Who should have the ultimate say over a child's medical treatment? A series of high-profile withdrawal of care cases have highlighted the full extent of the courts’ authority to make decisions on behalf of children in the medical context. In both the Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans litigation, the courts have made clear that they have the power to make medical decisions for children at the point that child's welfare is engaged. All courts involved in both cases affirmed the orthodox position that the threshold for judicial intervention in disputes about medical care of children is the welfare of the child, often referred to as the “best interests” approach (referring to both the threshold and the test applied to determine what should be done). While no new point of law has been decided in these cases, they are important in that they confirm just how expansive the inherent jurisdiction of the courts in such cases is, extending as far as to prevent parents from removing their child to another jurisdiction to pursue alternative treatment. In this paper, we argue that the current threshold for intervention is too low. We argue that prima facie decision-making authority about a child's medical care should rest with the child's parents, affording them the ability to choose between the range of medical options available. This authority should yield only where the parents’ decision carries a “serious risk of significant harm” to the child, at which point the court then has the authority to intervene. When it does so, the court should then apply the best interests approach.

EU agencies have mushroomed in recent years and new agencies, such as those in the financial arena, can have far-reaching quasi-regulatory and supervisory powers. These developments raise fundamental questions as to their constitutional standing, the delegation of powers and how to wrestle the challenges of independence and accountability. This paper considers ESMA, the most ambitious new financial sector agency. It examines ESMA's governance and accountability mechanisms and makes normative proposals to better balance the competing supranational and national interests within it. Such refinements should also be implemented in conjunction with additional accountability requirements, particularly a greater role for the European Parliament. This reshaping is vital to guarantee ESMA's autonomy and legitimacy.

This article explores how the legal system has constructed, over time, the concept of the “wage”. Drawing on insights from classical political economy it contrasts a conception of the wage as the cost of social reproduction (a “social wage”), with the neoclassical notion of the wage as the price of a commodity (a “market wage”) that we see embedded in legal and political discourse today. Drawing on historical sources, it explores how these competing ideas of the wage have been reconstructed in juridical language in case law and legislation over time, exploring at the same time the impact of this process on the relationship between minimum wages and tax credits. This analysis is then used to shed light on the conception of the wage embedded in the National Minimum Wage Act 1998, providing a critical re-evaluation of the “National Living Wage” introduced in 2016.

This article seeks to defend the law of unjust enrichment against the recent influential attacks of Robert Stevens (“The Unjust Enrichment Disaster” (2018) 134 LQR 574) and Lionel Smith (“Restitution: A New Start?” in Devonshire and Havelock, The Impact of Equity and Restitution in Commerce (2018), ch. 5). A central argument here put forward is that there is a law of unjust enrichment, embodying a cause of action in unjust enrichment, which unites what Stevens and Smith see as disparate categories. A linked but separate argument is that, within the central area of unjust enrichment, Stevens is incorrect to regard the defendant's acceptance of performance as being necessary to trigger restitution albeit that acceptance may be relevant in establishing that the defendant has been enriched. A further, and more specific, argument is that, with great respect, the overruling, as a matter of principle, of Sempra Metals Ltd. v IRC [2007] UKHL 34, [2008] 1 A.C. 561, by the Supreme Court in Prudential Assurance Ltd. v HMRC [2018] UKSC 39, [2018] 3 WLR 652, seems unfortunate and appears to have been influenced by Stevens's excessively narrow approach to the meaning of “at the expense of”.

This article is concerned with the question of whether malice is an appropriate touchstone of liability in tort law. It begins by identifying four torts in which malice may properly be regarded as an ingredient of liability (distinguishing various other torts, such as private nuisance and defamation, in which malice plays a merely secondary and contingent role). Having identified these four torts – namely malicious prosecution, abuse of process, misfeasance in a public office and lawful means conspiracy – the article then seeks to identify a common juridical thread which links them together. So doing serves to rebut the allegation, often made in respect of all them, namely, that they are anomalous actions. It then concludes by considering the individual worth of these torts, bearing in mind the important difference between not being anomalous on the one hand, and being positively meritorious on the other. It concludes that a respectable defence of each of the four torts can be made even though malice is an atypical touchstone of liability.

In this article I address the question of whether the omissions principle – the principle that the common law does not impose liability for omissions – applies with the same force in negligence cases involving public authority defendants as in cases involving private defendants. My argument is that the answer depends upon the answer to a prior question: can a duty of care be based upon the public law powers and duties of a public authority? In making my argument, I refute the views both of those who insist that a claim in negligence against a public authority can be rejected purely because it relates to an omission not falling within one of the standard exceptions to the omissions principle and of those who insist that such a claim can succeed while at the same denying that a duty of care can be based on a public authority's public law powers and duties.