The Bowman Review of the Court of Appeal (Civil Division) was commissioned by Lord Mackay and given a general welcome by Lord Irvine.' It is the last of the reports collectively known as the Woolf Reforms.2 It contains 146 recommendations. Its style and intent are at one with the earlier reports. It is heavy on recommendations and light on argument. Its purpose is to pave the way for managerial judging, if need be, to replace adjudication. At first sight the absence of debate is disturbing: after all, are we not used to a world where proposals for reform are accompanied by a detailed examination, even analysis, of problems? The answer is that Bowman, like Woolf, is not intended to aid mere reform. They talk expressly and beguilingly of a change of culture. This too is deceptive. These reforms are not intended to build on or alter or adapt the Old World. The reports hardly argue the case for change. Indeed it is difficult to see how that could be done within the assumptions of the old ways. The language and the syntax and the grammar are all new. These reforms herald a New World. It owes little to the past, and what debt there is cannot be explained in any brief note.3 One merely has to look at some of the recommendations in Bowman to see the magnitude of the shift from the traditional functions of the Court:4