Main Institutions of Roman Law (1931), and with Buckland and McNair's Roman Law and Common Law (1936).

One feature of the current debate concerning the term “public authority” in the Human Rights Act 1998 is a rule to the effect that public authorities are not themselves capable of having and enforcing Convention rights. In what follows this will be referred to as the “rights-restriction rule”. The position was confirmed by the House of Lords in Aston Cantlow and has been given effect by the courts in relation to English local authorities and to NHS Trusts in Scotland. Despite this, doubts have been expressed. In particular the parliamentary Joint Committee has suggested, though without argument, that the denial of Convention rights to public authorities may be wrong in principle and that there are “circumstances in which public authorities have Convention rights”.

It is now a cliché to highlight that whilst artificial intelligence (AI) provides many opportunities, it also presents myriad risks to established norms. Amongst the norms considered in the literature, the Rule of Law unsurprisingly features. But the analyses of the Rule of Law are narrow. AI has the capacity to augment as well as to undermine fidelity to the ideal of the Rule of Law. Rather than viewing AI only as a threat to important norms, this article’s core argument is that AI should also be presented as an opportunity to meet their demands. It uses the Rule of Law in tax administration to support this argument.