In this paper I will offer some methodological reflections on legal science and its relations with the natural and human sciences. The first part of the paper (sections 2-4) deals with the relation between legal science and the natural sciences. The thesis I put forward is drawn from my book Teorie della scienza giuridica e teorie delle scienee naturali. Modelli e analogie, and restates the main points of my argument there against approaches founded on neopositivism and in favour of a post-positivist approach. The second part (sections 5-7) deals with some aspects of the relations between legal and human sciences, and develops some rather more tentative ideas which go beyond the conclusions reached in the book.

Sexual harassment is persistent, prevalent and under-reported in Australian workplaces despite its legal regulation over many decades. The most recent survey data in Australia indicate that the majority of individuals who are subject to sexual harassment at work do not make a formal report or lodge a complaint. The opportunity for voice that organisational processes provide to those who experience sexual harassment at work is a particular focus, given the under-reporting problem. The paper also considers the impact of organisational processes on those who observe the inappropriate behaviour and/or the organisational response. Ultimately, this paper argues that organisations should reduce their reliance on individual complaints by expanding the pathways by which concerns can be raised or observed behaviours addressed that offer alternative voice mechanisms, with an emphasis on problem-solving and early intervention where this is appropriate. The paper also considers different communications strategies, such as approaches to training, the sharing of information about workplace incidents, and leadership on the issue within organisations.

Loot boxes have recently become a game mechanism of concern to policy-makers and regulators. The similarity between loot boxes and gambling is clear, and loot boxes and their regulation are commonly viewed through the lens of gambling. By contrast, very little attention has been given to tackling them as unfair, and in particular aggressive, commercial practices under consumer law. This article argues that by classifying the provision of loot boxes as a potentially aggressive commercial practice we will see that consumer law may protect gamers from some of the significant harms with which such products are associated.

Comparative legal studies have been haunted by many unresolved scholarly problems of a methodological and theoretical nature which too often continue to be ignored within the literature. The deficiencies in theory and method of comparative legal studies have rightly been often blamed for marginalisation of this subject in legal education and practice. The aim of the present article is to contribute to this general debate by identifying and then analysing certain deficiencies of approach to the task of comparing western and socialist legal systems and cultures. Our main preoccupation is to address critically the methodology of comparative law not only for its own sake but also in response to the challenge raised by Bell's recent claim that legal theory has much to learn from reflecting upon the issues raised by the comparative enterprise.

It has become commonplace to argue that foreign direct investment (FDI) flows are to some extent determined by the effectiveness of host state legal systems – the institutions and officials involved in the creation and implementation of law, including courts and judges, bureaucrats, and politicians, in their capacity as makers and implementers of law. The primary concern of the paper is how this dominant theory can be tested – that is, what methods can we use to test the extent to which the effectiveness of legal systems affects success in attracting FDI? The analysis focuses in particular on South Asia, the US and the UK, The paper considers what data on FDI and legal systems are necessary and available for conducting a statistical regression test of the theory. It establishes that the data available until recently were inadequate. The paper then considers the extent to which recent empirical studies, conducted under the auspices of the World Bank, produce useful facts for the purpose of testing the relationship between FDI and legal systems. These new data sets are recommended by the World Bank Group's Foreign Investment Advisory Service (FIAS), and thus provide a useful insight into the type of information assumed by theorists to be available, and useful, to investors. The paper therefore also considers how the theory that legal systems are determinants of FDI can be implemented by investors – that is, what information exists upon which they can base their location decisions? It is concluded that many points, fundamental and finer, about the relationship between legal systems and FDI remain to be explored. We have a neat, intellectually appealing theory. Sadly, we still do not have the facts to test it, nor for investors to implement it.

If there is one fact about which critics (deregulators) and proponents (regulators) of anti-insider dealing laws are certain to agree, it is that rules designed to prohibit trading on inside information are popular. Virtually every country with a developed securities market has implemented legislation regulating insider dealing and in the vast majority of cases criminal sanctions have been imposed. Britain is no exception, and has recently reaffirmed its policy commitment in the Criminal Justice Act 1993, Part V (CJA). Regulators claim that legislation is justified on the basis of a range of different arguments, the most consistently cited of which is that insider dealing jeopardises the development of fair and orderly markets and by so doing undermines investor confidence. Other justifications include allegations that insider dealing is immoral, and contrary to ‘good business ethic’; that it hurts corporations (and their shareholders), investors, and market-makers;

For any field of law, the goal it was designed to achieve permeates every aspect of its application and interpretation. This is particularly true when the black letter of the law is cryptic and silent on most aspects of how it should be interpreted and applied, as is the case with competition law, which for the most part revolves around a small number of highly abstract provisions. It is only natural then that ample scholarly work has been devoted to identifying the goals and purposes of competition law. By and large these attempts have been textual, historical, and teleological. We introduce here instead a quantitative analysis of the case law and present the results of the first empirical study into the goals and purposes of EU competition law as they emerge from the entirety of the case law of the European Court of Justice, opinions of the Advocate Generals, Commission decisions, and speeches of Commissioners for Competition. This body of almost 4,000 sources paints a comprehensive picture of the underlying goals of EU competition law, and helps conclusively confirm some previous insights while debunking others, thereby helping to advance the present application and future evolution of competition law.

