The growth of royal justice in England consisted in part in the development of writs to begin proceedings in royal, county, or seignorial court. In the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries the King's court seldom created entirely new substantive rules and entitlements. Rather, the growth of royal justice consisted in the reinstitutionalisation of customary norms and entitlements in the legal mechanism of royal government. The available writs and the rules governing their use—especially writs which began proceedings directly in the King's court—constituted the structure of royal justice in that they determined which norms and entitlements would be shaped in the King's court and would have the power and authority of royal government behind them. Bracton's ideal that there ought to be a writ for every case requiring a remedy motivated the proliferation of royal writs—both the creation of new writs and the division of existing writs into two or more variants—from the forty-five writs found in Glanvill (1187–9) to the 886 writs found in an early fourteenth-century register of writs. Each new writ brought a new social situation within the ken of royal government or changed the terms in which royal government recognised and enforced social norms. The division of a single writ into two or more variants meant a refinement of the legal structure. Changes in the rules governing the use of a writ also changed the interaction between royal government and social life. The reinstitutionalisation of customary norms and entitlements created additional subjects for argument. In addition to the customary norms as recognised in the King's court, persons could also argue about the writs and rules of the King's court itself. Substantive issues could thus be suppressed and transposed into procedural issues that deter-mined the boundaries to the royal judicial power to affirm and to effectuate customary norms. In 1176, the King asserted royal jurisdiction over the customary entitlement known as dower. This essay traces the development of the writs of dower from their creation to Chapter 49 of the Statute of Westminster I (1275), which changed the rule for using thepraecipe writ of dower.

TWO important decisions have recently considered the effect of human rights law on domestic property law: Kay v. Lambeth L.B.C.; Leeds C.C. v. Price, and J.A. Pye (Oxford) Ltd. v. United Kingdom. In each case, the claimant brought a domestic proprietary claim, one successfully, the other unsuccessfully, against a defendant. The aggrieved party argued that the domestic legal outcome conflicted with his rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. In each case, the court had to decide whether the Convention had indeed been infringed by the bringing of a proprietary claim and, if so, what the consequences of that infringement might be.

Under the present law, policy-based reasoning plays a major role in the judicial determination of private law disputes. The propriety of this type of reasoning, however, has been the subject of much debate. Whilst many argue that there is nothing objectionable about using policy-based reasoning, others, particularly those who believe in a rights and/or corrective justice-based view of private law, argue that policy should play no role in the determination of private law disputes, and that courts should instead rely on what they call “principle”. This article will examine both sides of the debate, initially exploring what is actually meant by “principle” and “policy”, and then providing an overview of the primary arguments relied on in favour of both a policy- and principle-based approach to resolving private law disputes. Finally, a compromise between the two approaches, the so-called “pluralist” approach, will be examined.

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.

It is well established that a party seeking an interlocutory or a Mareva injunction is required to give a cross-undertaking in damages as a condition of being granted the order sought. Equally settled is the principle that the undertaking in damages may be invoked in two situations. First, when the injunction is discharged before trial on the ground that it should never have been granted and, secondly, if at the end of the trial the party enjoined obtains a favourable judgment vindicating his claims in the action. Yet the principles governing a decision whether to enforce the undertaking are inadequately articulated. Two reasons have combined to contribute to this state of affairs: the fact that the award of damages is considered to be discretionary and the small number of instances in which the courts have been asked topronounce on the subject. However, the great rise in applications for interlocutory relief, whether by way of interim or Mareva injunctions or Anton Piller orders, has commensurably increased the importance of this subject. A number of recent decisions stand witness to this tendency and underscore the need for a thorough treatment of the topic.

Mr. Bruton occupied a flat by virtue of a written agreement with the Quadrant Housing Trust. The agreement specifically categorised itself as a “weekly licence” although it did give exclusive possession to Bruton. For its part, the Trust held the flat as licensee from the freehold owner, Lambeth Council, in order to pursue its charitable housing aims of providing temporary and emergency accommodation. By virtue of section 32 of the Housing Act 1985, any grant of a lease by the Council to the Trust would have been ultra vires. Bruton accepted the “licence” from the Trust on this basis, but now alleged that he held the flat on a lease, giving security of tenure and triggering a repairing obligation for the Trust under section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 (implied repairing obligations for short term leases). The High Court had held that the agreement was a licence and this was confirmed by the Court of Appeal, with Millett L.J. noting that it was difficult to see how Bruton could have a lease when the Trust itself held no estate in the land out of which a lease could have been granted: [1998] Q.B. 834, 845. The House of Lords, unanimously, held that Bruton had a lease on a simple application of Street v. Mountford [1985] A.C. 809. The fact that the Trust held no estate in the land was neither here nor there: Bruton v. London & Quadrant Housing Trust [1999] 3 W.L.R. 150.

Care and concern for the elderly have long been regarded by social anthropologists as hallmarks of a civilised community. Unfortunately the care of the elderly frequently presents problems of both a social and legal nature. Some of the difficulties which confront legal practitioners arise from factual situations similar to the following: an aged, widowed father, whose health is deteriorating, asks his adult child to move into his house and look after him for the rest of his days. In return, the father promises orally to leave the house by will to the child or to the child and his or her spouse. The type of problem which can then occur is seen when it is found on the father's death either that he has died intestate, and the estate of which the house forms part has to be divided equally between the child and his or her brothers and sisters, or that he has forgotten to alter his last will. Consequently a will executed perhaps many years earlier provides that the house should be left to some other relative—or even to the legendary cats' home. The child, having assiduously cared for the elderly father, may wish to claim the house and may seek the practitioner's advice.

Rejecting the competing positions of Swadling and Chambers, this article argues that the law of presumed resulting trusts reflects a very old rule that, upon a voluntary transfer, the fate of the beneficial interest in the property depends on the intention of the transferor. The case law shows that the presumption is of an intention to create a trust for the transferor or provider of the purchase money. It makes no difference if, reflecting the historically important concept of “retention”, this is phrased in negative terms as a presumption that the intention of the transferor was not to pass the beneficial interest to the transferee.

The new UK internal market, as embodied in the UK Internal Market Act 2020 and the common frameworks, is the latest example of market integration, but it is far from being the only one. A myriad of composite market structures exists across the world, including in Australia, Canada, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, the US and the EU. This article investigates how the UK internal market compares to other internal markets: to what extent does it follow pre-existing paths, to what extent does it depart from them? It is argued that the UK has diverged from international blueprints in several important aspects. Despite drawing on methods that are frequently employed for achieving economic integration, it reinterprets and combines these in a unique way. The result is an internal market which is defined by an unusual degree of centralisation, strong trade rights and a high potential for deregulation.