This paper is a revised version of a plenary lecture delivered at the SLS Annual Conference held at Oxford Brookes University in June 2023. It adopts an auto-ethnographic approach, drawing on the author's long experience of participating in the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF), to assess the current state of legal research in the UK and consider the implications of the increasing importance in the research landscape of engaging in research that serves the public good. The paper explores what falls within the scope of ‘legal research’, particularly for REF purposes, and reflects on how REF-focused research sits within the broader scope of legal scholarly activities. Ideas of the public good are examined and their relation to measures of research impact probed. The paper concludes by painting a broad-brush picture of the current research landscape, identifying key elements and engines of change, and speculating on the direction in which things are going and what should most concern legal scholars going forward. Although primarily focused on legal research in the UK, the paper should be of interest to legal scholars beyond the UK, particularly those in jurisdictions where research assessment exercises are a feature of academic life.

This paper presents the findings from the first qualitative study to consider the relationship between intersex experience and law, representing a significant contribution to a currently under-researched area of law. Since 2013 there has been a global move towards the legal recognition of intersex, with Australia, Germany and Malta all using different techniques to construct and regulate intersex embodiment. This paper is the first to compare and problematise these differing legal approaches in the legal literature. In doing so it demonstrates that many of these approaches are grounded in ideas of formal equality that lead to the entrenchment of vulnerability and fail to build resilience for the intersex community. Through engagement with the intersex community a more contextual account of substantive equality is enabled, encouraging new approaches to law and social justice. Our qualitative study revealed that prevention of non-therapeutic medical interventions on the bodies of children was understood to be the key method to achieving equality for intersex embodied people. Whilst this is the cornerstone of intersex-led legislative reform, such an approach necessitates support through a mixture of formal and substantive equality methods such as anti-discrimination law, education and enforcement procedures. This paper concludes by offering a series of recommendations to legislators capable of enabling substantive intersex equality.

For any field of law, the goal it was designed to achieve permeates every aspect of its application and interpretation. This is particularly true when the black letter of the law is cryptic and silent on most aspects of how it should be interpreted and applied, as is the case with competition law, which for the most part revolves around a small number of highly abstract provisions. It is only natural then that ample scholarly work has been devoted to identifying the goals and purposes of competition law. By and large these attempts have been textual, historical, and teleological. We introduce here instead a quantitative analysis of the case law and present the results of the first empirical study into the goals and purposes of EU competition law as they emerge from the entirety of the case law of the European Court of Justice, opinions of the Advocate Generals, Commission decisions, and speeches of Commissioners for Competition. This body of almost 4,000 sources paints a comprehensive picture of the underlying goals of EU competition law, and helps conclusively confirm some previous insights while debunking others, thereby helping to advance the present application and future evolution of competition law.

It is conventionally argued that because an artificially-intelligent (AI) system acts autonomously, its makers cannot easily be held liable should the system's actions harm. Since the system cannot be liable on its own account either, existing laws expose victims to accountability gaps and need to be reformed. Recent legal instruments have nonetheless established obligations against AI developers and providers. Drawing on attribution theory, this paper examines how these seemingly opposing positions are shaped by the ways in which AI systems are conceptualised. Specifically, folk dispositionism underpins conventional legal discourse on AI liability, personality, publications, and inventions and leads us towards problematic legal outcomes. Examining the technology and terminology driving contemporary AI systems, the paper contends that AI systems are better conceptualised instead as situational characters whose actions remain constrained by their programming. Properly viewing AI systems as such illuminates how existing legal doctrines could be sensibly applied to AI and reinforces emerging calls for placing greater scrutiny on the broader AI ecosystem.

This paper examines in three parts how ADR is being embedded into the English civil justice system. Section 1 discusses how courts encourage settlements, and it argues that while mounting costs in litigation lead to negotiated settlements, the participation in ADR primarily mainly occurs when parties are referred to it in a timely manner. Section 2 investigates the time when disputants are referred to ADR, and it proposes a taxonomy formed by three stages in the dispute life cycle: (1) before parties contemplate litigation; (2) at the pre-action phase as a pre-condition to issue a claim; and (3) after a defence is entered. Section 3 notes that the court digitalisation program is increasing ADR referrals across the above three stages, and it argues that these referrals will be more effective when they are timely and coupled with suitable incentives and sanctions, but the latter must take into consideration the parties’ power asymmetries.

