This paper contends that a feminist legal curriculum is necessary for legal education, and that it is also necessary for feminism. It argues that feminism is more than simply one of a number of useful critical perspectives, and that it must be located centrally within the law school and the legal curriculum in order to be effective. In accepting that a black-letter training has many merits and that the current core curriculum has value, the paper nevertheless suggests that both require substantive modifications and new critical dimensions. Specifically, to meet its obligations to our students, the legal curriculum needs to incorporate subjects relevant to women's experience, to make space for women's viewpoints and to offer feminist perspectives in every area of law - and these must be compulsory, not optional, additions. Finally, the paper concludes that implementation of such a curriculum is not only desirable, but also possible, and may indeed become a policy imperative as well as a feminist one.

The law of theft, as understood in Gomez and Hinks, has been the occasion of almost unanimous academic condemnation and of robust dissenting opinions in the House of Lords. While much of the critical discussion is sophisticated and challenging, it is important that the baby is not to be expelled with the bathwater. We suggest that one argument in favour of the current position is that it offers distinct protection to some of the more vulnerable members of society. This advantage ought nevertheless to be sacrificed if it can be purchased only at the cost of violating the rule of law and the harm principle. But our examination of these ideas reveals that the price need not be paid. The rule of law contains not one idea, but a plurality of ideas, many of which support the current position. As for the harm principle, it is notable that Hinks does not castigate harmless behaviour; rather it attacks the wrong of exploitation. This raises many difficult issues, but we argue that unless such exploitative behaviour is explicitly addressed in Legislation, reforming the current ‘broad’ understanding of the law in favour of a ‘reductive’ account assimilating theft to non-voluntary transfers would be a retrograde step. In principle the new concern for protecting the vulnerable from exploitation is welcome.

While recent public attention has focused on disputes concerning the fate of the dead such as the Bristol and Alder Hey organ retention scandals, this paper considers a much less publicised area of dispute which has nevertheless generated a significant amount of case law and potentially affects a much wider proportion of society. The paper looks at conflicts which arise when relatives cannot agree on how to bury their dead, the motives behind such disputes and the factors which influence their resolution. It examines the legal framework which has been applied by courts to date, proposes alternative solutions to this framework and questions the potential impact of the Human Rights Act 1998 on family burial conflicts.

This paper critically evaluates the contractual theories of companies and company law which have risen to prominence in recent years. It argues that history reveals as misguided the attempt to depict public companies as essentially contractual in nature, one of the most striking features of the development in nineteenth century Britain of the first body of (joint stock) company law having been its gradual move away from the principles of agency and contract underlying the law of partnership from which it emerged. Against this backdrop, the paper moves on to explore the ways in which theorists have tried, against the odds, to characterise public Companies as contractual and the reasons for their attempting to do so. While it might be apposite to view many private or closely held companies through the prism of contract, the paper argues, public companies and much of company law itself can only properly be understood when viewed through the prism of financial property. Indeed, it suggests, this is implicitly confirmed by the Company Law Review and (paradoxically) by the recent work of corporate governance specialists and financial economists in the US, with its focus on investor protection and the preservation of financial property's integrity, and its emphasis on the crucial role of (public) regulation in these processes. The paper concludes that these property forms are not merely the objects, but the products of regulation and that this has important implications for our understanding of both company law and corporate governance. In making these arguments, it seeks to cast some light on the nature of intangible property, on the differences between contract-based and property-based rights, on the neo-liberal idea of ‘deregulation’, and on the unity and scope of company law as a legal category.

Following the Gillick case in 1986, it was recognised that mature minors were owed a duty of confidentiality in respect of their medical information. Subsequent cases confirmed that the duty was also owed to non-competent children, including infants, but without explaining the basis for finding the existence of such a duty and its scope. It is particularly unclear when and upon what legal basis a doctor could disclose information to parents when their child wished to keep it confidential. This paper will examine the law of confidentiality as it applies to children, identifying issues which are problematic. Developments in the law of personal confidences which have taken place as a result of the Human Rights Act 1998, and the recognition of Article 8 rights as part of the law, will be reviewed and analysed from the perspective of the duty of confidence owed to children in respect of their medical information. Finally, the paper will offer an explanation of a basis for disclosure to parents which minimises violations of a minor's autonomy.