An act done by or on behalf of a company may be defective for a variety of reasons. It may be ultra vires the company itself: in which case it will be void. It may be within the powers of the company but outside the authority or powers of the agent (usually the directors) doing the act: in which case it will also be void, but may nevertheless in varying circumstances be ratified by the company. It may be within the powers both of the company and of the agent but be done for an improper purpose: in which case it may in some circumstances be set aside or afford some other remedy.

The purpose of this article is to review some of the numerous problems facing the new Family Division of the High Court which arise out of the reception of large numbers of Muslim immigrants into this country. The appearance of the Law Commission's Report on Polygamous Marriages and the debate in the House of Lords on Lord Simon's proposed amendment to the Recognition of Divorces and Legal Separations Act highlight the importance of the subject for the profession.

The theory that the common law is one and indivisible does not now, one would have hoped, attract a great deal of support. But the practice of the English Bar and the decisions of the English Bench continue to raise suspicions that the theory is not entirely outdated. There seems still a tendency to equate common law with English law.

Avoidance of emergency legislation

“The people had a right to free discussion. It was free discussion which elicited truth. They had a right to meet.” In these words at a civic reception in Liverpool on October 3, 1838, Lord John Russell proclaimed his belief in one of the basic freedoms of democracy, at the very time that Chartists were mobilising their forces and spreading their doctrine at meetings held throughout the country. This was an untimely declaration which drew upon him the deserved reproof of Sir Robert Peel; it unfortunately seems to have been put later to some rather unscrupulous use by the Chartists, an example of which went to furnish Sir James Graham with offensive material for his attack on the Government during the debate of January 29, 1840, on a motion of no confidence. None the less, even when the Chartist gatherings had attained an advanced stage of organisation, Russell with undaunted singleness of purpose affirmed the Government's resolve not to ask Parliament for additional powers or extraordinary measures, but to rely on the existing laws: “It would be very inadvisable to make any sudden change in the laws of the country and to introduce laws, the same as in some foreign countries, of exception for certain parties; because those laws have two bad effects—the one is that they excite the sympathy of a number of persons who otherwise would have no feeling in common with ill disposed and designing persons; and in the next place, because the people of the country in general, and even those who appear to be the worst disposed, do feel that there is a power and supremacy in the law, to which they are ready to yield obedience; and if a new law were introduced merely for the suppression of those societies, they would not feel that they were treated with the same justice with which they would have been treated if the ordinary laws of the country had been resorted to for their suppression and punishment.”

The dramatic terrorist attacks in the United States in September 2001 all too clearly illustrated the threat posed by international terrorism. Understandably, politicians are provoked into taking tough measures to protect their citizens from terrorist enemies. In times of danger the civil liberties implications of such measures can easily play second fiddle to security needs. Indeed, we need look no further in our jurisprudence than the discredited majority decision in Liversidge v. Anderson [1942] A.C. 206. Recently, Lord Woolf has warned that “the mistakes which have been made in the past, in relation to internment of aliens at the outbreak of war, should not be forgotten” (A v. Secretary of State for the Home Department [2002] EWCA Civ 1502 at para. [9]).

The Critical Legal Studies movement has been described by one of its leading proponents as having “undermined the central ideas of modern legal thought and put another conception of law in their place.” Whether or not the movement has actually succeeded in doing so, this is a fair description of its ambition. The scholarship of the CLS movement disputes the idea that the power of judges and other government officials either can or should be constrained by sources of law such as constitutions, statutes, and precedent. It is marked by a rejection of the belief that “legal argument” can or should be an enterprise distinct from political argument. It is also marked by a rejection of “legal rights” as a desirable or even possible means of protecting individuals from government power.

The way in which the courts in the United Kingdom have interpreted and applied the Ullah principle has created problems in the national application of the European Convention on Human Rights. As is evident particularly in Ambrose, this is partly because Lord Bingham's approach in Ullah has been misunderstood. The article analyses these issues in relation to the notion of binding precedent, finding that judicial authority belongs to principles. The national courts ought not, though that is what the Ullah–Ambrose approach enjoins, to expend their energies seeking to align the case before them with the least dissimilar of the reported cases. Rather they should stand back from the case law of the European Court, and apply the broad principles upon which the jurisprudence is founded.