Disputes relating to cryptoassets have proliferated in recent years, along with the rise of the cryptoasset market. Some of these can be resolved using traditional principles of contract, tort or trust law, but proprietary issues raise particular conundrums. While cryptoassets have generally been accepted to be property, that is merely the starting point. To properly resolve proprietary disputes, it is necessary to provide a reasoned and robust explanation for why particular rules of title originally developed in the context of tangible property should apply. In turn, two foundational questions must be answered. First, what is the subject-matter of the property right in cryptoassets? And secondly, what is the proprietary effect of a blockchain transaction? These issues have received relatively little attention in the literature, which has focused on whether cryptoassets are property at all, and existing contributions (including the Law Commission's recent Consultation Paper on Digital Assets) which do engage these issues are far from reaching consensus. This paper critically examines those views and puts forward its own reasoned approach for the application of traditional rules of title to cryptoassets.

This paper examines the law of fixtures and chattels which governs the circumstances in which items of personal property that are attached to land become part of that land. Whether a chattel has become a fixture is crucial in a range of contexts including when land is sold or mortgaged. However, the law of fixtures has long garnered a reputation for complexity and obscurity; a position that endures today. Through examination of historical accounts and decided case law, this paper explores the reasons for this reputation; identifies the central deficiencies and defects inherent in the law and argues that the existing approach is anachronistic, inconsistent and incoherent. Building on this, the paper concludes by proposing a new framework for rationalisation and reform which would bring long-overdue certainty and clarity to the law in this area.

The merits and means of accommodating non-binary populations into UK law is becoming an increasingly important issue for policymakers, judges, scholars and legal professionals. Following Elan-Cane's Supreme Court challenge to binary passport sex markers in 2021, the UK Government face another challenge this year concerning non-binary recognition on birth certificates. While an additional third sex option is perhaps the most well-known reform option for the current binary system, other options have been suggested, including additional multiple sex options and/or removing sex from the birth certificate. While scholars and policymakers debate the merits of these, little is known about non-binary people's own preferences towards these options. This paper therefore presents original empirical data on non-binary attitudes towards these options, demonstrating the various perceived opportunities and drawbacks of each, and reflecting on the possible consequences of reform.

Disputes over frozen embryos represent a particularly problematic case, legally and ethically, due to the ambiguity of their moral and legal status and the potential rights-claims which can be made with regard to them. Recent work has contextualised frozen embryos as liminal and suggested a contextual approach to their legal classification. By appeal to personal property law, with a lens provided by Roman law doctrines, and reproductive bioethics, we argue that frozen embryos may be subjects of property rights, providing a more stable framework for dispute resolution. To illustrate how a property approach would work, we reconsider the facts of the influential Evans case and argue that if a proprietary rather than promissory estoppel claim had been pursued, the reverse outcome may have been reached, to the benefit of women who are disproportionately harmed in these scenarios.

The usage of delegated legislation as a means of governance deserves significant attention, in view of the enormous impact that it is capable of having on the lives of citizens. While reforms to the process of parliamentary scrutiny are an important means of minimising the inappropriate usage of delegated legislation, this paper explores the possibility of drawing more fruitfully upon judicial review as an additional control mechanism. It undertakes a theoretical analysis of what makes delegated legislation distinct from primary legislation and other types of executive action for the purposes of judicial review, with a view towards identifying the proper normative orientation of judicial review of delegated legislation – upholding the moral requirements of delegation relationships and safeguarding democratic accountability and the rule of law. It then argues that existing grounds of review applied towards delegated legislation go some way towards but are inadequately directed at this normative orientation. Drawing inspiration from Irish and US jurisprudence, the paper critically evaluates several possible means of filling this doctrinal space, and concludes that the non-delegation doctrine and a rule of law-based ground of judicial review directed at exercises of delegated law-making power can supplement the law of judicial review of delegated legislation.