Boundaries are of the utmost importance because they establish size and shape. In so far as changes in the law affect the elements making up the boundaries of the firm, such changes can be expected to have an impact on the size and structure of firms. Theories which are capable of explaining how operations within the firm are different from those outside can be used to draw the boundaries of the firm and so to define its essence or nature. In this article three theories which give substance to the boundaries of the firm are presented and analysed.

The major debate in recent corporate legal theory has been between the coercionists and the contractarians. This can be caricatured as a dispute between those who follow institutional arguments, seeing the firm as a concession of the State, and those who follow economic theory, seeing the firm as a nexus of contracts.

While recent public attention has focused on disputes concerning the fate of the dead such as the Bristol and Alder Hey organ retention scandals, this paper considers a much less publicised area of dispute which has nevertheless generated a significant amount of case law and potentially affects a much wider proportion of society. The paper looks at conflicts which arise when relatives cannot agree on how to bury their dead, the motives behind such disputes and the factors which influence their resolution. It examines the legal framework which has been applied by courts to date, proposes alternative solutions to this framework and questions the potential impact of the Human Rights Act 1998 on family burial conflicts.

Recent years have seen a rise in the number of manslaughter prosecutions following deaths caused by improper medical treatment. Such prosecutions of individual doctors are problematic because, in many cases, a complex pattern of failures has contributed to the death. One alternative approach would be that of pursuing corporate manslaughter prosecutions against hospital trusts, but current law makes such prosecutions difficult. The Law Commission's proposed offence of corporate killing could, if adopted, form the basis of prosecutions following some hospital deaths. The article considers arguments for and against the use of criminal law in response to deaths caused by medical negligence.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is the first international human rights convention to state expressly that discrimination includes the failure to provide reasonable accommodation. The duty has been described as transformative but has also been critiqued for its lack of structural impact. This paper evaluates the transformative potential of the reasonable accommodation duty encompassed by the Convention, and considers how its potential can be realised. It argues that the duty is transformative because of the substantive equality it provides for individuals, and because it requires both active engagement with persons with disabilities and proactive consideration of barriers to inclusion, in multiple contexts. However, it contends that full realisation of the duty's transformative potential depends on appropriate legislative formulation. This may be a problem in dualist states where application of the Convention is not automatic and pre-existing legislation may be perceived as satisfying the obligation. The paper supports this contention with an analysis of Irish law, arguing that the full transformative potential of the reasonable accommodation duty has not yet been achieved in Ireland, and identifying the reasons for this. The paper examines the practical consequences of inadequate implementation and highlights pitfalls and best practice.

This paper concentrates on the ethical tension created by lawyer billing. In particular, it examines the tension between a lawyer's commercial imperative to make a profit and their ethical obligation to promote their clients interest over their own. Conventionally, this conflict is resolved through the lawyer providing disinterested advice on (their own) costs and the client granting informed consent to billing arrangements on that basis. This paper uses empirical data to suggest that notions of disinterested advice and informed consent are deeply flawed when it comes to lawyers' fees. Clients passively consume exploitative practices. As a result, this paper argues that, where possible, regulators should supplant informed consent with an approach requiring simple charging: reducing professional discretion over charging practices and strengthening the market-based regulation of price. This requires a significant simplification of lawyers' fees wherever possible.

Over the past two decades, there have been significant legal developments aimed at securing and enhancing the participation of vulnerable witnesses in criminal trials. Yet, there remains relatively little regard for the fact that many defendants, including those who are not deemed to be vulnerable, are unable to participate in criminal proceedings in a meaningful sense. This paper aims to address two questions. First, why should defendants have participatory rights and be capable of meaningful participation in criminal proceedings? Second, why has it proven so difficult to attain meaningful participation of defendants? It is contended that barriers to meaningful communication between the defendant and the court could be dismantled without great difficulty, but continue to exist because due regard is not given to the normative rationales for participatory rights and defendant participation.

The Rana Plaza disaster of April 2013 was the most prominent of several incidents that have highlighted poor standards of business behaviour in the supply chains of well-known brands. Analysis of these incidents has attributed these poor standards to an institutional structure in which lead firms with strategic power outsource production into global value chains and pursue business models that involve rapid product upgrading and require low costs and fast turnarounds in production such as the garment industry's ‘fast fashion’ business model. This paper aims to complement that analysis by showing how trade marks, as the main legal anchors of brands, have reinforced the strategic power of lead firms, enabled them to outsource production and encouraged them to adopt business models of this kind. The paper will also evaluate the claim that brands mitigate their harmful effects by transmitting countervailing pressure back onto their owners because they provide salient targets for bad publicity and blame, as coverage of the Rana Plaza disaster showed, which can threaten their owners with reputational damage. It will be argued that this countervailing pressure has a limited effect and cannot be relied on without more to address the issues that the Rana Plaza disaster revealed.

