In conjoined appeals in Wilson v. St. Helens Borough Council [1998] 3 W.L.R. 1070, the House of Lords considered two important questions concerning the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981, S.I. 1981/1794, which enact the Acquired Rights Directive (77/187/EEC): first, whether a purported dismissal of an employee, the reason or principal reason for which is the transfer of an undertaking, is effective or is a nullity, and secondly, the extent to which employees are free, expressly or by conduct, to accept variations by the transferee in their terms of employment.

It is axiomatic that divorcing spouses cannot by agreement oust the jurisdiction of the court to award ancillary relief: Hyman v. Hyman [1929] A.C. 601. Finality can only be achieved by obtaining the sanction of the court in the form of a consent order, invoking a procedure which requires full disclosure of all material factors so that the court can exercise its own discretion on the basis of the information put before it: Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, s.33A; Livesey v. Jenkins [1985] A.C. 424. But out-of-court agreements made by the parties are not without significance. Far from it, they will be treated as a very important consideration should the court subsequently be asked by one of the parties to make an award of ancillary relief, and will not usually be departed from unless there are good and substantial grounds for concluding that injustice will be done by holding the parties to their terms: Edgar v. Edgar [1980] 1 W.L.R. 1410. Presumptive enforceability has been criticised as “the worst of both worlds”, as the parties must go to court to determine whether the agreement they have reached is legally binding: Pounds v. Pounds [1994] 1 F.L.R. 775, 791, per Hoffmann L.J. Either the agreement should bind, or it should be wholly disregarded.

There is nothing wrong with the Court of Appeal decision in R. v. Aujla [1998] 2 Cr.App.R. 16. Almost everything is wrong, however, with the law that the court was called on to interpret, and the decision is interesting because it shows this up.

A system of registration of title to land was first introduced int England by the Land Transfer Act 1862. Many commentators have since charted its development and have described the struggle between those espousing title registration and those advocating a reformed system of unregistered conveyancing. There has, however, been little discussion of an alternative which was strongly advocated in the nineteenth century; a general register of deeds, rather than title. The article explains the difference between the two systems and describes the various proposals for the establishment of a deeds register. It then analyses the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two systems of registration and suggests that the eventual ascendancy of title registration was due less to any inherent superiority than to external factors.

The common law tradition strongly favours witnesses giving evidence in public. In the leading case of Scott v. Scott [1913] A.C. 417, the House of Lords ruled that at common law, even embarrassing evidence about sexual impotence in a nullity suit must be so given. Public justice is said to be essential to make sure that judges behave themselves and that witnesses tell the truth. For these two purely altruistic reasons, it is always staunchly defended by the media. In consequence, almost every statute passed to enable the judge to clear the court exempts the representatives of the press.

English law sets out from the proposition that, lest it prejudice the tribunal, the prosecution in a criminal case may not adduce evidence that an accused has committed any wrongdoing other than the offence(s) actually charged. Although other misconduct evidence is still supposed only to be admitted if strongly relevant to the issues being tried, over the years the courts have steadily relaxed this self-denying ordinance. Most recently, in D.P.P. v. P [1992] 2 A.C. 447 Lord Mackay L.C. abandoned the view espoused by members of the House of Lords in D.P.P. v. Boardman [1975] A.C. 421 that other misconduct evidence may only be adduced if it displays a “striking similarity” to the misconduct charged. He declared that in determining its admissibility a judge had only to consider whether the probative force of the other misconduct was “sufficiently great to make it just to admit the evidence, notwithstanding that it is prejudicial to the accused in tending to show that he was guilty of another crime” (p. 460).

A highly paid agent sets out to undermine his principal’s business. A doctor wangles sex-for-drugs favours from a patient. An advisor offers self-interested advice to his client. A father engages in an incestuous relationship with his child. In each case the perpetrator is clearly a wrongdoer and the law must somehow respond. But what is the legal wrong and how should the law respond?

