This paper considers the viability of the office of Lord Chancellor. It focuses on the Lord Chancellor's judicial role and argues that a number of factors, most notably the dominance of his executive responsibilities, the political influence and style of the current incumbent, Lord Irvine, and the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights through the Human Rights Act 1998, make its retention unsustainable. It therefore concludes that the Lord Chancellor should relinquish the role and no longer sit as judge. In the light of this conclusion, it moves on to look at the Lord Chancellor's responsibility for judicial appointments, his role as head of the judiciary, his position as a departmental minister in Cabinet and his function as Speaker in the House of Lords, and suggests that the nature of the office of Lord Chancellor is such that once the judicial role is relinquished, justifications for these other roles also disappear. The office should therefore be consigned to history, with other institutions assuming its responsibilities.

This paper critically evaluates clause 106 of the Adoption and Children Bill that permits for unmarried fathers to acquire parental responsibility on joint registration of the child's birth. I will argue that there are two factors influencing the proposed expansion of the ways in which fathers may acquire parental responsibility. First, current law recognises the automatic parental responsibility of mothers but only of married fathers, and so is said to contain an imbalance in favour of mothers. Secondly, there is a perceived need to recognise the father's commitment to the child, which is allegedly demonstrated through the act of registration. This paper examines these two themes by reviewing recent case law relating to section 4 applications. It will show that the current law does at least place an emphasis on fathers showing some merit to the court and will argue that the reform in itself will do little to enhance and promote the relationships between children and fathers. However, as a result considerable incursion will be made into the control that women, as primary carers, have in relation to their children.

This paper attempts to analyse the extent to which elements of the criminal law admit uniform definition across offences, and the implications of that question. That debate contributes to recent scholarship on the scope, purpose and content of the general part. I argue that there are elements which can be defined uniformly, elements which cannot be defined uniformly and elements which, although they are subject to variation depending on offence context, ought to be considered in general by the courts. The considerations that are important in thinking about uniformity are outlined in each of these cases. This has implications for the way in which we think about the general part. Generality is a question of both degree and kind. Consequently, the scope, purpose and content of the general part are more complex than has previously been thought. In the final section I sketch some of the implications that this analysis of the general part might have for methodology generally and, in particular, for social theory.

This paper reconsiders images of the judge and, in particular, the position of the woman judge using fairy tale and myth. It begins by exploring the actuality of women's exclusion within the judiciary, traditional explanations for this and the impact of recent changes. It goes on to consider the image of the Herculean judge, arguing that whilst we may view him as an ideological construct, or even as a fairy tale, we routinely deny this to ourselves and to others. This both ensures the normative survival of Hercules and simultaneously constrains counter-images of judges, including that of the woman judge, who becomes almost a contradiction in terms, faced with the need to shed her difference and fit the fairy tale. Like the little mermaid, the woman judge must trade her voice for partial acceptance in the prince's world.

This image of silencing which Andersen's tale so vividly captures highlights a paradox in current discourses of adjudication. On the one hand, women judges are viewed as desirable in order to broaden the range of perspectives on the bench, thus making the judiciary more representative; on the other hand, judges are supposed to be without perspective, thus suggesting there is little need for a representative judiciary. Feminists and other commentators negotiate their way uncomfortably through this territory, acknowledging a gender dimension to adjudication, but failing fully to confront its implications. This paper seeks to ‘undress’ the judge, to flush out images of adjudication which deter or prevent women from joining the judiciary and constrain their potential within it. It highlights both the role of the imagination in existing conceptions of adjudication and the increasing necessity for a re-imagined Hercules – an alternative understanding of the judge which women and other groups currently underrepresented on the bench can comfortably and constructively occupy.

In the Belgian Linguistic case the European Court of Human Rights held that legislation regarding language in education which was based on the principle of territoriality did not offend against the rights guaranteed in Article 2 of Protocol 1 or Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, whether taken alone or in conjunction with Article 14 on non-discrimination. That ruling was given some 35 years ago, and this paper considers whether developments since then might lead the European Court of Human Rights to decide similar issues differently if they arose today. However, having considered the situation, including instruments which have been adopted specifically to deal with language rights and minority rights, the conclusion is reached that the European Court of Human Rights would be likely to continue to allow a fairly wide margin of appreciation to states in the highly sensitive and controversial area of language rights and how they should be protected.