I Do not imagine that there is anyone who has anything to do with personal injuries litigation who has not heard of Mrs. May Donoghue. Her encounter with a partially decomposed snail at the Wellmeadow Café: in Paisley is part of our folklore. The law of liability for negligence was revolutionised by the decision of the House of Lords in Donoghue v. Stevenson. Indeed, one might even say that the modern law of negligence was created by it. Articles which are too numerous to mention have been written about her case. Some years ago alumni of the University of British Columbia organised a pilgrimage to Paisley to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the event. It was sponsored by the Canadian Bar Association, the Law Society of Scotland and the Faculty of Advocates.

For more than two and half centuries, the case of Emmanuel College v Evans (1626) has been understood as a leading case for the origin of the principal doctrine of mortgage law: the equity of redemption. A closer inspection shows that it has nothing to do with the equity of redemption. This article examines Emmanuel College to see what it was actually about and where this leaves the history of mortgages in equity. In so doing, the article demonstrates the status of Emmanuel College as a leading case to be invalid, and exposes a serious flaw in the methodology of much historiography on mortgages and of early-modern equity more generally. The article also shows how a leading case can obtain its position when it does not stand for its purported proposition. And it provides a nearly unique window into the nature of the Chancery court record and development of equity thanks to a serendipitous documentary survival.

THE principles for recovering monetary relief for losses to express trusts have recently been uncertain, especially in “commercial” situations. Where trustees undertook to hold money on trust for a lender and to advance the money to a borrower after receiving security documents, the trustees no doubt breach the trust by advancing the money without first receiving the security documents. However, since Target Holdings v Redferns [1996] A.C. 421, it has been uncertain what measure of relief the lender-beneficiary can recover – and especially whether the measure differs according to (1) whether the form of relief claimed is a general accounting or “equitable compensation” for only particular defaults or (2) whether the circumstances are “commercial”. Under the accounting doctrines as traditionally applied, trustees unable to vouch for trust assets they earlier received could not reduce their liability by showing that part or all of the loss would have been suffered even had they performed the trust correctly. The trustees were responsible for the misapplied sum regardless of causal enquiries. But, in Target, the House of Lords – emphasizing the commercial nature of the case – denied a lender-beneficiary's claim to recover the full sum wrongly disbursed by trustees. The significance of the case has been contested. Did Target change a fundamental norm of monetary relief for losses suffered through breach of trust – a norm applicable regardless of whether the form of relief claimed is a general accounting or equitable compensation for only particular defaults? Did Target instead leave the traditional accounting doctrines untouched, and create a new remedy of equitable compensation for breach of trust? Or did Target establish a “commercial” exception to traditional principles of trustee accountability, an exception limiting the quantum of relief? Indeed, was Target decided per incuriam?

THE ECtHR has for the second time in three years engaged with the British Government's handling of whole-life prison terms. In Hutchinson v United Kingdom (Application no. 57592/08), Judgment of 3 February 2015, not yet reported, the Fourth Section accepted the authoritativeness of an English court's decision on the meaning of English law relating to the Home Secretary's discretion to reduce a whole-life sentence. It also yielded to national judges on whether this sentence review mechanism complies with the proscription on inhuman and degrading treatment in Article 3 of the ECHR.

UMBRELLA effects arise where anti-competitive conduct by one or more market actors results in general price rises across the sector concerned. The Court of Justice of the European Union has, with its preliminary ruling in Case C-557/12, Kone and others v OBB-Infrastruktur AG, Judgment of 5 June 2014, EU:C:2014:1317, now addressed the potential legal implications of such umbrella effects. In confirming that the right to compensation stemming from breach of EU competition law extends to umbrella claims as a matter of principle, the Court of Justice has offered its most expansive, and arguably most emphatic, interpretation of the scope and importance of private antitrust enforcement to date.