Recent government proposals seeking to the reform of the law of gambling are likely to have unintended consequences for the law of insurance. This paper considers the likely impact of the judicial enforcement of wagers on the divisions between insurance and gambling and, in particular, the doctrine of insurable interest.

New Labour's recent ‘Welfare to Work’ policies encourage people with disabilities, where possible, to enter and participate in the workplace. The current policy of ‘inclusion’ is supported by the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA), which came into force in December 1996 providing those who are discriminated against on the grounds of their disability with an action against their employer. Drawing upon recently decided case law, this paper considers what the DDA offers those who are discriminated against because of a mental illness. I argue that policy-makers, courts and tribunals, because the relationship between physical and mental impairments is often misunderstood, fail to reflect the varied nature of or understand the stigma associated with, mental ill health. The law is thus at present incapable of providing adequate protection for mentally impaired individuals who attempt to participate or remain in the labour market, and new approaches, which are sensitive to the diverse nature of disability, need to be considered.

The authority of the classic Diceyan approach to parliamentary sovereignty has, as is well known, been called into question as a result of the UK's membership of the EU and human rights legislation. However, this paper focuses on the implications of Scottish devolution for the orthodox doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. The constitution, and the legislative supremacy of Westminster within it, remains a controversial political issue in Scotland. Accordingly, rather than hypothesising inductively from constitutional doctrine, consideration is given to the nature of the interaction between the socio-political forces which underlie Scottish devolution and the concept of parliamentary sovereignty. It is contended that the foundations of the Scottish political order have shifted in a way which is already presenting significant challenges. Moreover, looking to the future, the pressure on the orthodox Diceyan approach is likely to intensify over time. In this context, it is questionable whether constitutional conventions of the sort which are already evolving or the possible development by the courts of more formal constitutional norms will, in the long term, be able to reconcile parliamentary sovereignty with Scottish political reality. Indeed, it is argued that — from a Scottish perspective at least — the viability of classic, Diceyan parliamentary sovereignty as a meaningful constitutional doctrine will be called into question in the years to come.

In the UK, home education, or home-schooling, is an issue that has attracted little public, governmental or academic attention. Yet the number of children who are home educated is steadily increasing and the phenomenon has been referred to as a‘quiet revolution’. This paper neither celebrates nor denigrates home educators; its aim, rather, is to identify and critically examine the two dominant discourses that define the way in which the issue is currently understood. First, the legal discourse of parental rights, which forms the basis of the legal framework and, secondly, a child psychology/common-sense discourse of ‘socialisation’, within which school attendance is perceived as necessary for healthy child development. Drawing on historical sources, doctrinal human rights and child psychology and informed by post-structural and feminist perspectives, this article suggests that both discourses function as alternative methods of governance and that the conflicting ‘rights claims’ of parents and children obscure public interests and fundamental questions about the purpose of education.

There is increasing concern with the cost effectiveness of charities' fund-raising activities. Using a recent decision of the US Supreme Court as a backdrop, this paper examines the regulation of professional fund-raising and the associated issues relating to fund-raising costs. Whilst there are no legal limits on fund-raising costs in England and Wales, there are some elements of legal regulation which may indirectly impose some limitations on costs. As well as these legal tools, a number of other mechanisms, both current and proposed, which may help donors to decide which charities to support, taking into account their fund-raising efficiency, will also be considered. The paper finally acknowledges that whilst limiting the costs of fund-raising is a desirable objective, achieving this aim is by no means simple. It is hoped that current and proposed measures based on the theory of ‘let the donor’ decide will help to achieve this aim.

To be recognised as a legal person is to be individualised: it is to be rendered a separate and distinct being, the unitary bearer of rights and duties. By contrast, to be assigned a legal sex is to be grouped with others, to be placed within one of only two sexes, as either a man or a woman, a necessarily crude dichotomy. It is to be legally defined by the characteristics we are said to share with half the human population rather than regarded as an individual in our own right. This paper entails a critical comparative analysis of the legal concept of person and the legal concept of sex: of maleness or femaleness. It questions the logic and defensibility of this double characterisation of our legal lives. How can law reconcile its deep commitment to individualism with its persisting commitment to a two-sex system?