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.

The interpretation of administrative policies is of great importance in contemporary public law. The correct approach to policy interpretation has, however, been subject to insufficient academic scrutiny. The effect of policies is to provide guidance: not only to decision-makers, but also to stakeholders in the decision. Obvious stakeholders include the applicant or the individual who is the subject of the administrative decision, but the scope of potential legitimate stakeholders may go far beyond this. In matters of general interest, the broader public may be guided by policy (for instance, whether to object to a proposal during a consultation exercise, or on what basis to object). When considering how policy should be interpreted, the court should have regard to the extent of the appropriate audience of the policy, specifically considering how the least expert reader of the policy would interpret it. This ‘least expert reader principle’ will assist in answering difficult questions, such as whether the court should have regard to the underlying evidence base when interpreting a policy. The courts should rely upon, and express their reasoning by reference to, the least expert reader principle, in order to increase the transparency of judgments in the field of policy interpretation.

The paper reports the findings of over a decade of pioneering, award-winning fieldwork which has explored how workplace experience, if embedded successfully in different stages of legal education, can accelerate the ‘speed to capability’ and skills development of early career lawyers. The benefits from initial experiments of graduate-level work placements carried out by the authors since 2008 are presented. The paper then explores the findings from almost 10 years of creating year-long work placements for law undergraduates, assessing student skill growth, and the impact of the work placements on degree results and employment outcomes, before and during the Covid-19 pandemic.

This is the first academic paper to consider the role that parliamentarians play in access to justice. Under austerity, England and Wales has seen cuts to legal aid and local authority budgets that have impacted the ability of people to get help for legal problems in social welfare law from the advice sector. Members of the UK Parliament and Members of the Senedd Cymru are increasingly being called upon by their constituents to fill the resultant gap in advice. This paper draws on interviews with parliamentarians that draw out the nature of the role they are now playing in access to justice across three key areas of civil justice: welfare benefits; housing; and immigration. The growth of parliamentarians as figures in access to justice has thus far been largely neglected but is crucial to grasp, as the implications for the future of access to justice are massive. The paper calls for more research to better understand the phenomenon but urges caution that elected representatives should not be considered as an adequate substitute for a properly functioning, adequately funded advice sector.

It is estimated that there are in excess of eight million unfit homes in England and that one in five excess deaths are attributable to poor housing conditions, costing the NHS some £1.4bn per year. While the policy focus tends to be on housing supply, it is the private rented sector (PRS) that is a key vehicle for provision. The pandemic has given rise to some unexpected outcomes, not least in regulating that sector. This paper will consider how strategies have changed and generated new modes of regulation in the sector, which may have important longer-term effects for the relation between tenant and landlord. Using the frame of vulnerability and risk theories as a starting position, the paper will critique the role of law in allocating landlord rights and responsibilities. It will look at the implications of moving towards an appreciation of the relational, as opposed to physical aspects of housing provision in regulating landlord behaviour and the attendant risks of so doing. It will be argued that the literatures of vulnerability and risk only make sense if a further element is added in this case: the notion of hope.

The UK enacted its first legal measure to address gender pay inequity, the Equal Pay Act 1970, more than 50 years ago. Yet, in 2021, the gender pay gap (GPG) still stood at 15.4%. Departing from the remedial and individual approach that characterises equal pay legislation, the 2017 Gender Pay Gap Information Regulations (the Regulations) require private and voluntary sector organisations with 250+ employees to annually publish pay data broken down by gender. The long-term aspiration of the Regulations is to contribute to closing the GPG within a generation. It is also hoped that they will encourage the public disclosure of pay data and changes in workplace policies to reduce organisational GPGs (immediate aims) and improve employers’ accountability (underlying aim). This paper considers whether the Regulations have what it takes to meet those immediate and underlying aims. Our assessment framework is built on the premise that for public disclosure to be useful and for employers to tackle the causes of the GPG, the information reported must be of sufficient quality, meaningful and relevant. The paper draws on both doctrinal analysis and empirical data reported by FTSE 100 Index companies to assess the Regulations and determine whether they hold the potential to meet those aims.

This paper sets out the true ambit of section 126 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, noting that it requires virtually all residential mortgage agreements to be enforced by court order. Despite this, numerous commentaries on the English law of mortgage omit reference to section 126. The implications of our findings are profound. Not least, many accounts of the law of mortgage will require substantial revision, including recognition of the fact that cases such as Ropaigealach v Barclays Bank plc and Horsham Properties Group Ltd v Clark were reversed as long ago as 2008. More significant is the need to ensure that accurate knowledge of section 126 is conveyed to those who advise mortgagors at risk of possession. This is particularly the case given the ‘cost of living crisis’ and the backlog of possession claims arising out of the Covid-19 pandemic. Any mortgagees tempted to expedite recovery of mortgaged property by enforcing the mortgage extra-judicially should be directed to section 126 and the requirement it imposes to obtain a court order.

