This paper traces a key example of the overlap between tort and crime and explains the impact of how disjointed English legal thinking has been. For about 400 years English civil courts have accepted some form of pre-eminence of the criminal law where civil and serious criminal liability co-exist. This has often been described as the rule that “a trespass merges in a felony” though a more neutral term would be a “timing rule”. The development of the timing rules casts light on how English legal reasoning has approached the relationship between the victim and the state, the procedural context of substantive rules and the impact rules in one area of law can have elsewhere.

Part II of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 regulates the renewal of business tenancies. Within highly technical confines, it promotes the continuation of the tenant's business and addresses the risk of tenant exploitation. Nevertheless, it is argued that section 30(1)(g) unnecessarily prioritises the occupation needs of the landlord over the tenant's renewal rights and without imposing effective procedural safeguards. Although compensation for loss of renewal rights may be available, the award disregards any loss of established goodwill. This inadequacy of compensation undermines the anti-profiteering ethos of the Act and contravenes Article 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

It is a long-established legal rule that the contents of a will, once it is admitted to probate, are available for inspection by any member of the public. This article is the first examination of this remarkable rule, its possible rationales, and its attendant disadvantages. Particular attention is paid to the problems of the ensuing loss of privacy. Legislative attempts to limit open access are considered together with non-legislative devices used for the same purpose: the secret trust; and applications for the sealing of a will (a device especially prevalent in the case of royal wills).

The main thesis of this article is that the public-private divide has to be considered as a multifunctional and context-dependant divide. This thesis is demonstrated by comparing English law and Dutch law. The authors describe two areas in which the divide is relevant: judicial review and the applicability of public law standards including human rights. In both legal systems discussions concerning the private-public divide relate to the transfer of power to private bodies. However, in the Dutch – continental – legal system the label ‘public law’ is used in fewer kinds of cases than in the English legal system. This remarkable finding might be explained by the characterization of the public-private division as multifunctional and context-dependant.

One way in which law protects dignity is by enforcing human rights provisions that explicitly prohibit degradation. But, as Lon Fuller and others have observed, law's connection with dignity is also deeper and more pervasive than this. In the way that its requirements are presented, in its procedures, in its sponsorship of argumentation, in treating people as equals, even in the distinctive way in which it makes use of coercion, law treats humans as dignified agents, capable of self-control, with a good sense of their own interests, and an ability to respond intelligently to its demands.