This paper examines the recent trends in regional and international tribunals that relate to the position of the victim in the criminal process. Recent decisions in both the European Court of Human Rights and other international tribunals have illustrated a new and progressive attitude towards the role of the crime victim. This can be attributed, in part, to the breakdown of the public/private divide in human rights law and the mutually expanding parameters of both human rights discourse and criminal law. It is argued here that cross-fertilisation between these disciplines, which is widely evident in current policy making and judicial decision-making, has meant that the traditional failures of human rights law and the criminal law to protect victims are being addressed – at least to some extent. A line of European and international case law has developed which suggests that victims of crime have acquired a number of enforceable substantive rights, similar to those held by victims of abuse of power. While the potential for victims to be further empowered will always be inherently limited in adversarial jurisdictions, it is none the less a welcome development that a clear trend is emerging which indicates that international policy makers and tribunals are viewing criminal justice issues in a much more holistic manner.

This paper examines the interplay between discourses of exclusion and inclusion in the relationship between land law and human rights. It explores the common law conception of property in land and its relationship with the conceptual structure of property before suggesting that the particular form the conception takes in the English common law is problematic as a discourse of exclusion in the light of inclusive human rights considerations. However, further submerged exclusions in law are also explored, suggesting a problematic ideological continuity between land law and human rights law, notwithstanding identifiable surface tensions between them as contrasting discourses. Once the continuity of hidden exclusions is identified, the paper explores the theoretical unity between the deep structure of property as ‘propriety’ and human rights as ‘what is due’, and suggests their mutual potential for embracing more inclusive concerns. Finally, two modest proposals for future theoretical reform are offered: the need for a more anthropologically adequate and inclusive construct of the human being as legal actor, and the need for a more differentiated, context-sensitive formulation of the common law1 property conception, one capable of reconciling conceptually necessary elements of excludability with inclusive human rights impulses.

From the 1970 decision of Corbett onwards, legal narratives established two modes of categorising complex social identity in relation to sex and gender. These narratives responded to complex identity questions by attempting to simplify identity by limiting it to biological factors or anatomical and psychological factors.

I demonstrate that the law's struggle to ‘make’ sex is reflected to a certain extent by feminism's trajectory, in that feminisms have also attempted to grapple with these complex questions, and often opted for the same simple solutions to the problem of understanding gender, sex and identity. The aim of this paper is to show that some strands of feminist theory, specifically post-structuralist feminist theory, can produce a more progressive and constructive approach to determining sex in their ability to illuminate the complexities of identity. In particular, my aim is to urge those courts that ‘make’ sex to consider these complexities and the implications that flow from placing transgender people into rigid and narrow categories.

This paper considers the effectiveness of the range of mechanisms open to children in need in order to make local authorities accountable in respect of their duties towards such children under the Children Act 1989, Pt III and Sch 2. By effectiveness, what is meant is either that these mechanisms help to ensure that the relevant duties are fulfilled, or that they provide adequate redress when they are not fulfilled. In simple terms, without any effective accountability, the Children Act 1989 duties count for very little.

Almost every leading work on the law of confidence mentions the possibility of a declaration of a constructive trust as a remedy for a claim involving an abuse of confidence. Apart from the Canadian Supreme Court, no other appellate court in the Commonwealth has seriously debated this issue. This paper investigates the legitimacy of the use of the constructive trust in this context.

The pursuit of security as a matter of domestic policy stands high on the political agenda of many Western nations and is a booming area of private investment. This repays close attention to what is meant when the concept of security is invoked as a justification of public policy or private practice. This paper examines the various meanings and differing constructions of security as a negative or positive presence, as a material or symbolic good, as a public good or private service, and as a response to external or internal threats. It observes how the language of security is differentiated also according to local legal cultures and calls for comparative analysis of the meaning and usage of the term in different jurisdictions. It suggests some possible differences in the structural arrangements for the pursuit of security that arise from differing relationships among the state, private sector and civil society. And it concludes by mapping out some apparent variants on the public-private divide that might profitably inform comparative analysis of the practices, as opposed to the rhetoric, of security.