This paper considers whether UK corporate insolvency law and the UK Insolvency Act 1986 have extra-territorial effect post-Brexit, and whether – and to what extent – it is for the courts or the legislature to extend any extra-territorial effect. It does not deal with ‘inward recognition’, ie the recognition of foreign judgments and orders in the UK.

Brexit has left something of a vacuum and provisions which might otherwise have applied extra-territorially, at least within the EU, may now have been deprived completely of extra-territorial effect. But all is not lost and Brexit here presents opportunities. There is room for clarifying that particular provisions which might otherwise have discriminated between EU application and application vis-à-vis the rest of the world can now be given a uniform global interpretation. Courts should, however, proceed incrementally in extending the extra-territorial scope of UK corporate insolvency law.

A bolder reform would be to enact legislation that specifies the exact extent to which the UK Insolvency Act applies extra-territorially. Legislation obviously depends on parliamentary time and requires detailed drafting but also provides the opportunity for the UK to showcase that it remains at the forefront of international insolvency developments.

Death by neurological criteria (DNC) has remained controversial since its introduction over 50 years ago. Objections to the diagnosis of DNC have been coming before the courts in various jurisdictions, including at least seven recent challenges before the UK courts. In responding to these challenges, the UK courts have expressed no doubts as to the status of DNC and have affirmed that following a diagnosis of DNC, the matter of best interests is no longer relevant. Yet, the courts have also, tacitly, acknowledged that DNC is not quite the same as cardio-pulmonary death.

This paper begins by setting out the origins of DNC as a medico-legal construction, and its ongoing controversies. It then analyses the treatment of DNC, including authorisation of DNC testing, by the UK courts. It shows that the courts have been operating a form of ad hoc reasonable accommodation of different views of DNC but have done so without normative engagement. The paper argues that the courts should recognise that DNC disputes are not simply concerned with whether, as a matter of fact, DNC has been correctly diagnosed, but also raise profound questions about rights and interests, both of families and of the DNC dead.

It is recognised that civil litigation has a place within the police accountability infrastructure. However, the role of actions against the police for wrongful arrest, false imprisonment, assault, and malicious prosecution (hereafter police actions) is underexplored. Taking citizenship as its analytical frame, this paper probes the relationship between police actions and the police complaints and discipline system over the last 60 years. Its primary focus is the Court of Appeal decision Thompson v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, Hsu v Same [1998] QB 498 (Thompson). Here the potential for police actions to expose questionable police responses to officer misconduct, and failings in external oversight mechanisms, came into conflict with the drive towards proportionate civil justice. In prioritising the latter, Thompson increased police autonomy over settlement of police actions, thereby deprioritising the role of the courts in demarcating the limits of state interference with citizens’ rights. It is not suggested that Thompson should be overruled. Instead, it is contended that recognising the impact of the decision on subsequent reforms to police accountability processes and contemporary conceptions of the police-citizen relationship is crucial to understanding the roots of current disquiet concerning police accountability (and therefore to the development of meaningful reforms).

This paper connects two trends in contemporary legal scholarship that do not often intersect, namely commentary on the increasingly diverse nature of family law advice and support services, and calls for a refresh of the regulatory environment in which legal services in general are provided. Focusing on the law and landscape in England and Wales, we argue that regulatory challenges are particularly acute in the field of family law, where the range and reach of services provided by non-lawyers is extraordinary. We illustrate how particular aspects of debates over regulating and diversifying legal services apply to the family law context, noting that such concerns as there are have not always been well targeted. Finally, we identify a sub-set of innovative ‘extra-legal’ services that set private family law even further apart from other sub-fields of law when it comes to regulatory and professional challenge. These services clearly sit inside the landscape of family dispute resolution but equally clearly fall outside the boundaries of what is usually considered ‘legal’. This, we suggest, highlights the need for a concerted effort to define the contours of family law and family legal services so that a holistic approach might be taken to understanding and managing the standards and effectiveness of different service and support types.

Whereas legal comparisons tend to be concerned with legal systems, structures or rules, this paper focuses on a more fundamental element of law: a legal concept. From the semiotic point of view, a concept is an element of the tripartite construct of meaning, which – in the legal context – is derived from a particular legal system. Since effective communication in legal practice is predicated on the unity of meaning, issues are likely to arise when an act of communication spans disparate legal cultures. When the epistemic embedding of legal concepts fundamentally differs between the respective legal systems with which the participants to a communicative event are familiar, conceptual incommensurability will arise, impeding the communication process and, potentially, also having an impact on associated court proceedings.

