“It is evident both on principle and on authority,” said Lord Moulton in 1913:

“that there may be a contract the consideration for which is the making of some other contract. ‘If you will make such and such a contract I will give you one hundred pounds,’ is in every sense of the word a complete legal contract. It is collateral to the main contract, but each has an independent existence, and they do not differ in respect of their possessing to the full the character and status of a contract. But such collateral contracts must from their very nature be rare.”

English and Scandinavian legal theory have long shared many points of view. Among these are the belief that law is something man-made and made for men; hostility or indifference to doctrines of natural law at least in the scholastic form; and a general disbelief in the capacity of philosophical systems to throw light either on what law is or ought to be. Yet notwithstanding these similarities the principal Scandinavian tradition in legal theory has a different tone from its English counterpart. Though professedly sceptical in aim and empirical in method, it is much more like a kind of philosophy. The work of the founder of this tradition, Axel Hägerstrom, had for its motto Censeo metaphysicam esse delendam and is a sustained effort to show that notions commonly accepted as essential parts of the structure of law such as rights, duties, transfers of rights and validity, are in part composed of superstitious beliefs, “myths,” “fictions,” “magic” or rank confusion. This tradition, continued in the work of his disciples Lundstedt, Olivecrona and Alf Ross, has made contact with both American “rule-scepticism” and contemporary linguistic philosophy. Its latest most sophisticated product is Ross's recently published book On Law and Justice.1

This is in many ways an interesting book, and at points a brilliant one, though by no means free from the fiery dogmatism of Scandinavian “realist” jurisprudence. Ross is less tortuous and obscure than Hägerstrom, less naïve and professorial than Lundstedt; and richer in illuminating examples and concrete detail, if less urbane, than Oliveerona.

Although the whole of a man's rights and interests, which include his rights in his own personal safety, may not be readily divisible between his income and his capital assets, it is axiomatic that all those rights and interests are either subject to tax or not. It follows, therefore, that in an action for damages a claim may be made not only for loss of or damage to some non-taxable interest, but also, and perhaps exclusively, for a reduction in the plaintiff's taxable income caused by the wrongful act of the defendant. In such cases the plaintiff's liability to tax may become a relevant consideration, either as between himself and the Commissioners of Inland Revenue or as between himself and the defendant. It is the purpose of this article to consider some aspects of the inter-relationship of damages and tax, with particular reference to the decision of the House of Lords in British Transport Commission v. Gourley and the subsequent Report of the Law Reform Committee.

One can conceive of more exciting presents than a part of a debt; but a creditor is sometimes moved to make such an assignment. Suppose, for example, that he is owed £100 by X and desires to transfer the right to half of it to a friend. How can he do this?