Few lawyers would dissent from the view, voiced by the Law Commission in 1989 in their Report on Trusts of Land, that the trust for sale mechanism, introduced in 1926 to regulate the co-ownership of land, had for long ceased to be appropriate to the conditions of modern home ownership. Every conveyancing practitioner will have experienced the difficulty of explaining to clients about to marry that the matrimonial home which they were so eagerly looking forward to occupying would by law be owned by them as trustees, subject to an immediate binding trust for sale. No doubt in practice discretion played the better part of valour. Soon after qualifying, solicitors learned to abandon any attempt to explore the mysteries of such an apparent absurdity.

THE concept of ownership is a complex, powerful and controversial idea. In law it explains, justifies and gives moral force to a host of rights and duties as well as serving to legitimate the allocation of wealth and privilege. The influence of this idea is, furthermore, everywhere embodied in the law. In company law, legal and economic conceptions have both rested on and have been shaped by the normative implications of ownership. Historically, ownership was the principal explanation and justification for the central role of shareholders in corporate affairs. As owners, shareholders were entitled to control the management of the company and to the exclusive benefit of the company's activities. Ownership also served to legitimate the corporate form itself. So long as it was owned by individuals the economic and political power of the company was both benign and a bulwark against the intrusion of the state.

In recent years, a number of criminal cases have been reported in which defendants have sought to rely upon the confessions of their co-defendants as proof of their own innocence. The co-defendant may perhaps have admitted that he alone was responsible, or that he and some third party were responsible. His confession may have been made to the police or to some other person. In one case, the father of a girl charged with robbery covertly tape-recorded admissions made to him by one of her two co-defendants. These admissions were damning to that co-defendant, but tended to exonerate the girl.

THE English Law Commission's Consultation Paper “Limitation of Actions” is a long study of a complex subject. The subject has produced a large and detailed literature. Reform is necessary. The occasion of a Consultation Paper should stimulate both substantive and procedural lawyers to think deeply about how this subject, which is truly the gateway to justice, might be re-built.

It is beyond dispute now that corporations have replaced states as the most important makers of waves in the world's economy. It is also firmly established that with the increasing globalisation of that economy corporations operate in many cases far beyond the borders of the country that presided over their birth. A company which crosses frontiers to operate outside its original jurisdiction can bring problems of several different kinds in its wake. A court dealing with such a company may have to ascertain which law is, or should be, the law which regulates its affairs. The company may have internal disorders or may be experiencing difficulties in its external relationships. In seeking to grapple with these problems the jurisdictions of the world are broadly divided into two camps. There are those which look to the law of the place of the company's incorporation to govern these matters, and those which look to the law of the place of the central administration of the company as being the correct law to be supreme in this field. Some jurisdictions take a variety of half-way positions in this debate.