An important current issue in the conflict of laws is how to deal with the decision of the European Court of Justice in Owusu v. Jackson. It has left numerous unanswered questions on the scope of the Brussels I Regulation and the future is deeply uncertain. Much could be written on whether Owusu is correct, and even more on where one should progress from the current position. But the concern of the present article is more limited: how does the decision in Owusu interact with the previous decision of the European Court of Justice in Turner v. Grovit? Before addressing that question, however, it is necessary to introduce both decisions, and, in particular, the different views of where the future after Owusu may lie.

The debate in January 2007, as presented by the mass media, concerning whether an exemption should be provided for Roman Catholic Adoption Agencies from new laws prohibiting discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation in the provision of goods and services, rested upon two erroneous assumptions. The first was an assumption that awarding exemptions on grounds of religion was novel; the second was that the debate concerned whether there ought to be a religious exemption at all. This article seeks to engage with the real debate concerning the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007, which is not whether there ought to be a religious exemption (since one has been given) but rather the scope of the exemption. It also aims to show that religious exemptions are common in English law, including discrimination law, and to elucidate the various exemptions, paying particular attention to their beneficiaries and the basis on which discrimination is permitted. In short, this article seeks to understand the state of the law as a whole contextualising the recent moral panic.

Article 87 (1) EC prohibits any state aid in whatsoever form, unless the Commission considers it to be compatible with the common market. This prohibition significantly reduces in many cases the freedom of Member States to conduct their policies in defining the political and economic environment in which undertakings operate. Article 88 (3) EC, which provides for the notification procedure and prohibits the implementation of aid measures before the Commission's approval, also significantly reduces the Member State's playground. Rarely, however, can it be argued that the state aid control could potentially have drastic consequences for the national constitution order. Although the questions of what constitutes state resources and to which extent trade between Member States can be affected are controversial, this article focuses on only one aspect of the definition of state aid, namely selectivity, the application of which may have the most far-reaching consequences for many Member States' constitutional orders. It has to be stressed, though, that this short article does not aim to deal comprehensively with every difficult issue connected with the application of the selectivity test, but is limited to some of its aspects which may have bearing on Member States' decisions concerning the distribution of powers and especially the power of taxation.

When the holders of endowed chairs give inaugural lectures it is common for the lecture to begin with a respectful tribute to the achievements of the distinguished scholars in whose shoes the incumbent now stands. In the case of a personal chair this is obviously not possible. It is appropriate, though, that I should none the less acknowledge here the intellectual debts that I owe to others. But those who might be mentioned are very numerous. And in order to avoid having to draw invidious distinctions and being bound to offend someone, by commission or omission, I will mention only two giants of scholarship who have both had a profound influence upon me. They are both no longer with us but they remain influential in the work of others including myself.

In common law jurisdictions, there has been considerable academic and judicial discussion of the duties of company directors generally. In contrast, relatively little ink has been spent on the specific duty, if any, of a company director to disclose his own misconduct (in the civil realm) to the company, even less so on the nature and basis of such a duty. This is unsurprising given the very restrictive approach to disclosure obligations in English law. Thus, while a director may in loose terms be said to be under a “duty” to disclose interests that conflict with the company's, such disclosure only serves the purpose of relieving him from liability, and failure to do so per se has not been regarded as an independent source of liability.

The question of whether a shareholder may bring a personal action to recover diminution in value of his shares as a result of a wrong committed by the defendant against the company appears to be settled by the House of Lords in Johnson v. Gore Wood & Co. (to be referred to as the Johnson case). The facts may be stated briefly. Gore Wood, a firm of solicitors, had acted for Johnson's company, in which he owned almost entirely all the shares. The solicitors were alleged to have acted negligently when they failed to exercise an option to purchase a piece of land for Johnson's company. The solicitors then settled a suit brought by the company. After the settlement, Johnson sued the solicitors, arguing that they also owed a duty to him personally. As some of the losses claimed by Johnson were also losses which the company suffered and which had been settled, the solicitors applied to strike out those claims on the ground that they were “reflective losses”. The House of Lords struck out those claims which were reflective losses, namely, claims for diminution in value of his shares and reduction in dividend stream, but allowed other claims to go to trial. The concern of this article is with a shareholder's personal claim for diminution in value of shares.

This article examines the backgrounds of a sample of 77 English and Welsh judges in an ambitious research project sponsored by the Nuffield Foundation, in which I work-shadowed and interviewed a core sample of 40 judges at every level of the court structure, in 2003–5, with the aim of finding out what modern judges do and what they are like. I interviewed a further 37.

Magistrates' Courts are designed to provide more economical and expeditious adjudications than may be possible in the Crown Courts. It is the summary nature of Magistrates' Courts' determinations that justifies the defendant's statutory right to a rehearing in a Crown Court if he is dissatisfied with the result of his first trial. However the powers of a Crown Court on disposing of an appeal can deter defendants from lodging what they consider to be meritorious appeals. This article assesses the nature and legitimacy of those powers, which work in terrorem of appeals.