It is good that the Cambridge Law Faculty has established a Centre for European Legal Studies. In the first place because it is plain that practising lawyers in the future will need to be increasingly aware of European Community Law—whether they are taught it as a separate subject or as a part of specialist areas of the law. In the second place because if, as I also think, Britain should be not only at the heart but also at the head of Europe, if it is in it at all, there are few better ways of preparing our future political and administrative leaders than by a grounding in Community law.

Land registration has long proved a source of concern to the Law Commission. Its Third Report in 1987 recommended significant changes to the substantive law; its Fourth Report subsequently incorporated these changes into a comprehensive draft Land Registration Bill which was intended to replace the Land Registration Act 1925 with a modern, simpler statute.

IN Hämäläinen v Finland (Application no. 37359/09), 16 July 2014, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights held that Contracting States of the Council of Europe may require the dissolution of an existing marriage before extending the right to legal gender recognition.

Recent decisions relating to commercial transactions have raised issues about the limits of the courts’ jurisdiction to interfere with contractual terms, even where the terms seem to yield unjust results on breach. The author argues for a reconceptualisation of the ancient equitable doctrine of relief against forfeiture, as one which ensures that rights taken by way of security should never allow a secured creditor to recover more than his secured debt. Building on roots in the law of mortgages, this requires the court to characterise the substance of the parties’ bargain. It can, in common with the law of penalties, be understood as implementing a mandatory policy which allows the parties full freedom in crafting their primary obligations, but denies them full freedom in deciding what shall be the consequences of a breach of a primary obligation. The author argues that the restatement fits the contours of the existing law, and the requirements of corrective justice.

There can hardly be any aspect of the law of contract which has in recent years exercised the ingenuity of the courts and the academic lawyers more than the effect of fundamental breach on exemption clauses. The doctrine which seemed to be emerging, that no exemption clause could relieve a party who was in fundamental breach, has been discredited by the House of Lords in Suisse Atlantique, but though the speeches in that case have clarified the position, there is still room for a general statement of the law. The present article is concerned with clear presentation of principle rather than exhaustive examination of authority, whether academic or judicial; and though most of the points have been anticipated at some time or another, it has not seemed desirable to clog the argument by discussing these anticipations. There may also be some value in considering, as aspects of a single problem, some features of the law of contract which are usually discussed in the books under different and widely separated heads such as “Conditions and Warranties,” “Exemption Clauses,” “Discharge by Performance,” and “Discharge by Breach.”