All aspects of law possess scaler elements, but critiques from the ‘politics of scale’, a concept well established in political geography, remain rare in legal analysis. Brexit, especially as regards Northern Ireland, provides a key opportunity to consider scaler analysis both in a descriptive and theoretical sense. Scale deepens our understanding of how law co-constitutes multiple scales but also highlights where a flat understanding of law tied to vertical jurisdictional frames foils attempts to garner a full understanding of its operation. Northern Ireland, a legal and political space that from one perspective lends itself to an apparently clear-cut vertical description of legal scales, actually presents a rich space where networked, rhetorical and nodular scales and structures continuously (re)contest scaled solutions. The Brexit outcome of what used to be known as the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland and is now known as the Windsor Framework – and specifically how the Framework is intended to operate in practice – provides an opportunity to not only understand Northern Ireland within a scale and law frame, but also to highlight the shortcomings of law's traditional scaler approach and what lessons may be learned when analysing or engaging with the intersection of law and politics in similar future situations.

The aim of this paper is to inform a sociological jurisprudence of the implied duty in the contract of employment of mutual trust and confidence. Present analyses of the emerging term have been doctrinal in nature. Such scholarship contributes a normative internal perspective to what can be understood as the jurisprudential project of guarding and maintaining law as a practice of regulation. This paper seeks to generate knowledge that will allow for an extension of the jurisprudential analysis to take into account how mutual trust and confidence may manifest in contemporary conditions of work. This is achieved by, first, presenting original sociological data of the employment relation in a work context likely to demonstrate practices that resonate with features of mutual trust and confidence – that of early-stage digital technology startups – and, secondly, contrasting this empirical account with doctrinal conceptions of the term. Findings unsettle the dominant jurisprudential account of mutual trust and confidence as positively contributing to the social goal of labour law as operating to counter the power of capital.

This paper examines the interaction between ‘radical’ constitutional change, in the form of political devolution, and property systems in the UK, from the perspective of those at the margins of those systems. The paper adopts a property ‘from below’ approach and critically applies the theoretical framework developed by AJ van der Walt in Property in the Margins. In that book, van der Walt outlined how property systems frequently operate to resist democratic and constitutional change and transformation through the functioning of the property paradigm, which refers to a set of doctrinal, rhetorical, and logical assumptions and beliefs about the relative value and power of discrete property interests in law and in society. Building on van der Walt's work, this paper takes eviction, which represents the landlord's apex right, as a case study and considers how qualifications of that right have been reformed by the Private Housing (Tenancies) (Scotland) Act 2016. It is argued that while the strength of the property paradigm is apparent in both English and Scottish property systems, Living Rent, a national tenants’ union in Scotland, have organised tenants to effectively contest and, in some respects, displace the logic of the property paradigm during the reform process.

Judges communicate outside of the courtroom on a regular basis. They give speeches at universities and to societies; appear before select committees; write for a range of publications; and engage in both media and outreach activities. Existing literature has charted the value and perils of such extrajudicial communication. This paper contributes an explanation of what motivates judges towards such communication, and what shapes their discourse. The work draws on 13 semi-structured interviews with senior serving and recently retired judges, along with an extensive range of examples of judicial speech beyond the bench. It argues that extrajudicial communication is shaped by a shared conception amongst the judicial community of what is appropriate. This conception of propriety is principally motivated by a communal pursuit of sustaining public confidence in the judicial office. The conception also informs the limits of appropriate discourse and establishes the ramifications for breach.

This paper analyses legal responses to the problem of debt taken out due to coercion within an intimate relationship. Coerced debt differs from other forms of domestic abuse, as it involves a contractual relationship between the victim and a third-party lender. Legal responses must consider whether the victim should be released from her contractual obligation. The paper employs a theoretical lens of vulnerability and relationality, examining lenders’ duties to combat coerced debt, as well as contractual doctrines of undue influence and duress, which allow victims to have transactions set aside under certain circumstances. The paper argues that victims are being failed by an inadequate legal response. The law views vulnerability as an exceptional state and relationality as a constraint, rather than inherent features of the human condition. Through the social construct of the ‘free market’, lenders are consistently favoured by the law, with little obligation to ensure that transactions are free from coercion. The paper concludes with a call for the state to take greater responsibility for coerced debt and to allocate the risk differently than it currently does. This will promote higher levels of resilience for victims and allow them to escape abusive relational contexts.

