Until recently environmental noise pollution has attracted relatively little attention from Parliament. However, currently, noise is rapidly moving up the political agenda both in the United Kingdom and in the European Union. This article focuses on neighbourhood noise and examines the efficacy of the substantive law as an instrument of environmental control. Potential difficulties in employing nuisance-based environmental standards for noise are also discussed. The article concludes with the author's suggestion that the law is in need of reform. However, there is no single solution to the problem. Regulation, whatever form it takes, will not, of itself provide the complete solution to noise pollution.

In the criminal law it is common to distinguish between motive and intention. One of the main reasons for so doing is that in criminal law we are concerned with the wrongfulness of an action in itself and not the agent's own moral evaluation of that action. For this reason, intention has become central to assessing criminal liability. But a similar problem arises with regard to the term intention. This is because whether or not an agent intends a particular consequence depends upon whether or not it was one of the reasons (that is, explanatory reasons) for which she acted. However, we ought to be interested in the reasons that actually applied to those actions (guiding reasons). Hence, the concept of oblique intention applies where the agent realised that a harmful consequence of her action was virtually certain even though it was not a reason for her action. Some writers suggest that this problem can be solved by including consequences brought about intentionally as well as intended consequences within the concept of intention. And this, they argue, is because the use of the adverb is (either conceptually or causally) related to our moral evaluation of an action. In this essay I show that this is not so. The concept of intention is wholly descriptive. Consequently, we require a suitable supplement or alternative to the concept of intention to reflect the highest degree of moral responsibility for the harmful consequences of our actions.

In a number of high profile disasters, human and financial, in recent years, such as the Piper Alpha oil rig fire and the collapse of the BCCI bank, employees had concerns about the impending disaster but did not raise them for fear of repercussions at work. This has led to increased recognition of the role that employees can play in safeguarding the public interest. In 1998 legislation was finally passed to provide employment protection for employees who raise concerns about malpractice and wrongdoing at work. The Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 (PIDA) provides protection against dismissal and detrimental action where employees make disclosures about a range of specified subjects. Protection is primarily aimed at internal disclosure, but the Act also provides a framework for raising issues externally. This article examines the provisions of the Act and assesses its potential to protect those who risk their livelihoods to raise concerns that are in the public interest.

This article provides a general overview, and analysis of the litigation surrounding General Augusto Pinochet's detention in London in 1998 and the subsequent attempts to extradite him to Spain, for trial on charges relating to human rights abuses committed during the period of his militaty dictatorship in Chile between 1973 and 1990. The complicated sequence of events, from proceedings in the Spanish courts (which started in 1996) up to Pinochet's release from British custody on medical grounds in 2000, is examined und the potential consequences of the two substantive House of Lords decisions are explored from a British-based public international lawyer's perspective. The focus of the analysis is not so much on the detailed technicalities of personal immunity in English law: as on the broad concepts of State jurisdiction over international crimes and immunity for such crimes in international criminal law: notable aspects discussed include the future of universal jurisdiction in customary international law and the position of that law in the UK's municipal courts.

Defamation law offers a unique view of society and the changes it undergoes. When a claim of reputational injury is made, the case exposes the prejudices alive in the particular society at hand; and when the law deems a claim actionable, it recognises and, at some level, lends credence to the prejudices held. The case of Youssoupoff v Metro-Goldwyn Mayer is a case in point. The claim by Princess Youssoupoff in 1934 that an imputation of rape or seduction is libelous reveals underlying currents in English society at the time as to class, nation and gender. The judicial recognition of the claim, and the legal and extra- legal reactions to the claim at the time and since, further raise for examination the relationship between law and morality: to be recognised as defamatory, must an allegation impute immorality to the plaintiff? Should the law of defamation recognise societal prejudices that are real, even if deemed by lawmakers and the judiciary invalid? Is it the function of the law to mirror the society in which it is produced or to carry it forward?

The failure of rape law to convict more men and to protect more women appears to be attributable to the fact that underlying, and assumed by, the law is a male dominated conception of aggressive and possessive male sexuality and a misunderstanding of the real wrong of rape. The sentencing stage of criminal proceedings offers courts the opportunity to challenge these attitudes. Court of Appeal sentencing decisions in cases of marital and relationship rape are analysed and sentencing principles and practice which endorse and reinforce a male dominated conception of sexuality and the wrong of rape are criticised. So, it is argued, an intimate relationship between the offender and the victim should not be a mitigating factor. Nor should forgiveness be a special mitigating factor in cases of marital rape. And attempts to mitigate rape by explaining it in terms of emotional stress, an excess of seductive zeal or other ways that treat aggressive male sexual behaviour and female passivity as the norm, should not be countenanced. Instead, sentencing guidance should foster attitudes which conceive of sexuality as an expression of equal and sharing relationships.