‘Thus the law has been confined and drawn up into a narrow and inglorious study, and that which should be the leading science in every well-ordered commonwealth remained in all the barbarism of the rudest times… insomuch that the study of our jurisprudence presented to liberal and well-educated minds, even in the best authors, hardly anything but barbarous terms, ill explained, a coarse, but not a plain expression, an indigested method, and a species of reasoning the very refuse of the schools, which deduced the spirit of the laws, not from original justice or legal conformity, but from causes foreign to it and altogether whimsical.’ (Edmund Burke, ‘An essay towards an Abridgement of the English History’, Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke (Beaconsfield Edition 1901, vol 7) p 477).

I keep six honest serving men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them East and West;
But after they have worked for me
I give them all a rest.
I let them rest from nine till five,
For I am busy then,
As well as breakfast, lunch and tea,
For they are hungry men;
But different folk have different views;
I know a person small -
She keeps ten million serving men,
Who get no rest at all!
She sends ’em abroad on her own affairs,
From the second she opens her eyes -
One million HOWSt,w o million Wheres,
And seven million Whys!

The centenary of Maine’s death prompts the questions: why is he remembered and what is his significance for us today? In part the answer is simple. He wrote well, and his books such as Ancient Law are a pleasure to read. It is frankly a relief to turn to his works after reading the remarkable but laboured chapters of that other nineteenth century jurist, John Austin (1 790-1859).

But going beyond his style and assessing his intellectual merits and the modern uses of his ideas is a more complicated matter. If his jurisprudential ideas are compared with those of, say, Bentham and Austin it is clear that there is an initial contrast in the way their respective theories are categorised. When the latter two thinkers are considered it is useful to refer to Benthamite and Austinian forms of jurisprudence.

It is often assumed that a promise is not legally enforceable unless, as a necessary though not sufficient condition, the promise is morally ‘obligatory’ or ‘binding’. If this assumption is correct, or can be shown to be tenable, highly interesting and important things follow for both legal and contract theory. Promise-keeping emerges as a moral obligation before it is a legal one, the legal duty becoming but a sanctionable extension of the moral obligation, its continuation so to speak by other means. There is thus no fundamental break separating moral from legal promises; for even a legal promise, particularly or most visibly one not covered by existing authority, cannot be fully justified as to why it ought to be kept without support from moral grounds. In the first three sections we therefore consider the moral reasons we may advance in support of an obligation to keep promises. In the last two sections we try to relate these moral considerations more specifically to contract law.

The doctrine of privity has two main aspects. The first is that a third party is not to be burdened or prejudiced by a contract. This appears sound and wil not be examined further. The second aspect of the doctrine is controversial. A third party cannot take advantage ofa contract made by A and B for his benefit. The potential benefit to C can take two forms. A positive benefit is the right to some material advantage, such as money, property or services. A negative benefit consists in the conferring of an immunity. there is authority for the denial of both kinds of benefit to C. Tweddle u Atkinson and Dunlop u Selfridge established clearly that a third party does not have an ius quaesitum, tertio or active right. The House of Lords in Scruttons u Midland Silicones extended the privity rule so as to deny that C can take advantage of a negative benefit.

It is a commonplace that ‘Equity will not assist a volunteer’, or ‘Equity will not perfect an imperfect gift’. One problem posed by this rule is the question: what is the attitude of equity to instruments which, though not effective at law to transfer property, may at law give the volunteer beneficiary, or a person named as a trustee for volunteers, a right of action in damages? This is the very well-trodden ground of covenants to settle property and Re Pryce, Re Kay’s Settlement, and Re Cook’s Settlement Trusts, and the apparent conflict between these cases and Fletcher v Fletcher and Re Cavendish-Browne’s Settlement Trusts.

The recent litigation arising out of the Spycatcher affair was bound by the very nature of the issues at stake to be controversial; yet whatever view is to be taken of the rights and wrongs behind these issues one aspect of the litigation that was always likely to give rise to difficulties and to leave the common lawyers open to criticism was the conceptual framework in which these issues were handled. Ought serious constitutional questions like press freedom - questions that involve not just the public ‘interest’, but also the public’s ‘right’ to information in a democracy - to be debated at the level ofprivate ownership? Indeed is it actually rational to treat a government body, in relation to another government body or to the press, as if it were a private citizen entitled to the same rights (for example a ‘right to privacy) the human legal subject?

‘Today, therefore, the controlling factor in determining whether the exercise of a prerogative power is subject to judicial review is not its source but its subject matter.’ So uttered Lord Scarman, expressing the view of the majority of the House of Lords in Council of Civil Service Unions v Minister for the Civil Service (the GCHQ case). The Attorney General, in deciding whether to institute proceedings for the enforcement ofa public right, exercises a power vested in him by virtue of the royal prerogative. This power, it was previously held, was ‘absolute and non-reviewable’. The question now arises as to whether the Attorney General’s discretionary powers are embraced within that category of prerogative powers whose subject matter renders them amenable to judicial review, or whether they remain beyond judicial scrutiny.

