This report presents the findings of the survey conducted in 1993/94, this survey being an updated version of one conducted in 1983/94. The present study has been expanded to cover Australian and Canadian (Common Law) universities, and as in previous surveys has been conducted primarily through the medium of a detailed questionnaire.

In each of the jurisdictions surveyed there exist parallel concerns about legal education and, of more direct interest here, the role of Jurisprudence and Legal Theory within the law curriculum. By drawing on data received from Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom and the literature on legal education, this article aims to provide a comparative study of the extent to which Jurisprudence features in the academic training of the next generation of lawyers, a large proportion of whom will enter a profession characterised by a shared common law tradition.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 (HFE Act) has been described as a ‘milestone in biomedical regulation’. Yet as a milestone, it marks out the frontier of medical science as it stood at 1990. It was always accepted that the Act would not be the ‘last word on the subject’ of embryology. Five years on and, inevitably, the frontiers of the reproductive revolution have been pushed forward by scientific and clinical developments, and, again inevitably, those developments have thrown up new social, ethical and legal problems. Thanks to the passing of the 1990 Act, the new techniques do not exist in a vacuum: one of the achievements of the HFE Act is that it provides the institutional and legal framework in which new problems can be debated and resolved as they arise. The key element in that framework is the statutory licensing authority created by the 1990 Act-the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).

The Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986 (CDDA) instituted, inter alia, a mechanism whereby directors of failed companies can be disqualified from holding office in the future as the result of an application to the court by the Secretary of State, or in the case of compulsory liquidators, the official receive and a subsequent finding by the court that the director is unfit. The operation and effect of the CDDA has been the subject of speculation in the national press, other media and comment from insolvency practitioners since its inception. Most of this comment has focused on the role of the DTI and on its perceived failure to take steps to disqualify directors in sufficient numbers.

In a Notice on cooperation between national courts and the Commission published in early 1993, the European Commission made the following policy pronouncements about its future role in the enforcement of the competition rules contained in the EC Treaty:

‘As the administrative authority responsible for the Community's competition policy, the Commission must serve the Community's general interest. The administrative resources at the Commission's disposal to perform its task are necessarily limited and cannot be used to deal with all the cases brought to its attention. The Commission is therefore obliged, in general, to take all organizational measures necessary for the performance of its task and, in particular to establish priorities.’