The Charity Commissioners have indicated that they possess a law-making role. This paper evaluates the extent to which the Commissioners have exercised this role in relation to charities for the advancement of religion, and evaluates this role in the light of the Human Rights Act 1998. The analysis draws upon both case law and decisions of the Commissioners, in particular the decision of the Commissioners to refuse status as a religious charity to the Church of Scientology.

Are there now any circumstances in which a teenage may effectively withhold her consent to medical treatment? By effectively, I mean not only that she can refuse to consent to treatment but also that this refusal is respected and the treatment prevented.

Consent to medical advice and treatment, the givingofwhich means that a doctor does or does not commit a battery (criminal or civil) on her patient, necessarily involves both the giving of consent and the withholding of consent. Without one the other has no meaning.

‘English law, having committed itself to a rather technical and schematic doctrine of contract, in application takes a practical approach, often at the cost of forcing the facts to fit uneasily into the marked slots of offer, acceptance and consideration. Although the context of these remarks was the necessity to analyse the complex of relations between the parties involved in a carriage of goods by sea- cargo owners, carriers, stevedores, and so on- into classical offer and acceptance, with identifiable consideration, this was not, as such, the root of Lord Wilberforce's difficulty. Rather, the source of the problem was the notoriously inconvenient doctrine of privity of contract which, in The Eurymedon, prevented the negligent stevedores from being able to rely straightforwardly upon the time limit provisions in the contract of carriage.

Boxing, in particular professional boxing, has been bedevilied in recent years by a number of highly publicised tragedies in the ring. Despite these tragedies, the Law Commission in its recent Consultation Paper declined the opportunity to review the legality of professional boxing. The Law Commission concluded that

‘boxing, if it is to remain lawful, can only do so by the application of public policy considerations that are particular to that sport. Since that is a matter of pure policy, divorced from the more general considerations addressed in this Paper, we do not think it would be useful for us to add to the already formidable public debate on the issues.

Academic lawyers have commented extensively on the judicial interpretation of the Human Rights Act 1998, but the reaction of politicians to it has received less attention. This paper examines the trends in parliamentary attitudes to human rights by analysing Commons and Lords debates on the Human Rights Bill itself, the Terrorism Bill 1999–2000, the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Bill 2001 and the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill 2002. It also considers MPs' response to the Thompson and Venables and Anderson judgments, as well as Conservative attempts to amend the Human Rights Act. Against this background, it argues that the British polity can be characterised as a ‘contestatory democracy’, in which the system of fundamental rights protection is incomplete since it neglects Parliament's vital role in defining the Convention rights.

This paper is concerned with one hundred and ten years of legal history. It is a success story. Yet it has, not an unhappy ending, for the end is in the future, but an unhappy present. Markers put down in 1883 and 1983 define the century. The change in question is the modernization of the literature of common law and hence of all the machinery of its interpretative development. Having been kept in shape first by the forms of action and then by a hardening of the doctrine of precedent, in the late nineteenth century the growing mass of case law urgently required to be more rationally ordered and explained. It began to find in the universities the means of achieving that improvement. Analysis, definition and classification, the familiar tools of the university, were brought to bear for the first time on the raw materials of the common law.

It is the purpose of this lecture to suggest that ignorance of the law is a serious social problem in this country and to consider ways in which this problem might be cured or, at least, alleviated. It is proper to start however with a disclaimer. The first half of this lecture will contain many examples of ignorance of the law and might give the impression that I am concerned to attack the ignorant. This is not so. Though some of the examples of ignorance may well be culpable, my predominant concern is with defective institutional arrangements which are the primary source of the ignorance.

The integration of national financial markets over the past 30 years has resulted in a globalised market for corporate control which has increased both the opportunities for companies to fund acquisitions and the possibility of being acquired. Takeovers and mergers have, as a result, become a matter of some concern for governments, as they try to encourage the development of financial markets but also deal with the consequences of a globalised market for corporate control, where even companies regarded as national champions are within the reach of a foreign takeover. In the course of the last decade General Principle No 7 of the UK Takeover Code, that shareholders should decide the outcome of a takeover bid, has been adopted in many jurisdictions around the world and has formed the heart of the EU Directive on Takeovers. The Principle is however a controversial one, as its adoption is often viewed in civil law jurisdictions as an attack on a core part of a social market system. This has been particularly evident in the debate on the EU Directive on Takeovers. A number of common law heritage countries have also based their takeover regime around General Principle No 7 and many of these common law heritage counties have similarities with social market systems, in that they have less significant stock exchanges than the UK, the make up of their shareholding base is more concentrated and employment protections are more extensive. A central jurisdiction in that overlap is Australia, with exactly this combination. The purpose of this paper is to examine the historical effect of introducing UK takeover principles into the Australian system, by creating an empirical data set of takeovers of Australian listed companies covering the period before and after those UK-based principles were introduced. In doing so the paper found that factors such as concentrated ownership, capital controls and protective labour law have significant effects on the market for corporate control. There was no transforming effect evident in adopting an anti-managerial pro-shareholder takeover regime. As such, the fear that the adoption of a standardised EU-wide takeover Directive, along the lines of the UK Panel on Takeovers and Mergers' shareholder-oriented General Principle 7, would have a negative transforming effect on social market systems appears, on the Australian evidence, to be overblown, while other key features of such systems, particularly concentrated ownership and protective labour laws, remain in place.

