This paper connects two trends in contemporary legal scholarship that do not often intersect, namely commentary on the increasingly diverse nature of family law advice and support services, and calls for a refresh of the regulatory environment in which legal services in general are provided. Focusing on the law and landscape in England and Wales, we argue that regulatory challenges are particularly acute in the field of family law, where the range and reach of services provided by non-lawyers is extraordinary. We illustrate how particular aspects of debates over regulating and diversifying legal services apply to the family law context, noting that such concerns as there are have not always been well targeted. Finally, we identify a sub-set of innovative ‘extra-legal’ services that set private family law even further apart from other sub-fields of law when it comes to regulatory and professional challenge. These services clearly sit inside the landscape of family dispute resolution but equally clearly fall outside the boundaries of what is usually considered ‘legal’. This, we suggest, highlights the need for a concerted effort to define the contours of family law and family legal services so that a holistic approach might be taken to understanding and managing the standards and effectiveness of different service and support types.

This paper re-examines the Orientalist view that Islamic criminal justice operates without any constitutional protections for the individual. It takes the works of Noel Coulson as representative of the canon and subjects them to critical scrutiny. Rather than mimic Orientalist methods of analysis, the author integrates the views of a contemporary, but traditional Islamic scholar, and demonstrates that an accused receives similar, if not more, protection than in a secular, Western tradition.

A trustee who has accepted trust obligations can retire from his trusteeship in four ways: (i) by virtue of the trust instrument which expressly or impliedly authorises him to do so; (ii) under s 36 of the Trustee Act 1925; (iii) under s 39 of the Trustee Act 1925 and (iv) under s 41 of the Trustee Act 1925, ie by permission of the court.

In regard to retirement under s 36 which provides for non-judicial appointment of new trustees, it is widely accepted that a trustee may so retire only by the valid appointment of another trustee in his place; retirement without replacement is only possible under s 39 and that would require consent to the retirement. An examination of the relevant case law reveals that it assumes rather than establishes the widely accepted view; but more importantly the effect of legislative changes culminating in the present s 36 removes the most probable reason for the view so that the formulation for it has, so to speak, disappeared.

A relatively recent collective work published in France examines the extent to which social science knowledge is cumulative. However this work includes no chapter on law. The purpose of this paper is to imagine what a chapter on law might look like had one been invited by the editor. Is legal knowledge cumulative? This present paper is sceptical, although much depends on where one erects the boundaries between law and other social science disciplines. Yet, despite the scepticism, a reflection on cumulativeness and legal knowledge is not without interest. Indeed quite the opposite: for it generates a range of interesting sub-questions such as whether or not there have been paradigm changes in the discipline of law amounting to scientific revolutions.

This article provides a general overview, and analysis of the litigation surrounding General Augusto Pinochet's detention in London in 1998 and the subsequent attempts to extradite him to Spain, for trial on charges relating to human rights abuses committed during the period of his militaty dictatorship in Chile between 1973 and 1990. The complicated sequence of events, from proceedings in the Spanish courts (which started in 1996) up to Pinochet's release from British custody on medical grounds in 2000, is examined und the potential consequences of the two substantive House of Lords decisions are explored from a British-based public international lawyer's perspective. The focus of the analysis is not so much on the detailed technicalities of personal immunity in English law: as on the broad concepts of State jurisdiction over international crimes and immunity for such crimes in international criminal law: notable aspects discussed include the future of universal jurisdiction in customary international law and the position of that law in the UK's municipal courts.

Much academic work continues to operate within the cramping and pervasive spirit of a black-letter mentality that encourages scholars and jurists to maintain legal study as an inward-looking and self-contained discipline. There is still a marked tendency to treat law as somehow a world of its own that is separate from the society within which it operates and purports to serve. This is a disheartening and disabling state of affairs. Accordingly, this article will offer both a critique of the present situation and suggest an alternative way of proceeding. The writer recommends a shift from philosophy to democracy so that legal academics will be less obsessed with abstraction and formalism and more concerned with relevance and practicality. In contrast to the hubristic and occasionally mystical aspirations of mainstream scholars, it presents a more humble depiction of the worth and efficacy of the jurisprudential and scholarly project in which ‘usefulness’ is given pride of place. Of course, these fundamental charges are not applicable to all legal scholars. Many scholars are engaged in work that not only challenges the prevailing paradigm of legal scholarship, but also explores exciting new directions for legal study. It will be part of the essay to acknowledge those contributions.