The preliminary ruling by the European Court of Justice in the Seymour-Smith and Perez case about the scope and meaning of indirect discrimination has done little to clarify this perplexing concept. The ruling does not tell the thousands of short-service employees whose claims were stayed pending the litigation whether the qualifying period of two years’ continuous service for the right not to be unfairly dismissed is contrary to Community law. Nor does it provide clear standards by which disparate impact is to be tested, nor the relevant time for assessing the legality of an allegedly discriminatory measure, nor the conditions for establishing objective justification. More generally, these proceedings under Article 177 (now Article 234) of the EC Treaty reveal a failure by the Court to perform its function of facilitating the national court in interpreting and applying Community equality law in a way which would be consistent and uniform throughout the Union.

Dicey is not fashionable these days, and for understandable reasons. The cocktail of utilitarianism and positivism, the amalgam of Bentham and Austin, that he produced led inexorably to the proclamation of unlimited parliamentary supremacy. This is widely, though with much exaggeration, conceived to be the major prop of authoritarian government. It is also, more correctly, seen as hostile to the idea of human rights possessed by persons against governments. In one sense, the decision to incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights into UK domestic law is an authoritative repudiation of the Diceyian heritage.

This article examines the doctrine of privileged wills, under section 11 of the Wills Act 1837, which permits soldiers in “actual military service” and sailors “at sea” to make testamentary dispositions of their property in any convenient form, rather than in the strict form dictated for civilian wills by section 9 of the same Act. The question raised is whether the continued existence of this privilege can really be justified in a modern society where service and marine personnel are generally as well educated and as well advised as civilian testators. To answer this, the article considers the principal benefits and detriments of the formal requirements imposed by section 9, and tries to identify any way in which the balance of these benefits and detriments might differ for privileged testators. The conclusion reached is that there is no principled justification which can be made out for retaining section 11 in its present form. Instead, the only options which are theoretically supportable are either to extend the scope of the present doctrine considerably (thought by many commentators to be indesirable) or to abolish it.

Consumers frequently do not know of their rights and are unwilling to litigate. The powers of the Director General of Fiar Trading under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1994 will often provide more effective protection for the consumer than common law rules. The powers are pre-emptive and enable unfair terms to be removed from standard form contracts, so that consumers simply cease to encounter such terms. Some protection may be provided for consumers by common law rules which allow a finding that clauses are not incorporated or that they do not have the legal effect which they may appear to the consumer to have. However, without knowledge or a willingness to litigate, consumers may be misled by such clauses and terms as to the legal rights generated aand they will not then be able to enjoy their rights to the full. This article examines the extent to which the powers of the Director General can be used to protect consumers from such misleading clauses and terms. It considers the interaction of the Regulations and the common law, the scope of the Regulations, and the application of the Regulation's test of fairness.

This article takes a fresh look at the test for inducement of the insurer where there can be said to have been non-disclosure of a material fact by the insured. Specifically, the article questions the assumption that the test for inducement of the actual insurer operates in precisely the same way as it does under the general law of contract in misrepresentation. The speeches of the majority of the House of Lords in Pan Atlantic v. Pine Top (1995) appear to make no distinction between the operation of these concepts. Yet two recent Court of Appeal decisions (Downs v. Chappell; Bristol and West Building Society v. Mothew – both reported in 1997) would seem to suggest that there is a distinction to be made. The conclusion reached in this article is that evidence of actual inducement of the insurer in the sense of evidence that he would have refused to take the risk or would have taken it only on other terms is necessary when the case is put on the basis of “pure” non-disclosure. Where, in contrast, the case is properly framed in misrepresentation the insurer need only show that he acted in reliance or was induced to act by the representations actually made.

