Character merchandising is big business and any case concerning its legal protection is bound to arouse considerable interest. This is certainly true of the recent Court of Appeal decision in Elvis Presley Trade Marks [1999] R.P.C. 567, where the character concerned was “the King” himself. Earlier, in the “Ninja Turtles” passing-off case, Mirage Studios v. Counterfeat Clothing Co. Ltd. [1991] F.S.R. 145, the High Court had apparently endorsed the view that the public's awareness of merchandising practices means that it will assume that products carrying the likeness or name of a celebrity (real or fictional) will come from one “genuine” source. This decision, together with the provisions of the 1994 Trade Marks Act which swept away previous anti-trafficking provisions and liberalised the licensing regime, seemed, to many, to herald a new dawn for the protection of character merchandising, However, the Elvis Presley decision suggests that character merchandising in the UK will remain relatively unprotected compared to other jurisdictions.

Of all Bacon's claims to greatness, his claims as a lawyer are the least of all known. It is strange that this should be so. The law was his profession. Through the law he gained position and honour—Solicitor and Attorney-General and Lord Chancellor. Moreover, I think that those who study his philosophy should remember that Bacon was trained as a student and practitioner in a system of case law, which taught him to construct the rules and principles of law from concrete cases. It is at least arguable that this had some influence on his inductive system of experimental philosophy. Yet there is no doubt that it is as lawyer that Bacon is least known. I think that for this three reasons can be assigned. In the first place, some of his appearances as a lawyer were the least creditable parts of his career. I do not propose to defend his conduct as Lord Chancellor—he himself threw up the defence. But I think that there is more to be said in extenuation of his offence than some of his more severe critics allow—that at any rate was the opinion of Mr. Spedding, to whose great work on Bacon the Master of Trinity has alluded. In the second place, to appreciate Bacon's greatness as a lawyer we must have a considerable knowledge of sixteenth century law, of sixteenth century legal literature, and of sixteenth century lawyers. That is not very common; but it is getting more common; and as a result of this I think it is clear that among sixteenth century lawyers Bacon is pre-eminent. His only rival is Coke. As a lawyer I think that he was Coke's equal, and as a juridical thinker infinitely his superior. Thirdly, the most decisive reason why Bacon's eminence as a lawyer has been so inadequately recognised is the fact that he took the losing side in the politics of the seventeenth century, and the fact that the influence of seventeenth century politics has been immense and long lived.

Injunctions against pickets and demonstrators are not common. There appear to be no reported cases in England between 1899 (when Llandudno Urban District Council tried to stop a clergyman from preaching on the beach) and the disputes in the London Docks in 1972. In Hubbard v. Pitt, the use of injunctions again came to the fore, when a firm of estate agents obtained interlocutory injunctions restraining members of a tenants' campaign from picketing their premises as a political protest.

The proposition that a master, who has become liable for an injury caused by a servant acting in the course of his employment, can recover an indemnity from the servant is one which has been stated on a number of occasions, but until the recent case of Romford Ice & Cold Storage Co. v. Lister no clear authority could be cited in support. It is true that the master's rights against his servant have been canvassed in at least three modern cases, but in all of them the common law position has been obscured by the application of the Law Reform (Married Women and Tortfeasors) Act, 1935. In Romford Ice & Cold Storage Co. v. Lister, however, by what those interested in legal principle can only regard as a happy chance, it was necessary for the Court of Appeal to deal with the matter independently of the Act.

This is a prime example of how radical a court can be in its eagerness to protect human rights. In Jones v. Ministry of Interior of Saudi Arabia [2004] EWCA Civ 1394, the Court of Appeal reached an unprecedented decision by disregarding the relevant legislation, by going against its own previous decisions and higher authorities, and by reading an extremely liberal understanding into an international convention. In this case, the claimants sought damages in tort in civil proceedings against the Ministry of Interior of Saudi Arabia and a number of Saudi officials, including the head of the Ministry of Interior, alleging, among other things, systematic torture while they were in official custody in Saudi Arabia in 2001. What is remarkable about this case is that the alleged torture took place in Saudi Arabia, and that none of the individual defendants was present at any time on UK territory.