This paper examines how English courts have responded to the contract problems generated by the Covid-19 pandemic and considers what this tells us about future contract law development. In relation to consumers, the case law on pandemic-affected contracts, though limited, indicates that traditional contract doctrine does not necessarily produce beneficial outcomes for consumers. This further diminishes the importance of the common law in the consumer contracting context. In the commercial sector, contracting parties were encouraged by government and other organisations to co-operate with one another and act in good faith during the crisis, but this has not influenced the courts applying contract law in the pandemic aftermath. The emerging case law suggests that contract law has retained its commitment to certainty, freedom of contract and sanctity of contract, notwithstanding the extraordinary circumstances around the outbreak and its unpredictable effects on contracts. The unalloyed application of formal contract law in the post-pandemic case law augments the position of relational norms as extra-contractual in English law, putting the further judicial development of relational contract principles in doubt. The paper concludes that despite the considerable social and economic upheaval caused by the pandemic, its impact on contract law development is likely to be minimal.

The National Security Act 2023 replaces the Official Secrets Acts 1911, 1920 and 1939, updating, rationalising, and expanding the various offences which they contained and introducing new rules aimed at the same broad end of countering the threat posed to the UK by the efforts of hostile states and their proxies. It therefore represents a legislative confirmation of the ongoing pivot back to ‘state threats’ rather than terrorism as the focus of the national security enterprise in the UK, though now informed by the experience of counter-terrorism law since 2000. This paper assesses the main changes made by the 2023 Act, including in the context of threats to the democratic process, actual and potential, which have been identified in recent years. The argument offered is that the focus of the 2023 Act – encompassing threats to democracy only where they rise to the level of threats to national security – is undermined by the absence of a more thoroughgoing project to protect the democratic process more generally against foreign interference.

Shareholder say-on-pay voting allows institutional investors to influence the incentives of managers and, consequently, corporate behaviour. Surprisingly, the preferences of investors on executive compensation have been largely overlooked in the ongoing debates on the role of say-on-pay in corporate governance and the impact of shareholder stewardship on sustainable corporate behaviour. The analysis of investor disclosed explanations of say-on-pay votes in the FTSE 100 companies during 2013–2021 shows that institutional investors rely repeatedly on several dominant themes aimed at improving the incentives of corporate managers and controlling managerial rent extraction. But shareholder interests remain the core focus of say-on-pay votes, with only few investors demanding that companies reward executive directors for protecting the interests of a broader range of affected stakeholders. Additionally, most investors can be grouped into several clusters formed around the voting recommendations of proxy advisers. A group of UK-based institutional investors stands out by taking a more individualistic and diverse approach to the stewardship of executive compensation. These findings highlight the role of local investors in the oversight of executive pay, the growing influence of proxy advisers along with the increasing share of foreign institutional investors, and the influence of best practice governance codes in driving investor stewardship preferences.

This paper is a revised version of a plenary lecture delivered at the SLS Annual Conference held at Oxford Brookes University in June 2023. It adopts an auto-ethnographic approach, drawing on the author's long experience of participating in the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF), to assess the current state of legal research in the UK and consider the implications of the increasing importance in the research landscape of engaging in research that serves the public good. The paper explores what falls within the scope of ‘legal research’, particularly for REF purposes, and reflects on how REF-focused research sits within the broader scope of legal scholarly activities. Ideas of the public good are examined and their relation to measures of research impact probed. The paper concludes by painting a broad-brush picture of the current research landscape, identifying key elements and engines of change, and speculating on the direction in which things are going and what should most concern legal scholars going forward. Although primarily focused on legal research in the UK, the paper should be of interest to legal scholars beyond the UK, particularly those in jurisdictions where research assessment exercises are a feature of academic life.

In this short piece we focus on two of the main changes brought in by the recent Nationality and Borders Act 2022 with a focus on sexually diverse claimants: inadmissibility and the increased standard of proof. The recent changes have a negative impact on all asylum seekers but we highlight that they have a particularly adverse impact on sexually diverse claimants because their diverse backgrounds have not been appropriately considered. The problematic provisions on inadmissibility on the basis of mode of entry and removal to a ‘third safe country’ pose particular risks for sexual minorities. Additionally, the increased standard of proof exaggerates issues already faced by sexually diverse claimants in relation to objective evidence gathering and decision-makers using guidance riddled with stereotypical understandings about sexual minorities.

Austerity measures and the cost-of-living crisis have led to rising poverty rates and violations of socioeconomic rights in the UK and Europe. However, there are limited routes of redress for these violations in many European countries. Claims using Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to address violations of socioeconomic rights are suggested but not fully described in the academic literature. The European Court of Human Rights has found violations of the Convention in very limited circumstances caused by poverty and destitution. These circumstances include violations of the ECHR in cases of insufficient food being provided to those detained by the state. This paper considers possible violations of Article 3 ECHR in relation to food poverty. It argues that hunger is a violation of human dignity and provides tangible evidence of degrading treatment. It identifies benefit caps, the two-child limit, and benefit sanctions as policies that can lead to food poverty and, as a result, could amount to degrading treatment. For some living in food poverty due to these policies, Article 3 ECHR may provide a route of redress.

