Before the dawn of the millennium new legislative and executive authorities will have been established in Edinburgh, Cardiff and (subject to further political and other progress) in Belfast. This article analyses the nature of these constitutional initiatives, and examines their place in the unitary state which is the United Kingdom. It begins by tracing the history of constitutional union between England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. The legal effect of the 1998 devolution statutes is examined, in particular on the legal sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament. A triple constitutional and legal lock exists in the Scotland Act 1998 to ensure that the devolution settlement is the final step away from the pure unitary state which has enfolded Scotland in Great Britain. The nature and likely success of that lock are analysed in some detail. The lawmaking powers of the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, and the Northern Ireland Assembly are assessed. The similarities and differences between each of the three devolved governments and the British Government are highlighted, and consequences and possible lessons for future government-making at Westminster are drawn. The article concludes with a peer into the possible constitutional futures for the United Kingdom.

There is currently a good deal of disagreement concerning the constitutional justification for judicial review in English law. The ultra vires doctrine holds that review is simply a function of legislative intention. In contrast, a number of commentators argue that administrative law is a body of judge-made common law which is unrelated to the will of Parliament. The truth lies somewhere between these two poles.

The traditional ultra vires doctrine is unsatisfactory because, inter alia, it is unrealistic to assert that judicial review constitutes nothing more than the implementation of legislative intention. However, the attempt of some commentators to exclude intention from the justification for review is equally deficient since this is an affront to the sovereignty of Parliament. By locating the interpretative methodology of ultra vires within its proper constitutional setting and by recognising the importance of the rule of law to the process of statutory construction, it is possible to articulate an explanation of judicial review which is consistent with Parliament's legislative supremacy while avoiding the shortcomings of the traditional ultra vires principle (notably its inability satisfactorily to explain the derivation of the grounds of review; the courts' treatment of ouster clauses; the development of administrative law across time, and the extension of judicial review to non-statutory powers).

The Human Rights Act 1998 applies only to “public authorities”. This article begins by examining the Act's definition of a “public authority” and how this will interact with existing distinctions between public and private law in domestic judicial review and EU law. It is then argued that the Act may, through two different routes, have a limited horizontal impact between private bodies – although certain technical obstacles will need to be overcome. The article considers, finally, the operation between private bodies of the requirement that legislation be interpreted as far as possible in accordance with the European Convention on Human Rights.

In R. v. Kelly [1982] AC 665 the House of Lords held that by virtue of s. 686(1) of the Merchant Shipping Act 1894 a British subject may be tried in any English court within whose jurisdiction he or she is found for any crime under English law alleged to have been committed on the high seas on board a foreign ship to which he or she does not belong. After analysing the statutory predecessors of s. 686(1) in the light of archival documents previously unexamined, the article concludes that their Lordships' finding that it not only provided a venue but also extended the ambit of the criminal law is an example of creative interpretation.

In the United States, theorising about law has flourished. There has been an increase in the “market share” of theoretically oriented articles in leading law reviews, a proliferation of specialised journals devoted to interdisciplinary approaches to law and much more frequent citation of theoretical scholarship in legal literature. The interdisciplinary movement in legal thought has prompted a strong backlash. Fears have been expressed that “impractical” scholars are doing the legal profession and law students a disservice by pursuing “abstract” theory at the expense of engaging in analysis of legal doctrine.

Interdisciplinary scholarship is growing in prominence in Britain. If this trend continues, the experience in the United States suggests that concerns could arise about the practical value of academic law, both inside and outside the classroom. As a result, this is a suitable occasion to assess whether theoretical analysis can make a valuable contribution both with respect to research and teaching. This essay advances the thesis that thinking about law in interdisciplinary terms has a beneficial influence on academic writing and should lead to improvements in the classroom. The case in favour of the use of theory is set out in general terms and is then illustrated by considering a field often thought to be primarily technical and “vocational” in nature, namely company law.