This article seeks to examine the question of what the essential nature and definition of a mistake is. It examines whether it can be properly distinguished from ignorance. The article then seeks to examine the requirement of provability, first in the context of mistakes of fact and then in that of mistakes of law. A Dworkinian approach is taken, arguing that it is possible to be mistaken as to the law. The article then shows why an opinion or misprediction cannot be seen as a mistake, before turning to the topical issue of the manner of the recent removal of the mistake of law bar. Using Dworkin's analysis it will be suggested that where a case is overruled it can be said to have been u mistake to rely on it. The article also argues that Birks’ analysis of the question is flawed, in that he fails to see the real distinction between a mistake and a misprediction.

From the 1970 decision of Corbett onwards, legal narratives established two modes of categorising complex social identity in relation to sex and gender. These narratives responded to complex identity questions by attempting to simplify identity by limiting it to biological factors or anatomical and psychological factors.

I demonstrate that the law's struggle to ‘make’ sex is reflected to a certain extent by feminism's trajectory, in that feminisms have also attempted to grapple with these complex questions, and often opted for the same simple solutions to the problem of understanding gender, sex and identity. The aim of this paper is to show that some strands of feminist theory, specifically post-structuralist feminist theory, can produce a more progressive and constructive approach to determining sex in their ability to illuminate the complexities of identity. In particular, my aim is to urge those courts that ‘make’ sex to consider these complexities and the implications that flow from placing transgender people into rigid and narrow categories.

The relationship between criminal law and regulatory techniques in responses to corporate crime is complex and changing. The Serious Fraud Office's increased proactivity in relation to economic crime is precariously balanced on the fulcrum of criminal and regulatory rhetoric. In this paper I note significant developments and suggest that the similarities and differences between regulatory and criminal law approaches to corporate accountability are ripe for re-examination.

The aim in this paper is to challenge the increasingly common view in the literature that the law on end-of-life decision making is in disarray and is in need of urgent reform. The argument is that this assessment of the law is based on assumptions about the relationship between the identity of the defendant and their conduct, and about the nature of causation, which, on examination, prove to be indefensible. A clarification of the relationship between causation and omissions is provided which proves that the current legal position does not need modification, at least on the grounds that are commonly advanced for the converse view. This paves the way for a clarification, in conclusion, of important conceptual and moral differences between withholding, refusing and withdrawing life-sustaining measures, on the one hand, and assisted suicide and euthanasia, on the other.

In this journal Harry McVea recently has asked ‘What's Wrong with Insider Dealing?’ One imagines that many readers will have thought the question rather supererogatory, but Mr McVea more than adequately shows that just this question is very live in many of the leading works on the economics of stock markets. One is here dealing with seminal works such as those of Easterbrook, Fischel, Hirshleifer and Manne which are identified with the discipline of financial economics as such. Mr McVea, in my opinion rightly, concludes that insider dealing is wrong, but does so in a way that I think is wrong headed, particularly in the way that one fears his conclusion will be interpreted by most readers of this journal. Though there is much that is admirable in Mr McVea's paper, his conclusion is uncompelling, and is so for a reason with which I think it important to take issue.

Constitutional reform in the UK is usually pragmatic and piecemeal. Occasionally, however, comprehensive changes are proposed which are primarily driven by principle. The current proposals for constitutional change are a rare example of this type of reform. The abolition of the office of Lord Chancellor, the creation of a new Supreme Court and a Judicial Appointments Commission make up a package of measures intended to ‘redraw the relationship between the judiciary and the other branches of government’ and put it on a ‘modern footing’ by introducing a much clearer separation of powers between them.

The constitutional and political implications of a United Kingdom Supreme Court are far-reaching. This paper suggests that its establishment represents an increase in judicial independence, both in terms of the individual judge and institutionally. In so doing, it draws attention to the continued infringement of judicial independence, most notably through the use of senior judges to chair inquiries, and to the need for judicial independence to be safeguarded by the judges themselves. It argues that, somewhat paradoxically, the independence of the Court may increase the extent to which it is perceived as a political player and used for political purposes. It also argues that the requirement for greater transparency in the appointment of judges and the processes and decisions of the Court needs to be matched by the improved accountability of the Court and the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs. The paper ends by speculating on the longer-term constitutional implications of a Supreme Court, suggesting that it could result in the further diminution of parliamentary sovereignty, a more even distribution of power between the constitutional actors and the development of the United Kingdom into a constitutional democracy.