Disputes over frozen embryos represent a particularly problematic case, legally and ethically, due to the ambiguity of their moral and legal status and the potential rights-claims which can be made with regard to them. Recent work has contextualised frozen embryos as liminal and suggested a contextual approach to their legal classification. By appeal to personal property law, with a lens provided by Roman law doctrines, and reproductive bioethics, we argue that frozen embryos may be subjects of property rights, providing a more stable framework for dispute resolution. To illustrate how a property approach would work, we reconsider the facts of the influential Evans case and argue that if a proprietary rather than promissory estoppel claim had been pursued, the reverse outcome may have been reached, to the benefit of women who are disproportionately harmed in these scenarios.

The challenge that delegated legislation poses to parliamentary sovereignty and associated supremacy in the UK is purportedly addressed through what we term the ‘constitutional bargain of delegated law-making’. This has three elements: the proper limitation of delegation by Parliament through well-designed parent legislation; the exercise of self-restraint by the Executive in the use of delegated authority; and the enablement of meaningful scrutiny by Parliament. As a paradigm situation in which delegated law-making might be said to be necessary, the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic is an apposite context in which to assess the robustness of that bargain. Our analysis uses a sample of Westminster-generated pandemic-related secondary instruments as a peephole into the broader dynamics of this constitutional bargain and further reveals its significant frailties; frailties that are exposed, but not created, by the pandemic.

The merits and means of accommodating non-binary populations into UK law is becoming an increasingly important issue for policymakers, judges, scholars and legal professionals. Following Elan-Cane's Supreme Court challenge to binary passport sex markers in 2021, the UK Government face another challenge this year concerning non-binary recognition on birth certificates. While an additional third sex option is perhaps the most well-known reform option for the current binary system, other options have been suggested, including additional multiple sex options and/or removing sex from the birth certificate. While scholars and policymakers debate the merits of these, little is known about non-binary people's own preferences towards these options. This paper therefore presents original empirical data on non-binary attitudes towards these options, demonstrating the various perceived opportunities and drawbacks of each, and reflecting on the possible consequences of reform.

The interpretation of administrative policies is of great importance in contemporary public law. The correct approach to policy interpretation has, however, been subject to insufficient academic scrutiny. The effect of policies is to provide guidance: not only to decision-makers, but also to stakeholders in the decision. Obvious stakeholders include the applicant or the individual who is the subject of the administrative decision, but the scope of potential legitimate stakeholders may go far beyond this. In matters of general interest, the broader public may be guided by policy (for instance, whether to object to a proposal during a consultation exercise, or on what basis to object). When considering how policy should be interpreted, the court should have regard to the extent of the appropriate audience of the policy, specifically considering how the least expert reader of the policy would interpret it. This ‘least expert reader principle’ will assist in answering difficult questions, such as whether the court should have regard to the underlying evidence base when interpreting a policy. The courts should rely upon, and express their reasoning by reference to, the least expert reader principle, in order to increase the transparency of judgments in the field of policy interpretation.

The Attorney General for England and Wales is the Government's Senior Law Officer who, inter alia, initiates certain kinds of legal proceedings. She is also a politician: a member of the House of Commons or the House of Lords and appointed to Government by the Prime Minister. This paper considers the Attorney General's role in initiating contempt proceedings against fellow politicians. I detail a number of cases where politicians have been involved in potential contempts by publication. I argue that, in such cases, the Attorney General's position may amount to an actual or perceived conflict of interest and may breach the principle that justice should be seen to be done.

The paper reports the findings of over a decade of pioneering, award-winning fieldwork which has explored how workplace experience, if embedded successfully in different stages of legal education, can accelerate the ‘speed to capability’ and skills development of early career lawyers. The benefits from initial experiments of graduate-level work placements carried out by the authors since 2008 are presented. The paper then explores the findings from almost 10 years of creating year-long work placements for law undergraduates, assessing student skill growth, and the impact of the work placements on degree results and employment outcomes, before and during the Covid-19 pandemic.

This is the first academic paper to consider the role that parliamentarians play in access to justice. Under austerity, England and Wales has seen cuts to legal aid and local authority budgets that have impacted the ability of people to get help for legal problems in social welfare law from the advice sector. Members of the UK Parliament and Members of the Senedd Cymru are increasingly being called upon by their constituents to fill the resultant gap in advice. This paper draws on interviews with parliamentarians that draw out the nature of the role they are now playing in access to justice across three key areas of civil justice: welfare benefits; housing; and immigration. The growth of parliamentarians as figures in access to justice has thus far been largely neglected but is crucial to grasp, as the implications for the future of access to justice are massive. The paper calls for more research to better understand the phenomenon but urges caution that elected representatives should not be considered as an adequate substitute for a properly functioning, adequately funded advice sector.