In the preface to his memoirs, Casanova outlined his reasons for writing them in French. Having noted that the clarity, precision and grace of the French language are such that a cultivated person cannot help but fall beneath its spell, he went on to mention one further feature:

It is worth observing that among all the living languages in the republic of letters, French is the only one which its presiding judges have sentenced not to enrich itself at the expense of the other languages.

Arguably this is a proud posture for a language to strike, hermetically cocooned within a self-imposed cultural bridewell. Nevertheless, Casanova's observation was, to a degree, an accurate representation of the cultured French of his day and, curiously, is probably truer today that it has ever been.

No account of the history of English legal literature can omit the name of Littleton. Sir Thomas Littleton's treatise on tenures made the family name almost synonymous with the common law itself. But it is not generally known that another member of that illustrious family left unfinished a work which, had it been completed and published, would have earned him a position of importance in the history, not only of English, but of universal jurisprudence. In so far as the will ought to be taken for the deed, perhaps some measure of recognition may justifiably be afforded to his work even after three centuries of oblivion. The author was Edward Littleton (1589–1645), Baron Littleton of Munslow, a direct descendant of Sir Thomas. Educated at Christ Church College, Oxford, he entered the Inner Temple in 1608; and there, like his near-contemporary John Selden (1584–1654), he developed a taste for comparative jurisprudence, legal history, and the study of records. His reputation for learning brought him in 1640 to the seat of Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and within a year he was made Lord Keeper. The transition to high office was a personal disaster, since Littleton's nature did not suit him for a position of political delicacy, and his brief tenure of the Seal was scarcely less miserable than that of his predecessor Finch—who had fled to Holland in 1640. Among Littleton's first tasks was to preside over the preliminaries to the proposed impeachments of Finch and the ship-money judges, and the lengthy preparations for the trial of Strafford. Within months he became ill, and from February until August 1641 he absented himself from the House of Lords. The following year, either from fear or high-mindedness, he quit London, following the King to York and thence to Oxford. In his hurried flight he apparently left behind some of his goods and papers in the “Black Lodgings” in the Inner Temple. His health continued to deteriorate, and he died (aged 56) on 27 August 1645.

The practice of “lifting the veil” from the modern company seems at times to be regarded as a sign that corporate personality is a ficition. This view is hardly logical: if the personality of the company were a ficition, there would be no veil to lift, the liability of the company must be the liability of the members, and limited liability must be an illusion. It is precisely because the legal personality of the company is real that special arrangements must be made for lifting the veil of this personality when it conceals the wrongdoing of a member or director. To use a more florid metaphor, when the powerful hoofs of the pantomime horse are used for improper kicking. Back Legs will be stripped of his protective covering, and made to account for his use of an engine of destruction more powerful than his own boots—on exactly the same principle as if he were made to account for his use of a natural horse's to cause damage. It makes no difference whether he sits on the horse's back or stands inside its skin; and it makes no difference to the man's liability for wrongful use of the horse whether the horse has a legal personality or not. (It may of course make a difference to what the victim does about it, since he may have good reasons for choosing to sue the horse rather than the man.)

Tax legislation is probably the lengthiest and most complex legislation enacted in the United Kingdom. But the sheer volume of the legislation has not brought certainty of meaning or predictability of application. The legislation is seriously wanting in clarity and simplicity. The Commissioners of Inland Revenue are responsible for the “collection and management of the inland revenue”, and “have all necessary powers for carrying into execution every Act of Parliament relating to inland revenue”.

The need to redress the inequality of power between the citizen and the State, which lies at the heart of public law, is illustrated nowhere more clearly than in the facts of R. v. North and East Devon Health Authority, ex p. Coughlan [2000] 2 W.L.R. 622. As a result of her severe disability Pamela Coughlan was, for many years, looked after as a hospital in-patient. In 1993, however, she agreed to move to a purpose-built care facility on the strength of the respondent’s promise that it would be her “home for life”; yet, only five years later, the health authority decided to close the new home, citing financial reasons. That the applicant possessed a legitimate expectation which would be breached by closure of the home was not in doubt. The difficult question was how the expectation could be protected. Courts have long been willing to enforce procedural promises and to safeguard expectations of substantive benefits by requiring the adoption of a fair procedure (typically consultation) before the benefit is denied. Coughlan, however, makes it clear that courts may go further than this by substantively protecting substantive expectations.

“There is no such thing known to our procedure as putting half a prisoner's character in issue and leaving out the other half.” This observation fell from Humphreys J. in delivering the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeal in R. v. Winfield (1939). The purpose of this article is to suggest that at common law this statement is not borne out by principle or by authority. The effect on the common law where the prisoner elects to go into the witness-box in exercise of the statutory opportunity created by the Criminal Evidence Act, 1898, will also be considered. The type of situation that arises is illustrated by Winfield's Case, where the facts, in brief, were that on a charge of indecent assault, W. put in issue his good character for sexual morality, and the prosecution in cross-examination proved his previous convictions for offences involving dishonesty. The court held that such cross-examination was proper. The question is whether the evidence of the good or bad character of the prisoner must be confined to the trait or traits relevant to the type of crime charged. It will be submitted that the evidence must be so confined. On an indictment for murder, evidence of the good or bad character of the prisoner for honesty will be inadmissible. Not only the crime charged but also the circumstances in which it is alleged to have been committed must be considered. If the murder is committed with a hammer, character for peace and quiet on the one hand and for violence on the other will be admissible, but not if it is a case of slow poisoning.

The protection of human rights through common law principles and values has a greater potential than has been recognised hitherto. First, the adoption at common law of the proportionality test of interferences with rights shows that, when human rights are at issue, the courts will apply an exigent test, allowing interferences only if, amongst other things, a less intrusive measure could not have been used. Secondly, the principle of legality, along with common law constitutionalism as developed recently by the Supreme Court, now means that there is a common law pendant to the rule in s. 3(1) of the Human Rights Act 1998. Thirdly, in cases where the protection offered by the Act is displaced by obligations under the Charter of the United Nations, there is no displacement of common law rights, which continue to operate. Fourthly, common law rights are more open to the influences of the customary international law of human rights than are Convention rights. These factors combine to mean that the future of common law rights is an auspicious one.

The student who seeks to discover the essential elements of the crime of Assault at Common Law as distinct from Battery does not receive much help from the standard text-books. Most of them in substance follow the description of assault given by Hawkins: ‘An assault is an attempt or offer, with force and violence, to do a corporal hurt to another.’

In R. v. Dica [2004] 3 W.L.R. 213, the Court of Appeal decided that a man who knows that he is infected with the HIV virus but who infects his unsuspecting sexual partner through unprotected sexual intercourse should be punishable for inflicting grievous bodily harm, contrary to section 20 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. The Court did in fact quash the conviction of the accused, because the judge at the Old Bailey had not instructed the jury to decide whether or not the two infected partners of the accused had known of his infection and agreed to take the risk of contracting it themselves (this having been in dispute at the trial). Yet the case was sent for retrial, and if the next jury, properly directed, should find that his partners did not agree to take the risk of contracting the potentially fatal virus, then Dica would be properly convicted under OAPA, section 20.