There can be few passages ofjudicial exegesis which have claimed more attention, analysis and controversy than Lord Herschell’s famous, or infamous, statement of principle in Makin u A-G for New South Wales. His Lordship had appeared to assert an absolute rule against adducing evidence of bad character in order to prove the defendant’s guilt on the basis ofhis criminal disposition; and in Boardman v DPP Lord Hailsham expressly approved this prohibition on use of the ‘forbidden chain of reasoning’. A recent judgment by Gibbs CJ in the High Court of Australia contains a lucid modern restatement of Lord Herschell’s principle:

‘The prosecution cannot adduce evidence tending to show that the accused has been guilty ofcriminal acts other than those with which he is charged if the evidence shows only that he had a propensity to commit crime, or crime of a particular kind, or that he was the sort of person likely to have committed the crime charged.

Some recent attitudes to the scope of judicial review in the field of immigration policy represent a sharp contrast with the trends which typify the current renaissance in administrative law. The conspicuous features of modern developments are the range and intensity ofjudicial initiatives in expanding, almost beyond recognition, the parameters within which the exercise of supervisory jurisdiction is warranted in principle. Despite some suggestions to the contrary, it is not altogether satisfactory to regard the revamped notion oferror oflaw as an organising principle which supplants review mechanisms founded on the bedrock of vires; but it is quite evident that the theory of jurisdiction which lies at the root of seminal concepts sustaining the framework of judicial review is in the process of being transformed by contemporary ap roaches. The virtual equation of error of law with jurisdictional excess at any rate in regard to administrative tribunals as distinguished from inferior courts, has dramatically enlarged the scope of judicial review on the ground of jurisdictional fault, especially in the light of radical perceptions of the criteria which are called in aid to identify errors of law.

What little empirical work there has been in the field of contract law has revealed that the parties do not always regard the legal enforceability of their agreements as a high priority. Problems arise when this attitude is combined with the use of standard terms by one or both parties. Perhaps the best known example ofthis is the ‘battle ofthe forms standard forms are exchanged with no attention being given to their inconsistencies and it then becomes very difficult to determine which set of terms actually form the basis of the contract. Another problem occurs where the parties have carefully negotiated some part of their contract only to discover, when a dispute arises, that it is inconsistent with the standard terms which were incorporated into the contract and to which neither party had paid much attention. This article is concerned with the problem which occurs when one party has a set ofstandard terms but has introduced them into the transaction after the contract has been concluded.

This article examines a number of propositions about law and government with which lawyers and legal theorists are familiar. It argues that what are often said to be the ends of constitutional government are vague, and that what are said to be the best means of achieving them are underspecified or impossible. When civil liberty is allowed to rest in this state it is unsafe. To the extent that civil liberty is theorised it certainly casts a shadow upon the practical world of politics, and generates expectations. Often, however, when we suppose something like it to have been realised, a closer investigation reveals something quite different, namely benign government.

While finding fault with House of Lords’ decisions in the field ofcriminal law is by no means a new academic sport, the present decade is proving particularly fruitful for the critic. The precise ramifications of Caldwelll and Lawrence are still being thrashed out. seymour, on manslaughter, was unforgiveably ambiguous. Moloney and Hancock and Shankland left the mental element in murder hopelessly opaque. In impossible attempts Anderton v Ryan revealed a degree of ineptitude which even the House of Lords had to recognise in overruling itselfonly a year later in Shivpuri.

It is not simply a questionofacademics taking issue with the outcomeof a particular decision. The further, and in some respects even more worrying, aspect of many of these decisions is the quality of the legal reasoning they embody.

The issue addressed here is that of understanding and giving meaning to mens rea concepts in the criminal law; I look in particular at intention and recklessness. The point made is that the controversy surrounding the proper meaning and understanding of these two concepts - a dispute about their appropriate contours - cannot be solved in the manner so far assumed. It follows that it is a vain hope to expect clear, unambiguous and non-controversial formulations of these concepts.

The argument has a three-fold structure. First, it is suggested that we are locked into this controversy whether (i) we insist that our mem rea concepts do, and should, bear the same meaning they have in ordinary non-legal discourse; or (ii) we insist that such concepts do, and should, bear a technical meaning, distinct from whatever ordinary meaning they may have, which is better suited to the requirements of the criminal law. These are the two traditional strategies used in attempting to solve any controversy about the contours of mens rea concepts and I will show how they are potentially controversial.

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.