While finding fault with House of Lords’ decisions in the field ofcriminal law is by no means a new academic sport, the present decade is proving particularly fruitful for the critic. The precise ramifications of Caldwelll and Lawrence are still being thrashed out. seymour, on manslaughter, was unforgiveably ambiguous. Moloney and Hancock and Shankland left the mental element in murder hopelessly opaque. In impossible attempts Anderton v Ryan revealed a degree of ineptitude which even the House of Lords had to recognise in overruling itselfonly a year later in Shivpuri.
It is not simply a questionofacademics taking issue with the outcomeof a particular decision. The further, and in some respects even more worrying, aspect of many of these decisions is the quality of the legal reasoning they embody.