This paper explores the everyday lives of low-paid, low-skilled EU migrant workers living in and around Great Yarmouth in the East of England both pre- and post-Brexit. It considers the legal problems they face, especially around employment law, and how those problems may be resolved. It draws on the results of quantitative and qualitative research to examine the reach of law into the everyday lives of vulnerable EU migrants. We term our research ‘pragmatic law’ (PL) because our experience is that most legal issues, at least with the groups we are working with, do not enter any formal legal resolution pathway at a community level. They are addressed in the everyday, often by first-tier generalist (and sometimes volunteer) advisers with no formal legal training, who make no express reference to ‘the law’. This access to advice and problem resolution at a street level can be a lifeline to those living at the margins of the workforce.

This article explores civil society organisations’ (CSOs) participation in judicial review proceedings. This became contentious when the Ministry of Justice announced that it intended to reform the judicial review process, and suggested changes to the law on standing and third-party interventions. Ultimately, the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 did not amend the law in these areas, but has arguably made it more difficult for CSOs to engage in public interest litigation. Attempts to restrict the access of CSOs to judicial review need to be seen in the context of the shifting relationship between CSOs and the state, and differing perspectives on their function. If CSOs are to continue to take part in judicial review cases they need to justify their presence in terms of their expertise and on the ground knowledge. It is argued that deliberative, dignitarian and more general theories about the nature of civil society may well establish a basis for CSOs’ continued presence in judicial review litigation.

This paper evaluates the wide discretion afforded to planning decision-makers in England. It does so in respect of a key but often overlooked question in the transition to renewables: whether developers/owners of onshore wind projects should be required to provide a ‘bond’ to ensure decommissioning and site restoration (DSR) occurs. Bonds are financial instruments that evidence ability to fund DSR. They help avoid legacy issues (eg project abandonment) but carry a long-term cost burden for developers/owners. A study of 275 projects elicits three issues. First, a lack of government guidance on bonding, vague ‘threshold’ terms in law and policy and failure of planning decision-makers to consider how others had decided the question result in a lack of markers to inform discretion, with bonds being rare (present in only 15.6% of projects) and their stringency inconsistent. Secondly, this lack of markers legitimises risky, cost-saving practices prohibited in offshore wind, where government guidance informs bonding decisions. Thirdly, reasons for decisions are weak or absent, inhibiting achievement of the justifications for their provision in an administrative context (eg disciplining decision-making). Whilst discretion enhanced capacity to generate electricity from wind through enabling a reduction of market entry costs, assisting movement towards renewable energy targets, it resulted in abandonment risk being ignored. This mirrors strategies adopted elsewhere in England's energy sector, such as coal and oil and gas, where a ‘light touch’ approach to bonding has, traditionally, been deployed to avoid hindering project development.

Successful law reform campaigns leave behind a rich history; a story of engagement between activists seeking legal change, opponents who attempt to maintain the status quo, legislators, and the judiciary. The repeal of the provisions of the Tasmanian Criminal Code which prohibited certain private, consensual sexual relations between adults, and which were aimed primarily at male samesex sexual acts, by the state legislature in May 1997, signaled the end of a particularly arduous campaign which lasted several years. What makes this struggle worthy of academic treatment, first, is the simple fact that the gay activist campaign was waged over a plurality of legal and political sites at the state, national, and international levels.

This paper seeks to explore copyright from the perspective of John Rawls's egalitarian conception of justice. It first evaluates the classical theories for copyright. Next, it examines Rawls's principles of justice with particular emphasis on the difference principle. Then, it applies Rawls to the design of copyright law and debates on two doctrines of copyright law – namely the idea/expression dichotomy and the relevance of the merit of a work for copyright. The significance of the debate is to show that Rawls's perspective on justice offers a better justification for copyright and its principles and would potentially induce better justice.

Defamation law offers a unique view of society and the changes it undergoes. When a claim of reputational injury is made, the case exposes the prejudices alive in the particular society at hand; and when the law deems a claim actionable, it recognises and, at some level, lends credence to the prejudices held. The case of Youssoupoff v Metro-Goldwyn Mayer is a case in point. The claim by Princess Youssoupoff in 1934 that an imputation of rape or seduction is libelous reveals underlying currents in English society at the time as to class, nation and gender. The judicial recognition of the claim, and the legal and extra- legal reactions to the claim at the time and since, further raise for examination the relationship between law and morality: to be recognised as defamatory, must an allegation impute immorality to the plaintiff? Should the law of defamation recognise societal prejudices that are real, even if deemed by lawmakers and the judiciary invalid? Is it the function of the law to mirror the society in which it is produced or to carry it forward?

The assertion of contractual rights may be defeated by the illegality defence, not because their creation is offensive to public policy but by reason of an illegality that ‘taints’ these rights. To date, no analytical framework has been developed for understanding how these tainting rules are connected to one another. The Tainting Illegality Framework (TIF) presented in this paper seeks to fill this gap in current legal scholarship by exploring, first, the linkages between the rules by which contract rights are tainted and, secondly, the theoretical underpinnings that explain the existing tensions and that will continue to shape the law in this area. The suggested analytical approach enriches and increases the sophistication of the current approaches by considering how their application is shaped by considerations of proximity and the nature of the contaminating illegality. The framework recognises the value of the existing rules, and seeks to enrich the analytical approach by suggesting how their application can more transparently reflect the policy rationale for applying the illegality defence.