The work of defence lawyers in civil litigation has been neglected by law and society studies. Research on personal injury cases, in particular, has usually focused on the alleged failure of legal systems to compensate plaintiffs as fully and as quickly as they believe proper. The defence lawyer is conventionally portrayed as a pettifogger in the classic sense, one who seeks points of detail on which to argue, delay and confuse issues until the plaintiff reduces their demands, dies, loses heart or otherwise goes away. Recent work has been widely taken as proposing that the most effective plaintiff response is to harry defendants in an aggressive and uncompromising fashion–so-called ‘hard bargaining’. This paper combines data from two studies of personal injury litigation carried out in the late 1980s and the mid 1990s to question this conclusion. Although the procedural environment has changed in England since the implementation of the Civil Justice Reforms in April 1999, it is argued that the general points on methodology and on the starting assumptions of socio-legal research remain valid.

This paper aims to unravel two connected errors in the current critical position on companies. Since the financial crisis, there have been a growing number of voices in the academic community raised against the shareholder value driven corporate sector. The often conservative and highly doctrinal voices of English company lawyers have become in parts more radicalised and have found common research ground with varied academic disciplines and with company lawyers in other jurisdictions more accustomed to critical approaches. New ideas have been forged; old ideas have been rediscovered and re-examined. In the emerging networks, the neoliberal domination of the study of companies is being substantially challenged. As exciting as this is, I am concerned that critical scholars have cohered around a core claim about company law which is erroneous. Furthermore, they have largely assumed that the current economy can sustain a social agenda as well as creating profit. This, I argue, hugely underestimates entrenched problems in the economy. In unravelling these issues my aim is to reorientate challenges to shareholder primacy and to the claims of capital more generally.

Disputes relating to cryptoassets have proliferated in recent years, along with the rise of the cryptoasset market. Some of these can be resolved using traditional principles of contract, tort or trust law, but proprietary issues raise particular conundrums. While cryptoassets have generally been accepted to be property, that is merely the starting point. To properly resolve proprietary disputes, it is necessary to provide a reasoned and robust explanation for why particular rules of title originally developed in the context of tangible property should apply. In turn, two foundational questions must be answered. First, what is the subject-matter of the property right in cryptoassets? And secondly, what is the proprietary effect of a blockchain transaction? These issues have received relatively little attention in the literature, which has focused on whether cryptoassets are property at all, and existing contributions (including the Law Commission's recent Consultation Paper on Digital Assets) which do engage these issues are far from reaching consensus. This paper critically examines those views and puts forward its own reasoned approach for the application of traditional rules of title to cryptoassets.

The concept of the sovereignty of the nation state is at the very core of our understanding of public international law. Nevertheless, the concept is under constant pressure to adapt to the changing global situation. This is particularly true when sovereignty is examined in the light of environmental concerns. Is the traditional paradigm still relevant in an age when so many transboundary and global environmental issues confront the international legal order? This paper suggests that whilst sovereignty remains a central pillar of international law, it is one that increasingly must be responsive to the needs and concerns of an interdependent international community. It must not be treated as a static, immovable fact, but rather as a flexible tool through which states can more effectively act in an increasingly interdependent global society.

An important demographic and social trend is becoming indisputably evident in the UK. The population is ageing, and a clearly discernible group of elderly persons is growing. As this trend continues, it will be necessary to reconsider the effectiveness and application of the law from the perspective of the elderly claimant. While it has been recognised that there must be a legal scheme to oversee the care and protection of persons, including elders, who are unable to care for their interests due to severe disability, it is becoming evident that even elders who are apparently healthy and able may be vulnerable. Undue influence inter vivos is a significant legal doctrine upon which elderly people have relied in recent times to set aside gifs, contracts and guarantees which they (or their representatives) have considered in hindsight were not in their best interests. This paper seeks to provide an analysis of and contribute to an understanding of the doctrine of undue influence from the perspective of the elderly claimant in the UK. The paper considers actual and presumed undue influence and the impact of the House of Lords decision in Royal Bank of Scotland plc v Etridge (No2). It will be argued that the law of undue influence inter vivos is in transition from a nineteenth-century doctrine which did not confer a special legal status on the elderly to one which is applied in the context of an increasing recognition that the events leading up to the transaction and the circumstances of the case may indicate that elders need the relief which the doctrine affords. Nevertheless, the transition to a modem system of undue influence for the elderly is incomplete. There remain outstanding issues which need consideration before it can be said that there is a comprehensive or logically coherent approach to elders and undue influence.