Duty of care is in dire straits. Until recently, Lord Atkin's ‘neighbour principle’ was ‘the very foundation of the law of negligence’. It was a simple, all-purpose test for the existence of a duty of care. However, times have changed. There has been a loss of confidence in the neighbour principle. Its suitability as a general test for duty of care has been questioned, in a way that would have been unthinkable only a decade ago. In 1970, it was still possible to say that the principle ‘ought to apply unless there is some justification or valid explanation for its exclusion’. By 1984, apostasy had set in, and it was said that the principle ‘has long been recognised as not intended to afford a comprehensive definition’ In 1978, Lord Wilberforce attempted to make the principle more workable by marrying it to policy considerations in a two-state test for duty. Even this modified version of the principle has now fallen out of favour. In 1987, it was said of Lord Wilberforce's two-stage test that it ‘is not to be regarded as in all circumstances a suitable guide to the existence of a duty of care.’

For many women, the abuse of power in the form of physical and emotional battering by their so-called ‘partners’ is a fact of life. Individual women feel the pain, the humiliation, the fear and the anger. But the debate about how legally we should respond to a woman who finally kills her abuser is significant beyond the individual. Whatever the predicament of women such as Sara Thornton, or Kiranjit Ahluwalia, sentenced to life imprisonment and forced to scale seemingly impossible obstacles in the appeal process, the exponential rise in literature on this subject is quite disproportionate to the number and increase (if any) in such cases. The real significance of the ‘self-defence for battered women’ movement lies less in these concrete examples and more in its metaphorical role as witness to the social reality of the abuse of women.

The paper explores two fiscal devices which, while falling short of the ideal which economists have advocated, may induce behavioural change and thus operate effectively as regulatory instruments: the ‘nudging’ tax, which is calculated according to what level of payment is likely to reduce undesired activity; and the ‘rectificatory’ tax, which relates the sum payable to part of the harm caused by the activity. The former has been widely used, and with some success, but there is tension between its regulatory and revenue-raising functions. The latter seems better designed to meet goals of corrective justice than to modify conduct in an economically appropriated way.

At the outset, an exploration of the terms exercise, legal system, and internal logic used in the title of this paper may be useful. The assumption that a legal system has an intrrnal logic, also needs accounting for.

I call this an exercise because it is but a preliminary search for an all-embracing explanation for various specific and isolated observations related to legal systems; an attempt to prove that legal systems unfold in a way predetermined by their internal logic and that every step in this unfolding is a sine qua non of the one before and after. This is also called an exercise, because it is an attempt at analysing only three of the legal families or cultures.

In this paper, to paraphrase Scheper-Hughes, we explore the contested legalities and illegalities of medical tourism. Increasingly, individuals are travelling outside of their home jurisdiction to access health services. This may be for a range of reasons: for speed, for cheapness or in some cases to bypass criminal restrictions at state level. This paper explores those who fall into the latter category and who travel to avoid statutory or regulatory prohibitions in relation to certain clinical procedures in England and Wales. In this paper, we consider the appropriate legal response to illicit transplant tourism. We examine the legitimacy of using extra-territorial jurisdiction to enforce the ban on the commercial trade in organs found in the Human Tissue Act 2004. We suggest that this, along with the recent Draft Council of Europe Convention against Trafficking in Human Organs, provide an effective response to the transnational crime of illicit organ tourism.

Regulation as a legal form of social engineering has been subjected to much analysis in the last decade or so. The importance of the topic to contemporary law cannot be overstated: on the one hand, it has been the avowed aim of government to ‘deregulate’ industry; on the other hand, and paradoxically, both the concomitant policy of privatisation and the evolution towards a Single European Market have increased the need for regulation in appropriate areas. The efforts to explore the strengths and weaknesses of different regulatory forms have brought together scholars from a wide range of disciplines. Administrative lawyers have been concerned with how the power of decision-making is allocated between institutions and the general problems of accountability and control of discretion to which this gives rise. Socio-legal researchers have critically examined the practices of regulatory agencies as regards rule formulation and enforcement.

