Late colonial juridical practice in India was prone to bureaucratic errors and shared with the police a fundamental disinterest in the liberty of ordinary people. This article tells the politically marginal but highly revealing story of how a series of errors during the arrest and subsequent detention of an elderly man called Peter Budge—an innocent bystander in a situation of heightened communal tensions—led to a momentary scandal in the United Provinces administration in the year 1947–48. Peter's case disappeared between the cracks of bad record-keeping, leading to his lengthy and unlawful detention. It raises important questions about the complementary relation between law and violence, and the fictitious nature of public-order laws. In contrast to the scholarship that has discussed the spectacular violence of the state, this article looks at the ‘other’ acts of violence of the state and argues that the everyday reality of public-order enforcement is key to understanding the nature and operations of the late colonial and post-colonial state.

The ‘right of public meeting’ has historically been a key demand of extra-parliamentary political movements in England. This paper examines how public assembly came to be perceived as a legally protected right, and how national and local authorities debated and policed political meetings. Whereas previous histories have suggested that a ‘liberal governance’ dominated urban government during the nineteenth century, this paper offers an alternative framework for understanding the relationship between people and the state. It points to rights paradoxes, whereby the right of free passage and to ‘air and recreation’ often conflicted with the demand for the right of political meeting in challenges to use of public spaces. Local authorities sought to defend the rights of property against political movements by using the common law offences of obstruction and ‘nuisance’. By the first half of the twentieth century, new threats of militant tactics and racial harassment by political groups necessitated specific public order legislation. Though twentieth-century legislation sought to protect certain types of assembly and protest marches, the implementation and policing of public order was spatially discriminatory, and the right of public meeting was left unresolved.

Public order as a protectable interest is an important criterion for determining a consistent and rational scope of crimes against public order. From the specific perspective of everyday life, Feinberg's theory of minimum welfare interests neglects those kinds of interests that relate to a smooth or harmonious life. Socio-legal perspectives make it clear that safety interests, which directly concern basic living (bodily existence), do not include various kinds of order interests – and thus life order interests in convenience, comfort and peace, distinguishable from safety interests that are protected by English public order laws, can be construed as the public order interest. By critically adopting Feinberg's individualistic approach to analysing public interests in three types of case, the test of being public is further clarified. Typical categories of public order are socially and normatively identified before concluding with a discussion of the effects the identification made by the paper might make to the scope and nature of public order law and offences.

Building on current research regarding constitutional migration, this article shows how constitutional provisions protecting religious freedom (“subject to public order”) arrived in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, not via colonial British or traditional Islamic sources—both explicitly rejected—but via deliberate constitutional borrowing from “anti-colonial” precursors in Ireland and, especially, India. Drawing on Ernesto Laclau's notion of “empty signifiers,” the article highlights the shifting political circumstances that transformed the meaning of Pakistan's borrowed constitutional provisions. Even as core texts guaranteeing an individual's right to peaceful religious practice were imported, political, legal, and conceptual modulations ensured that specific forms of peaceful religious practice were refashioned as a source of religious provocation and, therein, public disorder. Far from protecting religious freedom, this repurposing of imported constitutional clauses tied to “the politics of public order” underpinned the formal legal restriction of an otherwise explicit right.

In recent years there have been protests at Armistice Day services and at the funeral of Margaret Thatcher, but these events seem insignificant compared to the impact of the ‘funeral picketing’ carried out in the United States by members of the Westboro Baptist Church, principally at the funerals of American forces personnel killed on active service. This has caused considerable distress to family members and wide public outrage. In 2011 the United States Supreme Court held in Snyder v Phelps that the right of freedom of speech of the WBC rendered them immune to claims for damages by mourners affected by their picketing. This article will first consider how English secular and canon law could be used to restrict the practice of funeral picketing and secondly discuss whether current law could provide a remedy for mourners distressed by funeral picketing and other forms of protest at funerals, were they to take place.

Accounts narrating the history of the modern law of occupation display ambivalence to the 1863 Lieber Code. At times, they mark the humanity of its provisions on occupied territories; at others, they find its concept of humanity in occupation limited compared to subsequent developments. A broader reading of the Code against Lieber's published works, teaching, and correspondence reveals a unique – and disconcerting –sense of humanity pervading through its provisions. Lieber's different sense of humanity, not directed at individuals, throws light on the history of the law governing occupied territories today and paves the way for critical reflections on its conceptual bases.

Several recent cases have highlighted the range of legal controls that can be applied to expression on social networks and other amateur digital content. This article identifies three trends in the regulation of digital communications. First, such communications are subject to a wide range of laws, including those primarily regulating the mass media, public order and targeted communications. Second, the persistence and searchability of digital messages make such communications more likely to come to the attention of litigators and prosecutors. Thirdly, that the established approach to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the ECHR tends to protect speech that is deemed to be of “high value”, and therefore does little to protect much internet content. This article calls for some greater protection to be afforded to communications that are casual and amateur. The freedom to converse outlined in this article does not call for absolute protection, but seeks to ensure that any controls on expression are proportionate. In particular, alternatives to the criminal law are considered.