This article examines the development, operation and reform of the tribunal system responsible for determining appeals against the refusal of refugee status by the Home Office. Consideration of this particular appellate system is situated within a broader discussion of the criteria and values against which tribunal adjudication systems may be evaluated, By examining asylum appeals, light is shed on the theory and practice of administrative justice with regard to: the problematic nature of ensuring accuracy in tribunal decision-making; the tensions under which appeal procedures operate; the importance of onward appeal rights; and the role of tribunals in policy implementation. The article argues that recent reform of the asylum appeal process, including the introduction of a single tier of appeal, the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal, by the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc) Act 2004 and restrictions on legal aid, has been motivated by political considerations and may increase the dificulties in operating an effective appeal process.

There is, it seems, a revival of interest in anarchist theories of law. But then there is always a revival of interest in anarchist theories of law. In the 1960s Wortley began his text, Jurisprudence, with a study of anarchism, and the early 1980s saw a succession of papers and articles on anarchist critiques of law. Despite this, discussion of anarchist legal theory has rarely moved beyond the introductory stage. Basic tenets have been outlined but detailed analysis eschewed. Part of the reason for this may lie in basic difficulties of definition. The concern has been with ‘anarchist theories of law’, but what is anarchism?

Most writers, whether they be anarchist theorists or academic commentators, begin with the proposition that the word anarchism is derived from the Greek anarchos and means either ‘no government’ or ‘no ruler’. Such etymology cannot take the place of definition but, beyond the bare fact that anarchism involves the rejection of rulers, no further definition seems possible.

The 2004 decision of the Court of Appeal in Manchester City Council v Romano and Samari highlighted the unexpected impact of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA) upon the control of anti-social behaviour by social landlords where that conduct is caused by a mental disorder. This paper positions the legislation against the backdrop of advanced liberal housing policy, and its concern with the management of risk and the fostering of individual responsibility among tenants. In particular, it explores the possible criticism that, by preventing landlords in certain circumstances from taking action against the mentally disordered on grounds of their anti-social conduct, the DDA patronises those individuals by denying them the opportunity to take responsibility for their actions.

In a previous paper in this journal I responded to Professor John Keown’s criticisms of the British Medical Association guidance on withholding and withdrawing life-prolonging treatment, arguing that the sanctity of life principle he endorses is indefensible as a juridical and moral guide. Professor Keown replied recently, also in this journal, alleging that I wrongly caricatured the sanctity of life position he supports, which continues to illuminate the proper decision-making path in relation to the withdrawal or withholding of life-sustaining medical treatment. In this present paper it is submitted that Keown’s riposte is misconceived and disguises the true nature of the sanctity of life stance, which both rests upon unconvincing premisses and tends towards unacceptable repercussions, thus leading to its inevitable and rightful rejection.

The constitutional referendum is often conceptualised as the ultimate institutional expression of popular sovereignty. However, ‘direct democracy’ is viewed apprehensively by many political and legal theorists, particularly republican scholars. They argue that referendums risk engendering a dangerous ‘populism’ while detracting from the deliberative and moderating virtues of parliamentary democracy. In this paper, I defend the political value of the constitutional referendum from within republican theory, arguing that there is a misplaced focus on parliamentary supremacy within much of the literature on ‘political constitutionalism’. However, I argue it should be valued neither as a mechanism for giving expression to popular will, nor as an intervention by the mythologised ‘constituent power’ – or indeed, contra Tierney, as a ‘sovereign’ exercise in any sense. Rather, it has two main, overlapping virtues: first, its role in facilitating the contestation and checking of executive power in the area of constitutional change, and secondly, its instrumental role in fostering a wider culture of civic participation.

The distinction between primary and secondary victims confirmed by Page v Smith has caused major problems in English psychiatric damage law. The House of Lords has suggested that the search for principle has been called off, and that the only sensible strategy is to say ‘thus far and no farther’. This paper suggests that one way forward is to recognise that it is not only persons who are physically proximate to an ‘accident’ who should be put in a special category: any case in which there is some sort of pre-existing relationship between claimant and defendant should be regarded as different from the standard secondary victim scenario. The relationship concept, first recognised in the USA and now adopted by the Court of Appeal, can be found in embryo form in the early cases.

Down the centuries, it has been considered that in general a doctor is only under a duty to exercise reasonable care in treating a patient. While the latter is entitled to a high standard of treatment, results are not guaranteed. In the United States, courts have imposed more onerous obligations, but in England there has been no real challenge to this position until now. The doctor's liability in contract has always had the potential of going beyond mere negligence, but the general concentration on tort actions and understandable uncertainties as to the scope of contractual liability meant that this potential was never explored.