This article seeks to contribute to a growing debate within legal studies about the relationship between women, men and the ‘private life’ of the law school. Via an exploration of the economic, political and cultural shifts presently transforming understandings of what academic life entails, the article seeks to unpack the contours of the material and emotional economy in which (legal) academic labour now takes place. As a particular kind of knowledge worker within an increasingly corporatised university environment, a shift in the dominant gender configurations of higher education (marked notably, I suggest, by the rise of ‘entrepreneurial masculinities’) has itself resulted in a complex shift in the landscape of doctrinal and socio-legal legal scholarship, in the hierarchy of law schools more generally and in understandings of what a ‘successful’ legal academic career entails. Conclusions address the possible implications of these developments for legal academics seeking to re-negotiate a growing tension between ‘work/life’ commitments at a time of rapid change and uncertainty within academic life. Importantly, these are changes which, I argue, have a gendered dimension and are themselves playing out in some unpredictable and at times – for both women and men – frequently contradictory ways.

This paper considers certain proposals made by the European Commission on environmental liability, particularly in its White Paper on Environmental Liability. Civil liability has made a relatively minor contribution to environmental policy in recent decades, given its many well-known shortcomings when applied to environmental problems. Its usefulness, however, is being reassessed, given something of a consensus that traditional forms of regulation are reaching the limits of their effectiveness and that new approaches to environmental law are necessary. This paper will consider how the White Paper would move beyond the limitations of existing civil liability frameworks, in particular the fundamental incompatibility between the interests recognised in English tort law and the interests at stake in environmental protection. The Commission's recent retreat from the more ambitious elements of the White Paper may be a matter of concern.

Since the decision of the House of Lords to overturn its earlier judgment in the case of Re Pinochet (No 2) the courts have closed the floodgates to further claims of judicial bias by adopting a restrictive approach to the rules on judicial disqualification. In the light of these restrictions on claims of individual bias, this paper reviews the institutional mechanisms for safeguarding impartiality at a collective level through the appointments process and the system for allocating cases to judges. It highlights weaknesses in these arrangements such as the lack of openness, the potential for inappropriate political control and the lack of diversity in the composition of the judiciary. It argues that as the concept of impartiality is increasingly linked to these institutional arrangements the continuing legitimacy of the judiciary requires that these problems are addressed.

This paper reflects on the achievements of feminism within the legal academy. Rather than offer an encyclopaedic account of feminist legal scholarship, it seeks instead to define, in broad terms, the aims, the spirit and the methods of legal feminism, identifying the commonalities among feminist scholars. It suggests that it is the critical study of law as ‘a form of life’, to borrow from Wittgenstein, which perhaps best characterises the shared endeavour of legal feminists. The paper identifies the major intellectual and political difficulties encountered, and also engendered, by feminists in the course of their work, and it assesses the impact of feminism on mainstream jurisprudence.

This paper examines the law on the proprietary rights of people in respect of their bodies, body parts and tissue. Proprietary rights include rights of ownership and control, The paper argues that the context in which judicial decisions are made and policy recommendations are developed sometimes results in a patchwork of legal principles. Being aware of the context in which different aspects of the law have been developed enables us to understand why principles have been developed, what is needed to reconcile them and how we can establish a coherent regulatory regime. The paper then proposes such a scheme to deal with property and control rights in this area. It argues that people (or the personal representatives of people who have died) should have a personal autonomy right to be consulted about the use of their corpse or their excised body parts or tissue in teaching, research and commercialisation of biological inventions, and to refuse or to impose conditions. They should not, however, have a right of ultimate ownership in their corpse, body parts or tissue, except for the limited right of personal representatives to gain possession of bodies and body parts of people who have died for burial or cremation if they so wish. That right should not extend to tissue preserved on slides, in paraffin wax or similar format. That tissue should be subject to proprietary interests in favour only of the hospital, research institute, its staff or the people to whom they transfer it. The same rule should apply to bodies or body parts held by a hospital or research institute with the consent of the person concerned, though the bodies or body parts may ultimately have to be returned for burial or cremation. Tissue removed under a statutory requirement without consent, such as for coronial investigation or forensic tests, should be used only for the purposes prescribed by the relevant legislation.

This paper considers the viability of the office of Lord Chancellor. It focuses on the Lord Chancellor's judicial role and argues that a number of factors, most notably the dominance of his executive responsibilities, the political influence and style of the current incumbent, Lord Irvine, and the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights through the Human Rights Act 1998, make its retention unsustainable. It therefore concludes that the Lord Chancellor should relinquish the role and no longer sit as judge. In the light of this conclusion, it moves on to look at the Lord Chancellor's responsibility for judicial appointments, his role as head of the judiciary, his position as a departmental minister in Cabinet and his function as Speaker in the House of Lords, and suggests that the nature of the office of Lord Chancellor is such that once the judicial role is relinquished, justifications for these other roles also disappear. The office should therefore be consigned to history, with other institutions assuming its responsibilities.