The charge of conspiring to defraud is the most important and frequently employed branch of the law of criminal conspiracy. Yet it has been largely ignored in most general discussions of the law of conspiracy, or at best treated as a special case to be exempted from the general attack on a crime which can only be described as an agreement to act illegally. The reasons for this tacit acceptance are largely pragmatic: the charge is clearly useful in bringing to justice a significant number of persons involved in large-scale frauds who might otherwise escape prosecution. A thorough-going assessment of its place in the criminal law is nonetheless long overdue.

One of the most useful and most-used powers that criminal courts1 have is the power to bind people over to be of good behaviour or to keep the peace. Magistrates form the view that a person (“the principal”), who might be a person of previously unblemished reputation, is likely to breach the peace or commit criminal offences. They require him to enter into a recognisance, in form a voluntary covenant or agreement, to keep the peace, or to be of good behaviour, sometimes in a set sum (say £100) for a set period. If he refuses, he can be imprisoned, regardless of the seriousness or triviality, lawfulness or unlawfulness, of the behaviour that originally brought him to court, perhaps as a witness. He may also be required to find sureties, other people who are prepared to promise that they will forfeit a sum of money (say £50 each) if their principal fails to behave. If the principal misbehaves, debts to the Crown arise of £100 from the principal and £50 from each surety. The mechanics are therefore rather similar to bail. Binding over operates today in two ways. First, it can be used after conviction for an offence as an alternative to sentence. The accused enters into a recognisance to keep the peace or be of good behaviour. If he breaches his undertaking, he can be summoned back to court to be sentenced for the original offence. Secondly, it can be used after conviction for an offence as an alternative to sentence. The accused enters into a recognisance to keep the peace or be of good behaviour. If he breaches his undertaking, he can be summoned back to court to be sentenced for the original offence. Secondly, it can be used as a preventive measure to deal with people who are before the court but have not been convicted. This latter use provides a flexible way to deal with cases arising out of disputes between neighbours and minor public order problems without the need for a full hearing. It saves time and money.

InRedland Bricks Ltd. v. Morris Lord Upjohn, in a speech with which all the other Law Lords agreed, asserted that the Court of Appeal had been wrong to consider the applicability of Lord Cairns' Act. Much of the judgments, he observed, had been taken up with a consideration of the principles laid down in Shelfer v. City of London Electric Lighting Co., a case concerned exclusively with the proper principles upon which in practice Lord Cairns' Act should be applied. Neither Lord Cairns' Act nor Shelfer's case, he said in terms, had anything whatever to do with the principles of law appli-cable to the case then before the court. It is accordingly crystal clear that Lord Upjohn regarded Lord Cairns' Act as totally irrelevant: what is less clear is the reason for his opinion.

The common law doctrines relating to mixtures and improvements of personal chattels give the impression, to most English lawyers, of being somewhat mysterious. Proprietary interests come and go like ships in the night, now mingled with rights to possession, now quite separate. But although cases involving proprietary claims are not common, the issue often arises as to A's personal rights against B, where B has without A's consent expended effort on A's property, and B's personal rights against A (if any) in respect of the improvement.

I.—Until quite modern times the expression ‘Criminal Science’ was taken to mean no more than study of criminal law. The nature and the method of criminal science at this stage is best illustrated by the well-known dictum of Carrara, one of the chief exponents of the classical school of criminal law, that ‘crime is not an entity in fact but an entity in law; it is not action but infraction’ (‘il delitto non è un ente di fatto ma un ente giuridico, è una infrazione e non un’azione’). The personality of the delinquent, the origin of crime, the nature and the efficacy of punishment, the relationship between society and criminal justice,—problems which now constitute such an important part of criminal research—for many decades remained completely outside the scope of criminal science as then understood.

We are met here this evening in memory of Stanley de Smith to pay a tribute to his labours in the field of English public law. His name will always be associated with the constitutional law of the British Commonwealth in its decline and the administrative law of England in its renaissance. It was in connection with the first of these topics in the nineteen fifties that I first met him when he was a brilliant young law don at the London School of Economics and I was a fairly senior silk instructed on behalf of the Kabaka in the constitutional dispute about Buganda. The depth of knowledge on constitutional matters which he then displayed encouraged me to seek his help in the last constitutional case in which I was engaged before I went on to the High Court bench. It involved appearing before the Federal Court in Pakistan and, unless my memory plays me false, it was de Smith who drew my attention to opinions given by the Law Officers in the seventeenth century about the government of the Plantations, that supplied the basis for the argument that was ultimately accepted by that court.

The rapid constitutional changes which followed on the attainment of independence by former colonial territories have, perhaps, converted into legal history much of de Smith's work in this particular field of public law. So I propose to take as the subject of this memorial lecture that other field of public law which he was to make his own: administrative law and, in particular, judicial review of administrative action.

The decision in 1907 to grant habeas corpus in favour of Eddie Guerin, a notorious criminal widely known as the man who escaped from Devil's Island, attracted attention at the time in the popular press but has been largely ignored by lawyers. The judgment of the court was brief and the issue decided appeared to be entirely factual. Yet the case was a remarkable one from a legal perspective which merits further attention. It deals with a difficult and crucially important legal point—the burden of proof and the resolution of issues of disputed fact on habeas corpus—in a most unusual and intriguing way.