Most of the academic discussion of the Trident Beauty has focused on its relevance to the law of restitution, in particular, restitution against third parties. This is understandable given the role restitution played in the judgments. Opinions have differed as to whether the House of Lords reached the correct result and this perhaps reflects the level of debate over what principles should govern restitutionary claims in this area. The restitutionary points were not, however, the beginning and end of the matter and some important issues of assignment have been marginalised in the wake of the restitutionary debate. The assignment of contractual rights is one part of the standard contract text that still defies analysis. However, the recent spate of difficult assignment related cases, evidencing its continued importance to commerce, as well as the near settlement of the modern rules of privity, suggest that the time is ripe to take it out of the too hard basket and put it on the agenda for the next decade. It is not, however, the aim of this paper to detail, much less resolve, every problem that exists within this area of the law. The much more modest aim here is to investigate the assignment issues raised by The Trident Beauty. The end result is that these issues resolve the restitutionary problem raised by the case if the suggested analysis is adopted. It is hoped that this paper will also show that this area of the law is simplified if there is a proper understanding of the relationship between the assignee and obligor and more time spent on construing the rights assigned to the assignee and the obligations of the obligor rather than taking refuge too quickly in phrases such as “the assignee takes subject to the equities” and “the assignee can be in no better position than the assignor”. This paper begins with a look at the decision in The Trident Beauty itself.

Does the loss of computer data constitute damage to property for the purposes of an action in negligence, or is it pure economic loss? On the test in Hunter v. Canary Wharf Ltd. [1997] A.C. 655, if the loss of data is concomitant with a change in the configuration in the particles of the computer hardware by means of which the data are stored, the Courts are likely to find that damage to property has taken place. This is likely to have significant implications in the context of problems caused by the “millennium bug”. However, whatever may be the correct analysis of the nature of the loss, de minimis principles and considerations of fairness, justice and reasonableness may militate against the imposition of liability in tort, at least where the loss of data is negligently, rather than deliberately, caused.

According to the English law of restitution, a payment under a mistake of fact can usually be recovered from the recipient, at least if the mistake is a liability mistake or “fundamental”. In three-party situations the situation therefore seems to be straight-forward: independently of the relationship of each of the three parties to each other, the plaintiff is the payer and the defendant is the recipient. However, a closer look into the case law and literature reveals that there are problems.

The issue of ratification is one whose “tentacles creep into every part of company law”. When a wrong has been done to the company, it is the mechanism which determines whether that wrong can be put right, and, if it can be, whether it will be; whether the wrongdoers ought to be released from their liability, and, ultimately, whether litigation can and will be commenced. That is a lot to ask of a single doctrine, and it is not, therefore, surprising to find that this topic has been described as being “singularly muddled”. The confusion has not been helped by the fact that the courts have often avoided tackling this difficult area head on, one judge going as far as to say “I do not think that it is necessary, nor do I feel competent to disentangle the many threads of principle in this tangled skein”. The Law Commission has also said that the “law on ratification is by no means clear” but has failed to tackle the complexities of the issue, stating that “[a]lthough there may be a need for modernising and simplifying the law of ratification, we are of the firm view that any changes need to be considered in the context of a comprehensive review of directors’ duties.” However, when recently given such an opportunity the Law Commission did not consider any changes to the law regarding ratification.

To see what international law can offer in an apparently chaotic and fast changing world is far from easy. But it is only by examining and trying to understand the evolving international system that some answers may be found, because international law and international relations are in a symbiotic relationship.

The characterising features of the contemporary international system are globalisation on the one hand and a unipolar power structure on the other. The former is having a significant impact on international law as by its very nature actors are engaged in transactions across State boundaries in alliances that are not bounded by nationality. Modern technology facilitates these alliances of interest and gives an unprecedented voice to non-State actors, whether in human rights, in environmental matters or in international markets.

The concentration of military power in the United States had led to various incremental changes in authorisations of force by the United Nations, whether for peacekeeping or for enforcement actions. The evolving relationship between the United Nations and NATO has negative as well as positive factors and needs careful monitoring.