Legal paternalism occurs when the law forces individuals to avoid certain risks (‘hard paternalism’), or, without coercion, nudges them away from such risks (‘soft paternalism’), on the ground that otherwise they will make unwise decisions. The questions when and how such approaches should be taken are of fundamental importance in a society in which there are increasing risks to health and livelihood resulting from technological developments and greater freedom of choice. However, they are not openly addressed in policy-making circles and have also been neglected in the European legal literature. In this paper, I attempt to explain these paradoxes and to outline a theoretical benefit–cost framework for determining when and how legal paternalism might be considered appropriate.

How does the European Union (EU) affect health law in its member states? Having defined ‘health law’, this article takes a multilevel governance perspective of the EU und its legal order, aid considers, through selected examples, the various modes of governance used by the EU applicable in the health law field. The article presents a spectrum of five different types of effect that the EU has on health law: strong effect from health-specific measures; strong effect from general measures; marginal effect; slow convergence effect; little prospect for effect.

‘The existence of law is one thing; its merit or demerit another. Of all the sayings of John Austin, none seems to make a simpler appeal to the plain fact of the matter than that one. We can argue for days about the merits or demerits of the Income Tax Acts or the latest effusion of trade union legislation. That such enactments are however laws is not a subject for lengthy nor inconclusive debates.

As to income tax, some may agree with Robert Nozick. They may think that state-imposed taxes on income are equivalent to slavery. The individual who is forced to pay two fifths of his earned income in tax is working as a slave two days in every week, for the fruits of his labours on those days are compulsorily exacted from him and paid over to other people in cash or in kind.

The origins of the cooperative movement can be traced to the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers in 1844, from which similar institutions emerged in Central Europe, the North American continent and the rest of the world. Modern credit unions evolved from these small cooperative societies and have developed into mainstream providers of financial services in many jurisdictions. However, credit unions in the UK have not made a similar impact. There are several factors that have limited their growth – an inadequate legislative framework, an ineffective credit union regulatory system, inappropriate development models, an over-reliance on state subsidies and a disunited movement. The aim of this paper is to re-examine these factors in light of the level of political support provided by the government since 1997.

The second survey of legal education was published in July 1975 and was based largely on information gathered during the academic session 1973/74. At that time, the decision was taken to present the material in tabular form in order that the report could provide a framework for the future publication, at suitable intervals, of supplements containing appropriate up-dated tables. In pursuance of this objective, supplements were published in 1978 and 1981 with statistics drawn largely from sessions 1976/77 and 1980/81 respectively.

Developments since 1981 now justify the undertaking of a more thorough review with the object of producing a third survey report.

Protocol 16 ECHR will provide for an extension of the advisory jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), enabling highest national courts to request advisory opinions on questions of principle concerning the interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) or its protocols. This extension of the ECtHR's advisory jurisdiction aims to achieve two goals: a reduction in the ECtHR's excessive docket, and the enhancement of dialogue between the ECtHR and (highest) national courts. While the aims of this reform initiative are laudable, we argue that Protocol 16 is likely to fail to achieve its objectives. Our analysis suggests that rather than facilitating the Court's adjudicatory function, extended advisory jurisdiction has the potential to impact on the Court's constitutionalist function in a manner that can be better achieved through the Court's contentious cases. The burden that this procedure will place on the Court's already overstretched resources would risk delays to contentious cases and potentially undermine judicial comity should requests for advisory opinions be declined. Furthermore, evidence of ‘constructive’ dialogue between highest national courts and the ECtHR is emerging in contentious cases without the need for a reformed advisory opinions mechanism. Rather than achieving its objectives, Protocol 16 risks exacerbating the Court's backlog and nullifying the positive effects of advisory opinions on dialogue.

The ‘accountability revolution’ has lead to an expansion in the concept of accountability and the application of accountability practices to an ever-wider range of public authorities. In a mature democracy, those who exercise significant public power ought to hold themselves open to account, and judicial power should not be excluded from this imperative. In the UK, there are three schools of thought about accountability of judges. ‘Opponents’ argue that the notion of an ‘accountable judge’ is an oxymoron. ‘Re-conceptualists’ point out that courts already engage in a number of practices that make them accountable. The ‘radical’ claim is that new forms of accountability are needed. To understand the debate better, we need to map out types and levels of accountability. First, a distinction may be drawn between the personal accountability of individual judges and the accountability of courts as institutions. Secondly, we may differentiate formal mechanisms for securing accountability and informal, ‘non-state’ practices, including scrutiny of judgments and judges by the news media and academics. Thirdly, different levels of accountability may be identified, relating to the ‘probity’, ‘performance’, ‘process’ and ‘content’ of the judicial function. The final part of the paper considers the design of accountability mechanisms for a new UK Supreme Court.