This paper is concerned with the legal and regulatory control of electoral campaigning online, in particular ‘microtargeting’. There has been a longstanding consensus in the UK on how to control political advertising, yet the shift of expenditure to the online environment, together with innovations in digital campaigning tools, are exposing tensions and gaps in the current regime. One central harm associated with microtargeting is its potential to undermine meaningful democratic deliberation. The paper interrogates the issues through the lens of electoral law and regulation, and questions the extent to which a recalibration is necessary to deal with the challenges of digital campaigning.

This paper examines the nature of welfare and best interests as used in medical and family law. It argues that these are commonly presented in individualistic terms, requiring the court to promote the interests of a child or incompetent adult without reference to the interests of others. However, this paper argues that, properly understood, best interests and welfare should be taken as concepts which recognise the importance of relational interests, the performance of obligations, and the virtue of altruism.

In Spring 2004 the French Parliament agreed to the passing of a Bill named ‘Application of the Principle of Secularity’. The new law was brought into effect on 2 September 2004, banning all ‘ostentatious’ religious symbols in state schools and the enactment denies Muslim schoolgirls the right to wear the ‘hijab’ (or the traditional Muslim headscarf) in French public schools. The new enactment has stirred controversy within the Islamic world where many have considered the law to be an example of ‘Islamophobia’ and the West's intolerance towards the religion of Islam. This article aims to understand the historical background and the rationale of the ban on religious symbols in French state schools and seeks to examine some of the main criticisms of the new law.

There has been considerable debate about how it would be possible to move from cosmopolitan normative theory to cosmopolitan legal practice. These debates range from an uncertainty about what specific moral and normative principles should underwrite cosmopolitan law, to how those requirements should be institutionalised at the global level. In addition, many cosmopolitan theorists rest their more elaborate institutional models on the assumption of an already existing and thoroughgoing practice of cosmopolitan law, without detailed considerations regarding applied theory. The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of cosmopolitan law and to argue how legal cosmopolitanism provides a necessary linchpin and transitional conduit between cosmopolitan theory and more institutionally based forms of cosmopolitanism. The paper examines the historical development of legal cosmopolitanism, the uniqueness of contemporary cosmopolitan legal theory within international legal debates, and maps the various approaches for moving cosmopolitan legal theory to legal practice. Through mapping the discipline, it is argued that Kantian legal cosmopolitanism represents the most coherent attempt to move from cosmopolitan legal theory to global institutional practice. This is due to the fact that it represents a minimal and moderate form of legal cosmopolitanism that accepts that any move to a cosmopolitan order would need to evolve from our current legal order. In this regard, it is argued that Kantian legal cosmopolitanism can occupy a transitional position, that not only satisfies the cosmopolitan concern for human worth, but that is also not guilty of being grossly utopian in its quest toward global justice.

In the UK and across the globe, women struggle to get a place on the boards of large public companies and still take home less pay than their male counterparts. At a time of financial crisis and corporate governance failures, this lack of equality is considered especially problematic because the talents of half the workforce are not being utilised fully. This paper explores the possibility of introducing legislative gender quotas for company boardrooms in the UK. Such laws have been passed in Norway and Spain with dramatic results. Other countries, such as France and the Netherlands, look set to follow the examples of Norway and Spain. Has that time arrived in the UK?

This paper examines the new legal framework on consumer Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) in the EU. Its primary contribution lies in identifying that harmonising the complaint submission in a pan-European Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) platform, and directing parties to nationally approved ADR entities that comply with minimum standards, will not fulfil the potential of an extra-judicial consumer redress system. This paper proposes key functions that the ODR platform should incorporate if it is to provide effective redress. This paper also argues that a successful ODR platform should include built-in incentives that encourage parties to: (i) participate in approved ADR processes; (ii) settle complaints with little or no intervention from neutral third parties; and (iii) ensure voluntary compliance with final outcomes.

Cross-examination is lauded within the common law tradition as the definitive forensic device for exposing testimonial infirmity. Victimological study of criminal trial proceedings has, however, revealed the extent to which cross-examination is used as a tool to humiliate, intimidate and confuse opposing witnesses. Particular difficulties confront children and those with learning disabilities as little reference is made during cross-examination to their special communicative needs. This paper reviews the tactics and techniques employed by cross-examiners to systematically destroy the credibility of those with limited language capability. The main aim of the paper is, however, to demonstrate the significant limitations of what may be termed an accommodation approach to the problems facing vulnerable witnesses, whereby ‘solutions’ are sought and crafted within the established trial framework. Such an approach ignores the very nature of adversary advacacy and the potent structural barriers to effective regulation of courtroom questioning within an adversarial system of trial.