Cuts in the Charity Commission's budget have caused it to retrench in its regulatory activity and re-prioritise its core functions. As a consequence, the Commission has promoted greater trustee self-reliance and charity-sector provision of regulatory services. This paper analyses these regulatory developments alongside a broader analysis of self-regulation in the charity sector. This paper argues that while self-reliance and self-regulation offer opportunities to the charity sector to create nuanced, sector-sensitive regulation, they could also compromise the credibility and quality of charity regulation. This paper further argues that the charity sector needs to address as a matter of priority the drivers for regulatory reform, the purposes and priority of charity regulation, and the shift in the balance of power that results.

Recently in this journal John Keown attacked the BMA Guidance published on ‘Withholding and Withdrawing Life-prolonging Medical Treatment’, arguing that it was, fundamentally at odds with the sanctity of life doctrine as properly understood, condemning the intentional termination of individuals' lives. In riposte it is asserted that even this modified version of the doctrine cannot support a defensible moral or legal standard for decision-making here, being founded upon an excessive emphasis on the mental state of the clinician and an inappropriately narrow focus on the effects of the proposed treatment on the ‘health’ of the patient, as opposed to being primarily driven by the (best) interests of the patient. The attempt to divorce treatment decisions from broader evaluations of the net benefit or other otherwise able to be attained by the patient from such treatment, including the taking into account of the individual's handicapped state, accordingly fails. Acceptance of such reality is, at the least, the first step toward a common language for further dialogue even between those with polar opposite opinions in this sphere.

This article examines the ability of the claimant to recover damages for mental distress in the English law of torts. This is an area of law which has received little attention and indeed, the general impression is frequently that such damages are not recoverable. This article seeks to establish that this is far from the case and that damages are frequently awarded for mental distress even if they are not always openly recognised. Most lawyers are familiar with the award of damages for ‘suffering’ within the action for personal injury, but damages for distress are awarded generally, particularly as aggravated damages, as recognised by the Law Commission in 1997. It will be argued that much will be gained by appreciating the true nature of these damages and the policy factors which determine when the claimant will be granted such an award. Whilst there is no evidence to support a right to claim such damages in their own right, there is sufficient authority for a separate head of damages us part of the claimant's general compensatory claim. It is therefore submitted that open recognition of this head will be to the benefit of individual claimants and the system as a whole in clarifying this area of damages.

This article seeks to unfold the character, scope and trajectory of justifiable property rights within Hegel’s jurisprudential writings. It does so in order to try to make this reputedly ‘difficult’ and much neglected theorist fit for undergraduate consumption on private law courses.

If we accept the need for an intelligible social theory of private law, why should lawyers consider that of Hegel? Hegel devoted his last book to a ‘Philosophy of Right. This text is, however, barely mentioned by even the more comprehensive of modern textbooks on jurisprudence. There could be little ground for complaint if such neglect of Hegel’s legal writings were based upon a fully reasoned consideration and then subsequent rejection due to certain vital and demonstrable flaws within them.

Three connected processes make up the UK corporate rescue regime: the formal, legal regime, informal approaches and the quasi-formal system, as exemplified by the pre-packaged administration. These three processes not only operate through different procedures but they are also attuned to the pursuit of different objectives and values, they are subject to different controls and they involve different roles for, and relationships between, the parties affected by corporate rescues. A number of negative and identifiable consequences flow from such divergences. An understanding of the tensions between these three systems and an awareness of the challenges posed by transition through different procedures does, however, help to explain many of the deficiencies of current corporate rescue processes and it also provides an enhanced basis for considering current proposals for reforming restructuring and working towards an improved rescue regime.

This paper assesses the current state of English criminal law in relation to the use of physical force by parents as a means of disciplining their children. It does so in the light of the Children Act 2004, the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms 1950, Art 3, pressure from bodies such as the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child and the law in other parts of Europe. It acknowledges that parents should have a large degree of autonomy in relation to parenting. However, the defence of ‘discipline’ or ‘reasonable chastisement’ is outdated, vague and potentially dangerous to children. It is argued that the response of the British Government to criticism of our law has been far from satisfactory. The reform which was incorporated into the Children Act 2004 as a result of pressure upon the government aims to avoid criminalising ‘ordinary families’ for minor smacks. However, the statement of principle is so diluted that parents might understandably be confused and enforcement may be difficult. Moreover, the pressure for reform has continued unabated. The paper concludes that what is needed is an outright ban, combined with an educational campaign, which can lead the way in changing the cultural tradition of physical punishment.