Against this theoretical backdrop, the paper shifts its focus to globalised legal practice, which requires a broader legal skillset and comparative perspectives. As an illustration, the equivalence of selected substantive law concepts is explored across the common law/civil law divide, accurate comprehension of which is essential to intercultural provision of legal services. Drawing parallels between the functional method in comparative law and the functional approach recommended in legal translation, an overview is provided of techniques for remedying terminological incongruence and conveying intended meaning across legal cultures. The paper concludes by querying whether the law curriculum would be enhanced by inclusion of comparative and linguistic perspectives, with a view to equipping graduates with interdisciplinary tools for effective legal communication and global law practice.

Third parties who receive trust property with knowledge that the transfer to them was a breach of trust will be liable in knowing receipt. Knowing receipt has grown quickly in importance in recent years and many of the finer points of the doctrine are still being worked out. This paper discusses one such issue: whether liability can exist when the third party acquires a security interest in trust property, rather than the underlying trust property itself. This point has not yet been considered by English courts, although it has been examined in cases from Australia, Canada and Hong Kong. The paper analyses the existing authorities in the context of the wider law relating to knowing receipt and explains the conceptual difficulties and practical problems with allowing liability to be grounded on the receipt of a mere security interest in trust property.

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.

Prior to the Insurance Act 2015, an insurer could refuse payment by relying on terms unrelated to the manner in which the loss occurred, or with the assured's default. Section 11 of the Insurance Act 2015 reverses that and requires ‘the punishment to fit the crime’ by introducing a ‘could have increased the risk’ test, which is said to be a requirement for correlation between an assured's non-compliance with a risk clause and the actual occurrence of the loss. The new test effectively raises more profound causation issues from a practical point of view as regards insurance recoveries and also from a theoretical point of view of causation in the law. It is submitted that the test ‘could have increased the risk’ introduced by section 11 of the Insurance Act 2015 should be interpreted by an approach to recognising a nexus – a general causal relevance (general causation) – and adopting interpretation as a restricting tool, to achieve alignment with the legislative intent. In presenting this argument, this paper explores the difference between correlation and causation in the law, expounding a wider understanding of legal causation than causa proxima in the insurance context.

Discrimination law primarily relies on individual enforcement for addressing discrimination at work; yet those who are most impacted by discrimination are likely the least able to enforce their rights. The question then becomes: what role should individual enforcement play in discrimination law? Can we effectively abandon individual enforcement as part of the legislative model? Drawing on a mixed method, multi-year comparative study of the enforcement of age discrimination law in the UK, Australia and Sweden, this paper considers the gaps, limits and risks of the individual enforcement model in discrimination law. Integrating doctrinal analysis; statistical analysis of claims and cases, and data from the EU and OECD; qualitative expert interviews; and a survey of legal practitioners, this paper argues that while individual enforcement is inherently limited as a tool for achieving systemic change, it must remain part of any legislative model. Reflecting on the experience in Sweden, where individual enforcement of discrimination law is significantly curtailed, the paper posits that individual rights and individual enforcement remain important complements to other regulatory tools, particularly in jurisdictions with strong enduring age norms. Abandoning or severely restricting individual enforcement is unlikely to support either the macro or micro effectiveness of age discrimination law.

The European Convention on Human Rights allows its Contracting Parties to submit third-party interventions. This paper analyses the reasons for engagement of the states with the European Court of Human Rights beyond what they are strictly expected to do: respond in contentious cases and execute judgments. It is argued here that the states mainly engage with the Court for the purposes of self-interest. This paper fills the gap in the literature by substantiating this claim using empirical methods of content analysis of the case law and research interviews with the governmental representatives. Finally, this paper looks at the impact of third-party interventions on the Court's reasoning and concludes that the Court is aware of the aims of the national governments and bears those aims in mind.

Associate Hospital Managers (AHMs) are members of the local community with a power under section 23 of the Mental Health Act 1983 to discharge people from compulsory mental health care against medical advice. They provide scrutiny of professional decisions and, in so doing, protect patient liberty by providing review of compulsory care. Abolition of the AHMs has been contemplated on numerous occasions, most recently by the Independent Review of the Mental Health Act 1983 (December 2018), the White Paper on ‘Reforming the Mental Health Act’ (January 2021) and the Government's response (July 2021). Through an historical and contemporary consideration of the section 23 power spanning 1808–2022, this paper argues that removal of the AHMs would be detrimental to the legitimacy of the 1983 Act. This is because the abolition of the AHMs would undermine the principles of local, democratic, community oversight entailed by section 23, and found nowhere else in the Act. The Draft Mental Health Bill (June 2022) does not address these concerns.

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.