The Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Act 2015 entered into force on 13 April 2015. It is too soon for it to have been considered judicially, and it has not yet been subjected to sustained academic analysis. Accordingly, this article considers its impact. In doing so, it situates the Act in its social context and draws attention to the fact that it is part of a large network of statutes that share the same objectives. It is argued, contrary to prevailing views, that parts of the Act change the law. It is also maintained that the Act’s reach is not confined to personal injury cases or even to tort cases. It potentially applies far more widely, including to contractual actions that allege a failure to take reasonable care. In addition to analysing the Act, this article investigates why the legislature might want to restate the common law (which is what the Act does in part), whether replicating the common law is desirable and, if the legislature is bent on restating the common law, how it should go about doing so.

A great many people share the sentiment that it is a serious wrong to behave with gross disrespect towards deceased bodies. It may therefore come as a surprise to learn that, currently, English and Welsh criminal law is incapable of dealing with cases of corpse desecration. Drawing upon provisions found in other jurisdictions, I argue that this legal gap ought to be filled by a new criminal offence. This should turn on the objective wrong of disrespect to the corpse as an important symbol of a once-living person. This framing is important in order to correctly identify what it is that makes desecration rightly criminal, assign accurate labels and to avoid unwarranted over-criminalisation. I conclude by suggesting that only when such an offence is enacted will we be able to ensure that the respect that we deserve in life is reflected in the treatment of our deceased bodies.

A growing number of jurisdictions treat ‘hardcore’ cartel conduct as crime, in the belief that the threat of incarceration is necessary for deterrence. The significant economic harm caused by cartels is generally undisputed, but there is disagreement over whether cartel conduct is morally offensive enough to justify criminalisation. Critics argue that it is another example of ‘over-criminalisation’, seeking to regulate an activity that is morally ambiguous. Those in favour have sought to formulate normative justifications for why cartel conduct should be crime. Many of these rely on the assumption that members of society expect markets to be competitive and believe cartels are undesirable. This paper makes a significant contribution by testing this question empirically. Public surveys from the UK, Germany, Italy and the US are used to critically analyse the extent to which normative justifications for cartel conduct have empirical backing.

This paper analyses the jurisprudence on the relevance of the commercial context to principles of the law of equity and trusts. We criticise recent UK Supreme Court decisions in the area (chiefly Williams v Central Bank of Nigeria, FHR European Ventures v Cedar Capital Partners and AIB Group v Mark Redler & Co) and identify a trend of the ‘commercialisation’ of the issues. The cases are placed in comparative context and it is argued that there is an unsatisfactory pattern of judicial reasoning, exhibiting a preference for some degree of unarticulated flexibility in commercial adjudication. But the price of that flexibility is a lack of doctrinal coherence and the development of equitable principles that will apply in, and beyond, the commercial context. We also argue that this trend has important implications for the coming rounds of Supreme Court appointments.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and UN Human Rights Committee have reached contradictory decisions in cases concerning the right to manifest religion. This discrepancy calls into question the universality of the right and is problematic from the perspective of legal certainty. Consequently, this article explores the extent to which the diverging decisions of these two bodies are compatible with a good faith interpretation of the right to manifest religion. A good faith interpretation of the right is identified by utilising the travaux préparatoires and subsequent interpretations. It is argued that by failing to scrutinise the necessity of restrictions and the role of secularism, the ECtHR has undermined this good faith interpretation and, in so doing, is not fulfilling its role as ‘the conscience of Europe’.

The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 ended the prohibition on female jurors. This did not mean that English and Welsh juries became representative institutions overnight, however: the property qualifications ensured that juries were still drawn from the top few per cent of the local population; and the 1919 Act expressly permitted trial judges to order single-sex juries where the nature of the evidence required it. The continued existence of peremptory challenges allowed defendants in felony trials to exclude women from their juries whenever they preferred to be tried only by men. Finally, some judges permitted female jurors to excuse themselves from particular trials if they so desired. This paper explores the effects these factors had on the practical enjoyment of the female jury franchise after the passing of the 1919 Act. It finds that the picture is remarkably localised: rates of women serving on juries were very different for the five assize circuits for which adequate records exist (Midland, Oxford, South Eastern, South Wales and Western). By exploring these issues, this paper reveals how flexible the female jury franchise was in its early years, and shows how important local differences were in keeping women off the jury.

There is an ongoing debate amongst hate crime scholars about the categories of victims that should be included within hate crime legislation. Some commentators argue that affording protection to groups based on predefined characteristics results in many victims being excluded from the legislation. They would prefer a more inclusive approach that would offer protection to a potentially limitless number of groups. This paper considers the question from a doctrinal perspective, and argues that a principled way of deciding the characteristics of hate crime is required. It will conclude that the core concern of hate crime legislation is with the furthering of the broader equality agenda and, as such, the victims of hate crime should form an exclusive group based on those characteristics protected under equality legislation. This approach can help provide a theoretical framework for hate crime legislation that can be more easily accommodated within criminal law principles.

The concept of a right to the truth is increasingly utilised in different settings to empower victims and societies to find out about past abuses linked to conflict or authoritarianism. Since the last comprehensive study of this topic in 2006, there has been little attempt to draw together the advancements of fragmented practices. Recent developments in European human rights call for a fresh analysis of the right to the truth as a freestanding principle linked to, but separate from, the state duty to investigate. This paper takes stock of the more recent evolutions of the right to the truth and contributes to its independent conceptualisation. The first part investigates whether there is growing consistency between the Inter-American and European human rights systems around the contours of the right to the truth, as linked to survivors’ right to know the past and to access justice (make claims) as an individual and collective matter. The second part broadens the discussion to the status of the right to the truth under international law in light of the ECHR jurisprudence, and considers whether the available legal categories are suited to its formalisation.

This paper focuses on the potential impact of the statutory authority defence on HS2 once the line is put into operation. The defence was forged in the heat of the railway revolution. It protects operators from liability in nuisance in respect of certain harms resulting from exercising the statutory powers under which the scheme is authorised. However, the nineteenth century case-law established that the defence would only operate in respect of harms that are the inevitable consequence of using those powers. In common with its Victorian forebears, the HS2 project has been authorised by way of an Act of Parliament. Arguably, the HS2 Act is one of the longest, most detailed and highly scrutinised pieces of legislation in history. Nevertheless, it is argued that the scheme may cause uncompensated losses that are not inevitable. In this respect, common law actions may yet have an important role to play.

English juries do not provide reasons for their verdicts. This paper argues that transparency is a fundamental value in modern decision making, and that reform is needed to trial by jury so that verdicts are routinely accompanied by explanations. It examines the options that exist to incorporate explained verdicts in the English criminal trial and concludes that accountability and legitimacy would be enhanced through the use of a trained, independent lay facilitator to chair the deliberation process and draft an explained verdict.

Since its inception, patent law has had many faces, manifesting different aims and functions. The latest recalibrations of the aims and functions of patent law are striking because – at its core – patent law itself has not changed significantly in this time. This paper examines the chameleon-like nature of the function of patents, tracking historical transformations from the privilege as an instrument of trade policy, to patents as an incentive/reward to invent and disclose the invention, and the most recent shift towards viewing patents as necessary for innovation. In particular, the paper addresses whether the latest shift represents a reversion to privilege-like functions, due to the analogous focus on commercialisation, and argues that this is not the case because of the fundamental move to focusing on patentees rather than society as a whole and to seeing patents as property.