Law

In the context of the far-reaching reforms proposed for the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, this book considers the operation and reform of courts at the apex of the UK's legal systems. The chapters are linked by broad and overlapping themes. The first of these is the complexity of accommodating national differences within the UK into the institutional design of the new supreme court. It will be not only a court for the UK's three legal systems, and simultaneously a national institution of the whole UK, but it is also likely to be called upon to resolve division of powers disputes within the emerging system of multi-level government. A second theme is the scope for comparative lesson-learning from top courts in other legal systems: the Supreme Court of Canada, the US federal courts system, and the constitutional courts in Germany and Spain are considered. Thirdly, the connections between the UK's top-level court and other courts, especially intermediate courts of appeal, the European Court of Justice, and the European Court of Human Rights are examined.

Judges spend their public lives in courtrooms. They speak to the public through their judgments. But senior judges are frequently invited to contribute to professional, judicial, or academic conferences or publications, on whatever topic engages the attention of the audience at the time. This book contains a selection of the essays and addresses written or given by the present Senior Law Lord (as a Queen's Bench judge, Lord Justice of Appeal, Master of the Rolls, and the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales) over the last 15 years or so, touching on a wide range of legally related topics.

Governments spend huge amounts of money buying goods and services from the private sector. How far should their spending power be affected by social policy? Arguments against the practice are often made by economists — on the grounds of inefficiency, and lawyers — on the grounds of free competition and international economic law. Buying Social Justice analyses how governments in developed and developing countries use their contracting power in order to advance social equality and reduce discrimination, and argues that this approach is an entirely legitimate and efficient means of achieving social justice. The book looks at the different experiences of a range of countries, including the UK, the USA, and South Africa. It also examines the impact of international and regional regulation of the international economy, and questions the extent to which the issue of procurement policy should be regulated at the national, European or international levels. The role of EC and WTO law in mediating the tensions between the economic function of procurement and the social uses of procurement is discussed, and the outcomes of controversies concerning the legitimacy of the integration of social values into procurement are analysed. Buying Social Justice argues that European and international legal regulation of procurement has become an important means of accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative in both the social and economic uses of procurement.

In America today, there are between 250 and 300 million firearms in private hands, amounting to one weapon for every American. Two in five American homes house guns. On the one hand, most gun owners are law-abiding citizens who believe they have a constitutional right to bear arms. On the other, a great many people believe gun control to be our best chance at reducing violent crime. While few — whether gun owner or anti-gun advocate — dispute the need to keep guns out of the wrong hands, the most important question has too often been dodged: What gun control options does the most heavily armed democracy in the world have? Can gun control really work? The last decade has seen several watersheds in the debate, none more important than the 1993 Brady Bill. That bill, this book argues, was the culmination of a strategy in place since the 1930s to permit widespread private ownership of guns while curtailing illegal use. But where do we go from here? While the Brady background check is easily circumvented, any further attempts to extend gun control — for instance, through comprehensive licensing of all gun owners and registration of all guns — would pose monumental administrative burdens. The book moves beyond easy slogans and broad-brush ideology to examine the on-the-ground practicalities of gun control, from mandatory safety locks to outright prohibition and disarmament. Casting aside ideology and abstractions, the book cautions against the belief that there exists some gun control solution which, had we the political will to seize it, would substantially reduce violent crime.

This book explores the canon law of the Roman Catholic Church from a comparative perspective. The Introduction to the book presents historical examples of antinomian and legalistic approaches to canon law. It discusses these approaches as threats to the rule of law in the Church, and describes the concept of the rule of law in the thought of various Anglo-American legal theorists. Chapter One offers an overview of canon law as the “home system” in this study. The remaining chapters consider antinomian and legalistic approaches to the rule of law in light of three specific issues: the sexual abuse crisis, ownership of church property, and the denial of Holy Communion to Catholic public officials. Chapters Two and Three discuss the failure of the rule of law as a result of antinomian and legalistic approaches to the sexual abuse crisis. Chapters Four and Five compare the concept of property in canon law with that of liberal political theory; they discuss the ownership of parish property in light of diocesan bankruptcies, the relationship between church property and the law of the secular state, and the secularization of Catholic institutions and their property. Chapters Six and Seven raise the indeterminacy claim with regards to canon law and the arguments for and against the denial of Holy Communion to Catholic public officials. Although the three issues arise in the context of the United States, they raise broader theoretical issues about antinomianism, legalism, and the rule of law.

There is no recognized corpus of binding law globally applicable to all churches in the Anglican Communion. Ostensibly, each church is autonomous, free to make rules to facilitate and to order its internal life. This book, which is global in scope, makes available a comparative study of the constitutions, canons, and other forms of law of churches in the worldwide Anglican Communion. The book's analysis draws out the similarities and differences between them and, from the coincidence of actual laws and from global ecclesiastical conventions enunciated by the Lambeth Conference, it elucidates the global principles of Anglican canon law that may apply to all churches in the Communion. The subjects examined include: government; ministry; doctrine and liturgy; rites; property; inter-church relations; and ecumenism. Thorough and practical analysis of a hitherto under-explored subject is placed squarely within its jurisprudential and theological context.

This book is about the role causation plays in the attribution of both moral responsibility and legal liability (in the law of crimes, torts, and to a lesser extent, contracts). The book strips away many of the usages of the word ‘causation’ in law and legal theory, on the grounds that such usages have little to do with causation itself. What remains is the law's use of ‘causation’ to name a natural relation that is at the heart of both ordinary and scientific explanations of the world. Some normative defense is offered as to why causation in this sense is a proper basis for assessing degrees of both culpability and permissibility in morality and also in law. A more extended metaphysical defense is also offered, as to the nature of the causal relation and as to the nature of the things related by the causal relation. This normative and metaphysical analysis is used as the springboard from which to critique much of what the law currently says about causation, including the law's counterfactual test for cause in fact, its notions of intervening cause, foreseeability, harm within the risk, accomplice liability, the causal status of omissions and of non-omissive allowings, and more besides. The result is a rethinking of causation's nature and role in our legal and moral practices of assigning blame and responsibility.

This text is an updated and extended second edition supporting the findings of its well-known predecessor which claimed that courts employ common-sense notions of causation in determining legal responsibility.

This book is the first major published work to present a comprehensive assessment of the impact of CCTV on the police in Britain. Drawing extensively upon empirical research, the volume examines how the police in Britain first became involved in public area surveillance, and how they have since attempted to use CCTV technology to prevent, respond to, and investigate crime. In addition, the volume also provides a detailed analysis of the legality of CCTV surveillance in light of recent changes to the Data Protection Act and the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights. Challenging many existing accounts of the relationship between the police and new surveillance technologies, the book breaks new ground in policing and surveillance theory, and argues that it is time for a major reassessment of both our understanding of how the police respond to technological change, and of the role played by such technologies in our society.

A number of jurisdictions, including England and Wales after their adoption of the 1991 Criminal Justice Act, require that sentences be ‘proportionate’ to the severity of the crime. This book discusses how sentences may be scaled proportionately to the gravity of the crime. Topics dealt with include how the idea of a penal censure justifies proportionate sentences; how a penalty scale should be ‘anchored’ to reduce overall punishment levels; how non-custodial penalties should be graded and used; and how political pressures impinge on sentencing policies.