Is it really worth having all this fuss and bother about the Human Rights Bill? Over the years the Convention has been interpreted to require United Kingdom courts to change their practices in various ways at the personal level, but what about protecting a person from an unjustified demand for tax? Suppose that the Inland Revenue demands tax from you which the courts later determine to be unlawful because the regulation under which the demand was made was not valid. You were not a party to that litigation but you are clearly within the ambit of the decision supplied by the courts. The Inland Revenue then persuades Parliament to deprive you of the benefit of the decision by retroactive legislation, although leaving the actual party to the litigation with the fruits of that enterprise. Is this the stuff on which the judges at Strasbourg will rush to protect the taxpayer from the State? The answer sadly is no — these judges are not going to risk embarrassing the contracting States by making rights bite where that would be expensive: National Provincial Building Society and others v. United Kingdom [1997] S.T.C. 1466. Of course these judges may fear that contracting States would reduce the powers of the court were they do so such a thing; such a fear would not be irrational since the German and UK Governments proposed that direct tax matters should be removed from the European Court of Justice in the sessions leading to the Treaty of Amsterdam. Perhaps a supra-national body is right to be cautious, but what should our own courts do? Once the Convention is incorporated into our domestic law, will our own judges feel a little more strongly about the matter and perhaps grant a declaration that the legislation is incompatible with the Convention? If they have a right to be incensed about the way in which Parliament protects the Revenue at the expense (literally) of the taxpayer, will they do something or will they just couch like lions under the throne of Parliamentary Sovereignty?

Are the Cambridge colleges “constituent colleges” of the University? This seemingly esoteric question has recently become of some practical importance. University Commissioners, appointed Pursuant to section 202(1) of the Education Reform Act 1988, have the duty of modifying the Statues or other instruments of government, of many, but not all, university institutions, so as to ensure that, whatever may have been the position hitherto, each of them has, for all future appointments, the power to dismiss members of its “academic staff” on grounds of redundancy, or for “good cause” (as defined in section 203(2)). Whether a university institution is subject to having its Statutes thus modified in ways which it might not have chosen for itself, in order to facilitate the “restructuring” of its academic activities, and the removal of “dead wood,” turns on whether it is a “qualifying institution,” as defined in section 202(3):

(a) any university or other institution to which during the period of three years beginning 1 August 1987, grants in aid are or have been made by the Universities Funding Council, or by the Secretary of State acting on the advice of the University Grants Committee;

(b) any constituent college, school or hall or other institution of a university falling within paragraph (a) above.

This article attempts an economic analysis of the policy formulated in Manchester Trust v Furness that constructive notice should not be made the basis of liability arising out of commercial transactions. It concentrates on instances of equitable liability for ”knowing receipt“ where the defendant is required to give restitution of funds which it received in breach of fiduciary duty. The article investigates the social costs of imposing a duty of inquiry on a person receiving misappropriated money in a commercial transaction. It concludes that there are strong economic reasons why a commercial recipient of money should not owe the same rigorous duties of inquiry commonly imposed in conveyancing transactions. However, once the standard of inquiry is adjusted to take into the exigencies of commercial dealings, there are no compelling economic reasons why constructive notice should be rejected as a possible basis of liability in knowing receipt.

In its judgment in the LaGrand case (Germany v. United States of America), delivered on 27 June 2001, the International Court of Justice found, for the first time in its history, that its orders indicating provisional measures were legally binding. This has long been the subject of extensive controversy, but the Court has traditionally refrained from stating its views on this point, even though such orders are frequently disregarded (e.g., in Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. (1951), Fisheries Jurisdiction (1972), Diplomatic Staff in Tehran (1979) and Genocide Convention (1993)). In LaGrand the Court adopted a positive stand on provisional measures and displayed full readiness to draw serious consequences from non-compliance therewith. One can expect that the important ruling in this case will have a far-reaching impact on future attitudes toward the Court’s provisional measures.

Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, the first and second claimants, sold the exclusive rights to publish their wedding photographs to OK! magazine, the third claimant; however, in spite of elaborate security arrangements, Hello! magazine obtained unofficial photographs, publication of which the claimants sought to restrain in the present proceedings. Although an injunction was granted at first instance, it was discharged by the Court of Appeal which held that, on the facts, damages would constitute an adequate remedy should the claimants succeed at trial. Given the interlocutory nature of the proceedings, Douglas v. Hello! Ltd. [2001] 2 W.L.R. 992 does not provide determinative answers to the substantive questions raised by the facts. Nevertheless, it supplies useful guidance as to the role of privacy in English law and tentatively addresses the “horizontal effect” of the Human Rights Act 1998 by considering whether that legislation may found claims against private parties as well as public authorities.

The European Court of Human Rights’ decision in Al-Adsani v. UK (2002) 34 E.H.R.R. 273 does not openly reject the view that torturers have become enemies of all mankind. It does however affirm that they can protect themselves abroad with a magic weapon that neither pirates nor slave traders usually possessed. This is the shield of sovereign immunity, which prevents State torturers from being tried before courts of a foreign State. In Al-Adsani, the ECHR, by a bare majority of 9 votes to 8, decided that States and their officials can invoke immunity even where they are accused of breaches of peremptory norms of international law (ius cogens), i.e. norms which, by definition, admit of no derogation (Article 53 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties).

LORD Hoffmann's famous “restatement” of the principles of contractual interpretation in Investors Compensation Scheme v West Bromwich Building Society [1998] 1 W.L.R. 896, 912–13, was heralded as a “quiet revolution” (McLauchlan (2000) 19 N.Z.U.L.R. 147, at 148) in that it appeared to overthrow the legalistic approach of the past. That approach, often associated with the “plain meaning rule” (Bank of New Zealand v Simpson [1990] A.C. 182 (PC), 189) involved giving effect to the expressed meaning of the text, which (limited exceptions aside) could not be contradicted by the relevant background (or matrix of fact). By contrast, the approach in ICS mandated the Court to search for the apparently intended meaning by consulting the relevant and admissible background in all cases. The ICS approach rapidly became dominant, and indeed orthodox, across multiple jurisdictions. However, in a series of judgments commencing with Re Sigma Finance Corporation [2009] UKSC 2; [2010] 1 All E.R. 571, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom has gradually moved away from the approach in ICS (albeit without expressly overruling it) and emphasised the importance of giving effect to the natural and ordinary meaning of the words used, in combination with other factors (see especially Marley v Rawlings [2014] UKSC 2; [2014] 2 W.L.R. 213, at [18]–[19]; Arnold v Britton [2015] UKSC 36; [2015] A.C. 1619, at [14]–[23]). This return to a more traditional approach to interpretation vindicates sustained criticism of the validity of the ICS approach in principle and practice (see e.g. Staughton [1999] C.L.J. 303; Berg (2006) 122 L.Q.R. 354; Buxton [2010] C.L.J. 253).