This essay offers a survey and analysis of the principal methodologies adopted and the aims pursued by ‘modern’ historians of the common law in England, Canada, and America, from Blackstone's time to the opening of the twenty-first century. From the beginning of this period through to the 1950s, the analysis reveals a steady current of contention amongst legal historians in respect of what legal history could do and just how these aims might be realised. The post-1950s era is characterised by the accelerating influence of the methodologies and objectives of extra-legal disciplines. These include, most especially, the work and techniques of social and political historians, and, eventually, the various manifestations of the postmodernist challenge to the segregation of ‘objective’ historical interpretation from the polemical and creative reconstruction of the past. It is argued that the infusion of this methodological new blood has been largely beneficial, enhancing the reach and subtlety of legal historiography, and boosting its overall capacity to act as an intellectually enriching discipline.

To this very day, public law scholars seem to be concerned about the identity of their area of scientific interest. Many of them in many European legal cultures routinely labour, some even agonise over distinguishing public law from what appears to be a securely established field of private law. More than 20 years ago, 20 to 30 variations of the public/private-theme, usually elevated to the rank of ‘theories’, could be counted in German scholarship alone, none of them satisfying the desire to clarify, once and for all, the nature, purpose, and scope of public law.

In this vein, law students are required to discuss at least the major demarcation theories so as, for instance, to establish jurisdiction of administrative courts, liability of the state, or the scope of constitutional rights.

Whereas it was before dispersed and hidden, Goff and Jones have brought Restitution together and made it prominent. Lacking the generations of textbooks which have organised other subjects, its case law will for many years attract debate as to how best it should be arranged and how it relates to other categories. Many writers think that the key is to be found in the ideas and language of unjust enrichment. But the lock does not immediately turn. Hedley's paper says that it will not. Indeed he thinks that any hope of an elegant theory, or, which may be the same thing, an integrated and economical classification, is vain, since Restitution is more various, empirical, and endemically muddled than the unjust enrichment camp dares to admit. His paper valuably compels a re-examination of fundamental questions.

The Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 may lead to considerable forced change in a contract. In some cases a contract term can be rendered automatically ineffective and in others a term can become ineffective unless it satisfies the requirement of reasonableness. Obviously the boundaries of such powerful provisions are of great significance and, for the most part, the sections which produce those effects are stated to apply to terms which ‘exclude or restrict liability.

We seem to be stuck fast over recklessness. The model direction in Caldwell is almost universally deplored, particularly in respect of its operation in cases like Elliott v C and R (Stephen Malcolm) but the lords show no sign of repenting, even though in both of the cases last cited expressions of disapproval ascended to them from a Divisional Court. Lord Roskill, an out-and-outer on the point, asserted that the model direction applies ‘throughout the criminal law unless Parliament has otherwise ordained in a particular case’, which if accepted would reverse the present decisions that the direction does not apply to offences of malice, as most offences against the person still are.

We urgently need action, which could be achieved by legislation or, much more quickly, by the lords themselves if they were so inclined.

The need for the statutory regulation of business tenancies was officially recognised towards the end of the nineteenth century. The mischief complained of was that some landlords held their tenants to ransom by demanding an inflated rent as a condition of a lease renewal. This was particularly harsh for the tenant who had built up business goodwill and carried out improvements to the premises. Despite the organisation of commercial tenants and the growth of political lobbying, it was not until Landlord and Tenant Act 1927 that controls emerged which provided compensation for loss of goodwill and improvements. The inadequacy of these provisions, however, entailed that tenant discontent and lobbying persisted until the enactment of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954. This paper charts the social and political change which brought about this significant retreat from market forces and the gradual recognition that security of tenure, as opposed to financial safeguards, was the necessary response. The controls established in 1954 have, remarkably, survived almost intact and, subject to some fine tuning, will continue to do so. This paper addresses the issue why the commercial code has, in marked distinction to its residential and agricultural counterparts, remained immune to shifts in political policy during a sustained period of deregulation in landlord and tenant law.

In recent years various developments in the system of trial by jury in England and Wales have given rise to comment and concern. One such development was the abolition by s. 13 of the Criminal Justice Act 1967 of the rule, said to have existed for over 600 years, that a jury must be unanimous in order to reach a verdict. These provisions are now contained in s. 17 of the Juries Act 1974 which allows for majority verdicts where there are no more than two dissentient voices to be returned under certain circumstances. The change in the unanimity rule has been criticised as striking at the root of the principle of proof of guilt beyond reasonable doubt and has been interpreted by some as being the first step on the slippery slope to jury verdicts by simple majority, a development which would do even more to undermine the principle of proof beyond reasonable doubt and might also lead to the complete abolition of trial by jury.