As someone who has spent a lot of time examining the underlying economic and social factors which affect lawyers and the services which they provide, I have to admit that I have no special insights which inform me how the legal profession will alter over the next few years. So much has happened in the recent past, such is the state of flux in the wake of the government's green and white papers that it would be a very foolish person who would confidently predict developments. Even the enactment of the Courts and Legal Services Bill will only provide a limited framework for the changes which are now taking place and further legislation may be necessary within a short period.

‘English law, having committed itself to a rather technical and schematic doctrine of contract, in application takes a practical approach, often at the cost of forcing the facts to fit uneasily into the marked slots of offer, acceptance and consideration. Although the context of these remarks was the necessity to analyse the complex of relations between the parties involved in a carriage of goods by sea- cargo owners, carriers, stevedores, and so on- into classical offer and acceptance, with identifiable consideration, this was not, as such, the root of Lord Wilberforce's difficulty. Rather, the source of the problem was the notoriously inconvenient doctrine of privity of contract which, in The Eurymedon, prevented the negligent stevedores from being able to rely straightforwardly upon the time limit provisions in the contract of carriage.

I am going to attack a particular type of undergraduate Criminal Law course. I do not have in mind any particular course currently taught. I do not assume that it is the textbooks which provide the model from which courses proceed. The sort ofcourse upon which I want to make an attack has many features, amongst which the following are to be found:

English common law is often understood to provide for the resolution of social disputes predominantly by resort to legal rules. Whilst there may be initially reasons for a rule which do not constitute legal reasons, once the rule becomes promulgated in a statute or is embodied in a judgment of a higher court then the application of the rule in future cases is justified by that very promulgation or embodiment. No further appeal to the social reasons originally behind the rule, what might be referred to as the ‘primary reason’ for a rule, is necessary. According to the theory any subsequent dispute to which the rule is addressed will be resolved one way or the other because there exists a distinctly legal reason for reaching that decision which is independent of the content of law and independent of, for example, social or moral considerations.

The orthodox rules on validity of marriage at common law are that formal validity of marriage is governed by the lex loci celebrationis and essential validity of marriage (or capacity to marry) is governed by the personal law, ie the law of domicile. Neither the lex loci celebrationis nor the lex fori ought to have any interest in such questions of essential validity.

According to such orthodoxy there are two rules of English law that are suspect and in need of reconsideration. First, there is (arguably) the rule that the parties to a marriage do not need to have capacity to marry by the lex loci celebrationis when they marry abroad but do need such capacity when the marriage takes place in England. The second rule subject to attack is the notorious ‘exception’ based on Sottomayer v de Barros (No 2)2 which allows a foreign incapacity to be ignored when an English domiciliary marries in England, but not when the marriage takes place abroad.

Should those who have served as members of the jury in a newsworthy trial be restrained by the criminal law from recounting what transpired in the jury room?

The issues surrounding the legitimacy or otherwise of jury room disclosures pose peculiar problems in the administration of justice. They do so because such disclosures are made, not by journalists assigned to cover the trial (as at present), nor via the medium of televising the event (as may shortly be the case), nor simply by those most intimately involved in the conduct and outcome ofthe trial (such as the accused or counsel). The special feature which sets jury room disclosures apart is the fact that they emanate from those who are directly responsible for the verdict in the case. Viewed in this way, the accounts given by ex-jurors should perhaps be considered in broadly the same light as the recollections of the person less directly responsible for the outcome, namely the trial judge. And, indeed, we do have a wellknown instance of the latter type of account in Lord Devlin's Easing the Passing , the story of the trial for murder in 1957 of Dr John Bodkin Adams.