THE relativity of titles to land is a fundamental feature of property holding in the common law system. It is treated as one of the features that distinguishes it from civilian systems of property holding and proves the pragmatic stuff from which the common law is made.

INTito v. Waddell (No. 2), Megarry V.-C. famously described, and differentiated, the two dealing rules, the “self-dealing rule” and the “fair-dealing rule”, that apply to those occupying fiduciary positions: The self-dealing rule is … that if a trustee sells the trust property to himself, the sale is voidable by any beneficiary ex debito justitiae, however fair the transaction. The fair-dealing rule is … that if a trustee purchases the beneficial interest of any of his beneficiaries, the transaction is not voidable ex debito justitiae, but can be set aside by the beneficiary unless the trustee can show that he has taken no advantage of his position and has made full disclosure to the beneficiary, and that the transaction is fair and honest.

TOWARDS the end of his judgment in R. v. Collins and Ashworth Hospital Authority ex p. Brady,Kay J. (as he then was) delivered the following homily: it would seem to me a matter of deep regret if the law has developed to a point in this area where the rights of a patient count for everything and other ethical values and institutional integrity count for nothing.

DIFFICULT questions of medical ethics are often made more complex in the real world by the intrusion of private law considerations. The end of life choices of a mentally competent but terminally ill patient may be influenced by the consequences for the financial well being of surviving dependants. In particular, attention is likely to be given to the effect on any life insurance cover in place. For many this will represent the greatest financial asset contingent on death. There has been considerable debate as to the proper response of public law to these issues, in both the criminal and regulatory fields. However, the prosecutorial, judicial and jury discretions that bound these rules limit their impact in practice. By contrast, the private law principles that govern the distribution of assets on death have been largely overlooked. This article redresses that imbalance.

It is widely accepted that the British intelligence dossier of September 2002 claiming that Iraq possessed “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD) which could be deployed “within 45 minutes” was critical to the British Government’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Given that no such weapons have materialized despite careful, comprehensive and labour-intensive searching, the dossier is now seen by many as a self-serving attempt by the Blair administration to “spin” the country into war.

JURISTIC writing and Imperial Constitutions on the subject of locatio conductio, collected by the compilers to produce D.19.2 and C.4.65, do not present a complete picture of the Roman law of lease. Not only were most of these texts severed from their original context, but the statements in the Introductory Constitutions to different parts of the Corpus Iuris Civilis also indicate that a large number were eliminated in the compilation process. Although it can hardly be disputed that what the compilers chose to include in these two titles was an accurate account of the law of letting and hiring in force during the time of Justinian, it has been credibly suggested that these titles were given a specific focus in order to project a particular image of the Roman rental economy.

OVER the past few years, an important legal debate has been raging, the full effects of which many lawyers have not yet felt. I am referring to the taxonomy debate and, specifically, the attempts by the late Professor Peter Birks and (the mainly academic) supporters and advocates of his and similar views to impose a coherent and logical taxonomy upon private (common) law. Much more attention should be paid to sound taxonomy, it is argued. This “great project” has been little noticed outside the backwater of the law in which it began, namely the law of restitution (or “unjust enrichment” as the theorists here under consideration would prefer).

IN 2000 the Employment Directive was enacted by the European Community, creating a framework for combating discrimination in employment on grounds not previously covered by Community law, namely religion or belief, disability, age and sexual orientation. To a large extent the definitions of discrimination are uniform in relation to the different grounds of discrimination. In accordance with the Directive, new Regulations have been introduced in the UK prohibiting discrimination on grounds of religion or belief (the Religion and Belief Regulations) and sexual orientation, and amendments have been made to some aspects of the law governing discrimination on grounds of race, sex and disability. Age discrimination is subject to regulations which came into force in October 2006. One common aspect of these new laws and amendments is that the concept of harassment is specifically defined, instead of being viewed as a form as discrimination.

THE right not to be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment is guaranteed in absolute terms in Article 3 of the ECHR. This article imposes on a State both a negative and a positive obligation. In recent months, the House of Lords has considered cases raising both obligations pursuant to Article 3. This paper will examine first the nature of Article 3 and these obligations, second the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights on the issue of State responsibility, and finally the recent decisions of the House of Lords in R. (on the application of Adam, Limbuela and Tesema) v. Secretary of State for the Home Department

THE law which governs decision-making by the shareholders (or, strictly speaking, members) of a company is an area in which there is a great emphasis on regulation. This emphasis has tended to obscure the basic principles of law around which that regulation has developed. It has also distracted attention away from an appreciation of how those principles are applied and developed in practice.

THERE can be little doubt that the spectre of false rape allegations has significantly influenced the development of legal doctrine and its enforcement. The fear of false allegations has been used to justify evidential rules in cases involving sexual offences such as the corroboration warning, the retention of the marital rape immunity and continues to influence police and prosecutorial decision-making.

ONE of the most difficult questions facing English courts as they develop the common law right to privacy recognised by the House of Lords in Campbell v. MGN Ltd. is whether and, if so, when a person might have a reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place. Should an individual have a cause of action if she is photographed as she leaves her mother’s funeral or as he receives medical attention after an accident? Or should there be an absolute rule which says that there is no privacy in a public space? Recent decisions in England and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) suggest that it is no longer an answer (if it ever was) simply to say that the disclosure concerned something which took place in public. A more difficult question therefore remains: if the existence of a privacy interest does not depend on the nature of the space in which claimants find themselves, how do we determine whether a person does have a legitimate privacy interest?