It is the purpose of this article to consider the recent case law on the Majewski rule and to show the problems which can be created by an undisciplined use of language. The first section is concerned with the inaptness of the language used in one of those cases to confine the Mujewski rule to its proper sphere of operation. The second part deals with the somewhat reckless use of the term ‘recklessness’ and its potential impact upon that rule.

Part I of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 has established a Crown Prosecution Service for the whole of England and Wales. The Service is, inter alia, responsible for the conduct of all police prosecutions (except minor motoring matters) following the institution of proceedings by the police. Police officers no longer present their own cases in court, but the new Service is not intended merely to replace them with professional advocates. The White Paper on which the Act is based declared that an independent prosecution service should be established. This was in order to give crown prosecutors complete freedom to veto, or to modify, the initial decison of the police to prosecute.

UK immigration law is changing rapidly. There have been four major revisions of the immigration rules since 1979, interspersed with numerous minor, but none the less significant, amendments. Moreover, in an increasingly complex field, litigation has flourished. Applications for judicial review have been lodged at a rate which has recently prompted the Court of Appeal to severely restrict access to the court - in all but the most exceptional cases - until the statutory appeal process has been thoroughly exhausted. One consequence of this level of activity has been that the provisions under which family members may join their relatives in the United Kingdom have changed radically during the short life of the Immigration Act 1971.

There are grounds for being optimistic about the future of legal education. Not least of these is that there is emerging a broad alliance, embracing a range of intellectual positions, which is increasingly outspoken in its criticism of the dominant vocationalism which characterises so much legal education. Neil McCormick has recently added his forceful voice to the criticism of the narrow and intellectually barren fetish of ‘learning the rules’ which constitutes the great bulk of the practice of law teaching. The context of MacCormick's advocacy of the virtues of a broad philosophical orientation in legal education was the publication of Barnett and Yach's survey of jurisprudence teaching in the United Kingdom.

A legislative package which transformed the landscape of Australian administrative law during the last decade by invigorating prosaic models of judicial review, has attracted attention throughout the Commonwealth as ‘an awesome leap’. A burgeoning bureaucracy, whose commitment to legal norms is all too often diluted by excessive zeal in the pursuit of administrative goals, and the perceived inadequacy of conventional restraints including legislative scrutiny, the supervisory jurisdiction of regular courts and internal checks operating at different levels of the executive hierarchy, have heralded bold, innovative approaches.

Most of the cases laying down the act of state doctrine, S.A. de Smith observed, were decided ‘in the heyday of imperial expansion, when judges often seemed to be as executive-minded as the Executive.’ Morris and Read, after analysing African cases adjudicating upon preexisting rights in ceded territories, conclude: ‘Those brought up in the traditional view of the judiciary as being the bulwark against any danger of autocratic behaviour on the part of the exeuctive may find all this somewhat susprising.’ Yet Lord Diplock, who could not fairly be described as executive-minded or reluctant to oppose executive autocracy, recently described as an ‘elementary fallacy’ the suggestion that a treaty transferring territory to the Crown can guarantee inhabitants' property rights before the municipal courts.