The ability to identify arrangements affecting property as falling within one or other of the recognised categories of proprietary interest, for example tenancies, licences or easements, and as resulting in certain consequences, is not only desirable, but is in the interest of certainty for all concerned essential. If an occupant of land is a tenant, certain known consequences follow: for example, the occupant has statutory protection which would not be the case were he merely a licensee. Again, if I cross your land merely by your permission, my privilege may be withdrawn at any time, whereas if I have an easement to do so, you cannot stop me. Arrangements which do not behave according to the rules, by appearing to create one type of interest while possessing the attributes of another, either undermine the recognised rules or are exceptional cases which must be acknowledged as such.

The use of proprietary estoppel to make or support claims to property is now common. Case-law tells us that the concept of unconscionability is central to a successful claim, but little guidance is provided as to what ‘unconscionability’ means or how it is to be established. It is often assumed rather than explained. This paper argues that unconscionability in fact has a reasonably clear meaning within the law of proprietary estoppel and that it can be used to define and confine proprietary estoppel within reasonably clear boundaries. It seeks to explain that proprietary estoppel is at heart an antidote to a lack of required formality in the creation or transfer of property rights and, consequently, that the proper meaning of unconscionability is linked to these formality requirements. Unconscionability is therefore not a cover for unregulated judicial discretion, nor a loose term to describe a general sense of unfairness, but a concept which can be used to discriminate objectively between valid and invalid estoppel claims.

Throughout the world, the corporate group structure has long proved troublesome to the creditors, and particularly the tort creditors, of undercapitalised subsidiary companies. In the wake of Australia's James Hardie asbestos compensation inquiry, Senior Counsel assisting the Jackson Special Commission, Mr John Sheahan QC, called for the Commission to ‘recommend reform of the Corporations Act so as to restrict the application of the limited liability principle as regards liability for damages for personal injury or death caused by a company that is part of a corporate group...’. Following this call, in May 2008 the Corporations and Markets Advisory Committee released a report on long-tail liabilities, making various recommendations for reform. Separately, legislation was passed making pooling available for insolvent group companies in Australia. This paper examines the long-tail liability suggestions and the 2007 pooling amendments. It will be argued that neither of these is adequate for the proper protection of tort creditors of insolvent subsidiaries. It then considers international alternatives which might satisfy Mr Sheahan's appeal for reform.

The relationship between trade unions and the courts has always been a sensitive one, and no less so when the issue is how to deal with a union’s refusal to obey court orders. During most of this century enforcement has not been a serious problem because the nature of trade dispute law has meant that the courts have rarely had to establish their authority over trade unions; but during the era of the Industrial Relations Act 1971 and also since 1980 the situation has been rather different. This is because statute has drastically curtailed the ambit of lawful industrial action, and has also rendered unions directly liable, thus making conflict between unions and the courts inevitable.

Where a contract of employment is brought to an end during, rather than at the end of, a working period, the question arises of the employee's right to be paid for the part-period worked. If the termination has come about because of the employer's breach of contract, it is not difficult to see that the employee will at least have a claim for damages for breach, which must take into account what the employee has lost by not being allowed to work up to the end of the period in question.

X (minors) v Bedfordshire County Council is by far the most important decision on the liability in negligence of public authorities since Anns v Merton London Borough Council. These two authorities, along with Dorset Yacht Co v Home Office, furnish the ground rules for such actions. The leading judgment in X v Bedfordshire CC, in which all his brethren concur, is given by Lord Browne- Wilkinson; the only other judgment being given by Lord Jauncey. The common thread running through this trilogy of cases is the emphasis on the significance of the element of discretion in the exercise of the statutory functions of a public authority: ‘Most statutes which impose a statutory duty on local authorities confer on the authority a discretion as to the extent to which, and the methods by which, such statutory duty is to be performed’.

Natural law is discussed by almost every modern writer on jurisprudence; but with a few exceptions - of which John Finnis' Natural Law and Natural Rights is the most substantial - the impression given is that it is of historical interest only, that it has in some way been discredited, or at least superseded, by legal positivism. The implicit idea - and here legal positivism borrows from Comte - is that natural law represented some earlier ‘metaphysical’ stage which was then followed by ‘scientific’ legal positivism. This account requires the existence of a natural law theory that dominated juristic and philosophical thinking until the eighteenth century, when it was overthrown by Hume and Bentham. Hume, the story goes, found the decisive argument against the natural law theory; while Bentham created the new theory oflegal positivism. The argument Hume discovered was that ought cannot be derived from is; and this, it is widely supposed, is fatal to all varieties of natural law.

Any project to draft a criminal code has to compromise between the desirable and the politically possible. It may be that the draft now produced by the Law Commission, or something like it, is the best that can safely be backed, though the contrast between it and the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code (which also had to take account of political realities, and yet has been adopted in many States) is a painful reflection on our stodginess. It is hard to avoid the impression that the Law Commission have been too cautious in their approach, leaning too much in favour of bare restatement of the existing law and against modifications that experience or reflection show to be necessary.