Discrimination law primarily relies on individual enforcement for addressing discrimination at work; yet those who are most impacted by discrimination are likely the least able to enforce their rights. The question then becomes: what role should individual enforcement play in discrimination law? Can we effectively abandon individual enforcement as part of the legislative model? Drawing on a mixed method, multi-year comparative study of the enforcement of age discrimination law in the UK, Australia and Sweden, this paper considers the gaps, limits and risks of the individual enforcement model in discrimination law. Integrating doctrinal analysis; statistical analysis of claims and cases, and data from the EU and OECD; qualitative expert interviews; and a survey of legal practitioners, this paper argues that while individual enforcement is inherently limited as a tool for achieving systemic change, it must remain part of any legislative model. Reflecting on the experience in Sweden, where individual enforcement of discrimination law is significantly curtailed, the paper posits that individual rights and individual enforcement remain important complements to other regulatory tools, particularly in jurisdictions with strong enduring age norms. Abandoning or severely restricting individual enforcement is unlikely to support either the macro or micro effectiveness of age discrimination law.

This paper explores the relationship between the concept of the ‘identity of the child’ and legal parenthood. It examines the role of identity in the determination of legal parenthood in three contexts: (a) parental orders after surrogacy arrangements; (b) disputed paternity cases; and (c) the statutory rules in cases involving gamete donation. This paper argues that the concept of ‘identity’ plays an inconsistent role in the attribution of legal parenthood, because the concept lacks substantive content within judicial reasoning and the statutory framework. The understanding of identity, and the role it plays, appears to change in these different contexts to serve the different purposes that the law is trying to achieve. The reason for this inconsistency is that, despite the utilisation of the language of the ‘child's identity’, legal parenthood remains adult-centric and premised upon replicating the binary, two-parent model of the nuclear family. We argue that instead of appealing to this incoherent concept of ‘identity’, the courts should explicitly engage with different types of parenthood and acknowledge the importance of each for both children and parents. Such an approach would result in more truly child-centred reasoning and serve to diminish the predominance of the binary, two-parent model.

It is May 2030 and Stormont heads into its fourth Assembly election in eight years. Voters walk past election posters loudly praising and denouncing the Northern Ireland Protocol. As with the other Assembly elections since Brexit, the Protocol occupies centre-stage. Voters are under no delusion: the new Assembly will be as polarised as ever, no matter its party-political make-up.

The legal backdrop to this (not entirely unfeasible) future is complex: the UK's Withdrawal Agreement has meant the emergence of a regulatory border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The consequences which flow from this have been swift and myriad: trade barriers and social unrest, barely a year after withdrawal.

The focus of this paper, however, is the impact of these changes on the UK constitution. I will examine two landmark judgments of the UK Supreme Court, applying the themes arising in these cases to the legislation which incorporated the Protocol into UK domestic law. In so doing, I will argue that, far from ‘taking back control’, the UK Parliament has instead erected significant new barriers to its ability to ‘make or unmake any law whatever’ for the whole of the UK.

Exclusion of improperly obtained evidence is often discussed in relation to criminal proceedings, but not civil proceedings, where concerns about wrongdoing of state actors and deprivation of liberty are not usually present. It is sometimes assumed that judges in civil proceedings in England and Wales had no discretion to exclude relevant and reliable evidence based on how it was obtained (as a distinct concern from exclusion of evidence of little probative value) prior to the enactment of the Civil Procedure Rules 1998. This paper seeks to demonstrate that this is wrong, arguing that a number of sources of power to exclude evidence on the basis of how that evidence was obtained have arisen in England and Wales, and that these are not attributable to the Civil Procedure Rules. There is a discretion which enables exclusion of evidence where this is ‘in the interests of justice’, and a discretion to do with the administration of justice. It may be possible to break these down further, to concerns over abuse of the court's own procedures, and executive illegality. Analysing the decisions leading to these developments reveals the importance of human rights concerns to recognition of exclusionary discretion in civil proceedings, and for informing the content of the discretion/s.

A significant issue in combatting the Covid-19 pandemic is the need to enhance developing states’ access to Covid-19 vaccines. The present paper considers the request for a temporary waiver of intellectual property rights in relation to Covid-19 technologies and treatments submitted to the World Trade Organization and analyses a key argument against the proposed waiver: that the compulsory licensing provisions set out in the TRIPS Agreement are sufficiently flexible to help states get access to vaccines. The compulsory licensing flexibilities set out in TRIPS, including the amendment to TRIPS in Article 31bis, are evaluated, to explore whether compulsory licensing could be an effective tool in helping developing states to access Covid-19 vaccines. Key issues are explored from a human rights perspective to examine whether a rights-based approach to the compulsory licensing provisions could offer further insights as to how the provisions could be more workable, to enhance access to medicines and vaccines for developing states.

