Given that the modern law of contract is geared to the protection of reasonable expectation, is this approach capable of extension to contracting in electronic environments, particularly to mass consumer contracting via the Internet? The position taken in this paper is that the gearing of the modern law is largely appropriate. Applying such a modern approach to the provision of dedicated legal regimes for electronic commerce, the principle of ‘medium neutrality’ puts electronic environments on the same footing as traditional contracting environments; and the principles of fair dealing developed for traditional consumer marketplaces are copied across to virtual shopping sites. Whilst we contend that a revolution in the technology of contracting does not imply a revolution in contractual principles, we accept that it will not always be straightforward for the law to implement or respond to the reasonable expectations of Internet contractors (particularly so where, as is increasingly the case, contractors from radically different cultures are connected by the Internet).

Recent years have seen a rise in the number of manslaughter prosecutions following deaths caused by improper medical treatment. Such prosecutions of individual doctors are problematic because, in many cases, a complex pattern of failures has contributed to the death. One alternative approach would be that of pursuing corporate manslaughter prosecutions against hospital trusts, but current law makes such prosecutions difficult. The Law Commission's proposed offence of corporate killing could, if adopted, form the basis of prosecutions following some hospital deaths. The article considers arguments for and against the use of criminal law in response to deaths caused by medical negligence.

This paper is intended to contribute to an understanding of how Jews and Judaism have been constructed in English case law. Using an analysis of law as ‘racialised’, the paper observes not just ‘the Jews’ of English law, but also the complex production of ‘Englishness’ (and English law) itself: The specific focus of the paper is upon the law of trusts; in particular, legal judgments adjudicating testamentary dispositions where the Jewish settlor has insisted upon progeny ‘marrying in’ in order to inherit. Jewishness is constructed as both ‘faith’ and ‘race’, and the paper considers these categories and their interaction. While the judges tend to find the wills in question uncertain, it is argued that it is in fact ‘Jews’ and ‘Judaism’ with which the courts are unable to come to terms.

This article critically appraises the UK government's recently published Consultation Paper on the future of the anti-terrorism laws. The author considers the likely effect of the Human Rights Act 1998 on the impact of any legislation that might flow from the government's proposals. The interaction between human rights law and anti-terrorism legislation provides a useful case study of the likely effects of incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law. The author argues that many of these effects have not been anticipated by the drafters of the anti-terrorism proposals, with the result that many of their suggested changes to the law will be vulnerable to legal challenge if not sharply modified before enactment. The author concludes by considering the likelihood that, over time, successive governments will learn to tailor their legislation to the requirements of the Convention, even in the anti-terrorism field, but that in the short-term a period of legislative instability is to be expected.

After the Aberfan disaster on 21 October 1966, which killed 144 people, 116 of them children, the Charity Commission, duty-bound to uphold an outdated and inflexible law, intervened and obstructed payments by the charitable disaster fund to individual victims and for the cemetery memorial. It did not intervene to protect the fund from a government raid on its money to pay for the removal of dangerous coal tips above Aberfan – a raid that seems dubiously justifiable in charity law. The failures of regulation after Aberfan are discussed; some of them have since been remedied, some not.

The purpose of this article is to examine whether legal culture has an influence on the implementation of EC law in member states by means of one case study; the failure of the French legal community to recognise and apply a prohibition against indirect as well as direct discrimination, which is well established in EC legislation and case law. It is suggested that legal cultural factors may have some role to play. The focus of French legal culture on the importance of legal certainty has contributed to an emphasis on a formal concept of equality within the law, to which the concept of indirect discrimination is not suited. The paradoxical role of the French judge, who is given very little power in theory and who is therefore able to take the inevitable policy decisions behind the cloak of judicial anonymity, means that she is able to avoid the obligation placed on her by EC law to implement a prohibition on indirect sex discrimination.