‘Hate’ crime has attracted intense debate, but surprisingly little has been written on how best to draft and interpret hate crime legislation. The dominant conceptual models derive from US scholarship. Although valuable, they pay insufficient attention to principles of criminal law and to how hate crime law is perceived. This paper explores these problems through a discussion of legal approaches to, and lay perceptions of, racism, as embodied in the racially aggravated offence. It proposes a model which offers a more just alternative.

This article argues that professional codes of conduct cannot perform the important task of ensuring that lawyers uphold high ethical standards. Instead, moral behaviour by lawyers requires the development of fixed behavioural attributes relevant to legal practice - what may be called a lawyer's professional moral character. At the same time, however, along with other factors, professional codes are important in that they can either contribute to or detract from the successful development of professional moral character. If so, it is argued that in order to have the best chance of assisting the character development of lawyers, codes should neither take the form of highly detailed or extremely vague, aspirational norms, but should instead guide ethical decision-making by requiring them to consider a wide range of contextual factors when resolving ethical dilemmas.

This paper explores cases involving disputes between lesbian parents and known donors with whom informal insemination arrangements were made. It observes that the current legal framework for recognising parents following assisted reproduction is incapable of dealing adequately with known donors, notwithstanding a host of recent developments in the law relating to lesbian parenting. As a result, the case-law exhibits judicial uncertainty and inconsistency about the extent of the recognition to which known donors should be entitled. In spite of the difficulties posed by using known donors, the paper argues that there is a strong case for finding an appropriate way of accommodating them within the legal framework for recognising parents. It explores some of the possible legal responses and highlights their potential advantages and disadvantages from theoretical and practical perspectives.

This paper examines the law on the proprietary rights of people in respect of their bodies, body parts and tissue. Proprietary rights include rights of ownership and control, The paper argues that the context in which judicial decisions are made and policy recommendations are developed sometimes results in a patchwork of legal principles. Being aware of the context in which different aspects of the law have been developed enables us to understand why principles have been developed, what is needed to reconcile them and how we can establish a coherent regulatory regime. The paper then proposes such a scheme to deal with property and control rights in this area. It argues that people (or the personal representatives of people who have died) should have a personal autonomy right to be consulted about the use of their corpse or their excised body parts or tissue in teaching, research and commercialisation of biological inventions, and to refuse or to impose conditions. They should not, however, have a right of ultimate ownership in their corpse, body parts or tissue, except for the limited right of personal representatives to gain possession of bodies and body parts of people who have died for burial or cremation if they so wish. That right should not extend to tissue preserved on slides, in paraffin wax or similar format. That tissue should be subject to proprietary interests in favour only of the hospital, research institute, its staff or the people to whom they transfer it. The same rule should apply to bodies or body parts held by a hospital or research institute with the consent of the person concerned, though the bodies or body parts may ultimately have to be returned for burial or cremation. Tissue removed under a statutory requirement without consent, such as for coronial investigation or forensic tests, should be used only for the purposes prescribed by the relevant legislation.

Justification of a voluntary vaccination policy in England and Wales rests on tenuous foundations. Two arguments against voluntary vaccination are gaining ground. The first is that globalisation necessitates preparedness strategies for pandemics. Assuming sufficient supply, compulsory vaccination of adults and children constitutes a potential policy option in the context of a severe, vaccine-preventable pandemic outbreak. The second argument is that children have a right to preventive medicine and thus to vaccination. The influence of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and its emphasis on parents as the trustees of their children's best interests, and the increasingly global nature of our collective and individual responsibilities with respect to the transmission of vaccine-preventable disease present challenges to the right to refuse vaccination on our own behalf and on behalf of our children. Exploring methods of compulsion and persuasion utilised across Europe, the USA and Australia, this paper argues that necessity and proportionality must be reassessed, and national public health law and policy setting out a graduated and proportionate approach to compulsory vaccination developed as a matter of priority.

It is frequently assumed that legal transplants can help law makers in choosing the best ideas from elsewhere in the world. However, this paper suggests that there can also be cases of ‘malicious legal transplants’. It explains why such transplants emerge and how they may be prevented. This discussion fills a gap in the normative debate about legal transplants: while it is valuable to identify good models, it is equally important to understand how the impact of malicious ideas can be prevented.

