TWO decisions of the Supreme Court – Benkharbouche v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs [2017] UKSC 62, [2017] 3 W.L.R. 957, and Reyes v Al-Malki [2017] UKSC 61, [2017] 3 W.L.R. 923 – demonstrate the limitations of state and diplomatic immunity in employment disputes, and raise important questions concerning the interaction between immunity and other rules of international law.

MISAPPREHENSIONS about the UK's constitution are ten-a-penny. Most prominent among them, perhaps, are the notions that the UK “has no constitution” and that fundamental rights cannot meaningfully exist without an “entrenched” or “written constitution”. To that list of misunderstandings can now be added the ideas – brought to light by the Supreme Court's judgment in R. (UNISON) v Lord Chancellor [2017] UKSC 51, [2017] 3 W.L.R. 409 – that the judicial system, far from being a non-negotiable feature of any constitutional democracy, is nothing more than a public service, and that access to it can be regulated by the executive accordingly. To describe UNISON as a welcome corrective to such misconceptions would be to engage in rash understatement. In a tour de force that ought to be compulsory reading for every Minister and parliamentarian, the Court elucidates the true value of independent courts and tribunals, illuminates the common law's potential as a guarantor of basic rights, and reiterates an axiomatic set of constitutional home truths.

InRiddell [2017] EWCA Crim 413, [2017] 1 W.L.R. 3593, the Court of Appeal held that self-defence could be a defence to an offence not inherently involving the use of force, namely, dangerous driving.

SIR Brian Leveson's approval of the third deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) in Serious Fraud Office v Rolls-Royce plc [2017] Lloyd's Rep. F.C. 249 is the most significant addition to the growing canon of case law on DPAs. This new enforcement tool was added to the UK prosecutors’ armoury by the Crime and Courts Act 2013. Following the successful use of deferrals to tackle corporate crime in the US, the Act allows an organisation to avoid prosecution for certain corporate crimes by entering into an agreement with a designated prosecutor, under court supervision, whereby prosecution is deferred pending successful compliance with certain conditions, which may include payment of a substantial fine.

ON 18 October 2017, the UK Supreme Court decided Armes v Nottinghamshire County Council [2017] UKSC 60. The Court ruled that a local authority could be vicariously liable for intentional torts committed by foster parents against a child whom the authority had placed in their care. The outcome was not entirely unexpected. Less than two decades ago it would have been inconceivable. After all, isn't it the case that the common law does not recognise a general principle of liability in tort for the acts of third parties? And that in so far as it does, it holds an employer vicariously liable for a tort committed by an employee in the course of their employment? This is a very long way from the facts of Armes.

THE key issue for determination by the Supreme Court in Ivey v Genting Casinos (UK) Ltd. [2017] UKSC 67, [2017] 3 W.L.R. 1212 was whether the crime of cheating at gambling, contrary to s. 42 of the Gambling Act 2005, requires proof of dishonesty. Even though the Court unanimously held that it did not, the Court went on to consider the appropriate test of dishonesty in both criminal and civil law and, in doing so, adopted a unified test which is essentially objective.