In his 1935 judgment in Woolmington v DPP, Viscount Sankey declared the prosecution's burden of proving the accused's guilt was a ‘golden thread’, running ‘throughout the whole web of English criminal law’. This paper explores what Woolmington can tell us about the appeals process – and about the criminal law itself – less than 30 years after the first automatic right to appeal was created in English criminal law. It argues that the decision helps us understand the political pressures that could help to form – and make possible – legal decisions during this period. And it finds that the Woolmington decision itself – both in the text of the decision and in its immediate reception – was more universal than it was fundamental. Woolmington, I argue, has always been more about the high-level principles of English criminal law than about securing any kind of minimal procedural rights for a defendant.

In a negligence action against a defendant suffering from a mental disorder or an incapacity, a key but neglected question is what we mean by involuntariness. Although involuntariness is an accepted response, its relationship to mental or physical incapacity is poorly understood. The existing authorities offer only basic instruction about what is meant by involuntariness. Moreover, there is a suspicion that involuntariness undermines the objectivity of the standard of care. However, in this paper, it is argued that involuntariness can be better defined and a clearer understanding can be gained of how responsibility operates within tort law. By relating the case law and commentary on involuntariness to a choice theory of responsibility and arguing that this operates at a foundational level which is analytically prior to questions of breach, this paper tries to illuminate how tort law – like other areas of law – makes fundamental assumptions about the capacity of individuals to whom duties are expected to apply. None of this will necessarily increase the volume of claims or unsettle well-worn authorities but it does ensure both consistency and fairness and argues for a deeper appreciation of agency within how tort law characterises the applicability of duties.

The demand for family mediation to adapt and change has risen sharply in the contemporary English and Welsh family justice system. This paper focuses on a crucial, yet overlooked, barrier to reform: the tensions felt within the family mediator profession. It first provides an important overview of the introduction of family mediation in the late twentieth century, highlighting the distinction between the traditional therapeutic mediator and the subsequent lawyer mediator. Recent anecdotal evidence suggests that friction exists amongst the two mediator sub-groups, similar to earlier tensions felt between lawyers and mediators. The remainder of this paper is based on an empirical study, comprising 17 interviews with family mediators, which confirms these tensions, as well as a lack of national identity across the profession. However, the data also reveal mediators’ desire for collaboration and community within the profession. The paper is hopeful that regulatory reform can help mediators to ‘mediate themselves’ going forward, and questions whether this transition is supported by a new hybrid mediator.

Financial globalisation has given issuers more freedom to carry out jurisdiction shopping. As a policy response, a growing number of stock markets have introduced the dual-class share structure to enhance global competitiveness. However, does the dual-class share structure help stock markets attract issuers? It is a question rarely examined empirically in existing scholarly work. This paper explores the practices of three jurisdictions with global financial centres, ie the US, China and Hong Kong, to narrow the research gap. Based on hand-collected data, it explains the infrequent listings with the dual-class share structure in China and Hong Kong in the post-reform era in two ways: low demand due to the use of substitutes; and limited allowance caused by the harsh ex ante regulation, and is the first comparative quantitative study in this field. Drawing on the empirical lessons, this paper recommends that China relax its ex ante regulation and suggests the wider community consider the necessity of introducing the dual-class share structure and the balance they aim to achieve between investor protection and market openness.

A general right to equality is a common feature of written constitutions around the world. Interesting questions arise when one seeks to apply such rights to discrete executive acts. The subject of such acts has necessarily been singled out from a multitude of possibilities for the purposes of the act. To determine whether a differentiation has occurred such that like cases have not been treated alike, to what or whom should this subject be compared? The question of how one selects the proper comparator becomes especially significant when one notes that whether the equal protection guarantee is triggered at all depends on the answer to this question. This paper will study how courts in Hong Kong and Singapore have addressed these difficulties. It argues that three categories of approaches can be discerned in these jurisdictions: class-focused, policy-focused, and justification-focused approaches. It critically evaluates each approach, argues in favour of a justification-focused approach to constitutional equal protection in the context of discrete executive acts, and explores the implications of such an approach for the proper relationship between constitutional equality and administrative law.