The Old Hall is full tonight. Those outside who turn and see the line of festal light will not know that the windows are illumined by the brilliance of the company within. This audience is indeed most intimidatingly distinguished. These facts do proper honour to the memory of Francis Mann. He would have welcomed too the happy coincidence, given that Lady Fox is in the chair, that we also have the opportunity to celebrate the appointment of one of this century's greatest judges to the Order of Merit. Three such appointments were announced today. I hope we are allowed to think that Lord Denning has succeeded to the place of Sir Isaiah Berlin, one champion of liberty and human dignity following another.

The use of pharmacotherapy (more emotively known as chemical castration) is the use of drugs to treat and help manage the risk that sex offenders, and in particular paedophiles, pose to society. Due to the increased climate of public fear of this risk, the government recently published a Review of the Protection of Children from Sex Offenders (the Review). This Review, published in June 2007, sought to explore how the protection of children could be improved and how greater reassurance to the public on the management of sex offenders could be provided. The Review makes several proposals with regard to managing high-risk sex offenders. Amongst the list of 20 actions, the trialling of polygraph tests, satellite tracking technology and the use of anti-libidinal suppressants is included. This paper examines the latter, pharmacotherapy, and assesses how concepts such as dignity and consent underpin the human rights' implications of its use. The paper will also assess the recent changes to mental health legislation and evaluate whether such treatment for incompetent or competent offenders is a viable option given the UK's obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Use of the term ‘informed consent’ is commonplace in both bioethics and medical law. In the legal context the term may be referred to as ‘the doctrine of informed consent’ but the way that this latter term is used raises doubt as to its value as a legal concept. In this paper I explore the concept of the ‘doctrine of informed consent’ and suggest that it may be useful, but only if limited to the autonomy-driven duty to disclose rather than as a more general referent. Having established the nature of the concept I then consider whether the doctrine - which is applied in a minority of US states, Canada and Australia - has crossed the Atlantic and become part of the law in England and Wales. In particular, I analyse Lord Woolf MR's judgment in Pearce v United Bristol Healthcare NHS Trust and suggest that the law has moved towards the doctrine but that it still falls short of the disclosure required by the reasonable patient standard.

This paper examines the diverse responses of the German states to the Code Napoleon at the beginning of the nineteenth century. These states differed both in the extent to which they adopted the Code, and the extent to which they retained the Code after Napoleon's influence waned. In order to identify the causes of adoption and retention of the Code, we use fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). This method is now well established in comparative research in the social sciences but has been little used in comparative legal analysis. We find the following to be among the conditions relevant to the reception of the Code: territorial diversity, control by Napoleon, central state institutions, a feudal economy and society, liberal (enlightented absolutist) rule, nativism among the governing elites and popular anti-French sentiment. The paper also serves to demonstrate the potential of fsQCA as a method for comparative lawyers.

The ‘elusive’ concept of ‘impairment’ was introduced into the General Medical Council's Fitness to Practise Procedures in 2002. Its function was ostensibly to bring all forms of fitness to practise allegations against doctors under a unifying concept and thereby reduce procedural complexity. This paper strives to illuminate the application of ‘impairment’ of fitness to practise with reference to a year of fitness to practise decision making by the General Medical Council (GMC). It concludes that impairment has brought with it a redemptive style of resolving matters of professional discipline which brings significant benefits to doctors, the patient population and society as a whole, but which can also encourage a contrived exchange of remorse, insight and remediation with further implications for professional integrity and truth.

This paper addresses, from a socio-legal perspective, the question of the significance of law for the treatment, care and the end-of-life decision making for patients with chronic disorders of consciousness. We use the phrase ‘chronic disorders of consciousness’ as an umbrella term to refer to severely brain-injured patients in prolonged comas, vegetative or minimally conscious states. Based on an analysis of interviews with family members of patients with chronic disorders of consciousness, we explore the images of law that were drawn upon and invoked by these family members when negotiating the situation of their relatives, including, in some cases, the ending of their lives. By examining ‘legal consciousness’ in this way (an admittedly confusing term in the context of this study,) we offer a distinctly sociological contribution to the question of how law matters in this particular domain of social life.

Assertions that Britain is (or is in danger of becoming) a‘ blame and sue’ society are nowadays so frequently repeated in the media and elsewhere that they have all but become received wisdom. Whether they express a dangerous reality or a passing moral panic deserves serious consideration because of their potential to influence legislative and judicial agendas. This article examines what is meant by the phrase ‘compensation culture’, evaluates the recent evidence concerning it, and attempts to assess whether the concerns expressed are justified.