British Case Research Articles

Photographing People in Public and the Protection of Privacy: The Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights and Some Comparisons with England

This study examines certain aspects of privacy protection, addressing the questions of whether it is possible to consider a person’s image (most often a photograph) as part of their private life and whether the protection of privacy can be claimed in public spaces. A thorough examination of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and English case law reveals that these questions can be answered affirmatively. Certain general principles emerge from this case law, which take into account the freedom to discuss public affairs, namely, the protection of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Based on an examination of these, it seems that a connection with a matter that qualifies as a public affair justifies the protection of the freedom of the press, meaning that purely tabloid content does not enjoy such protection. This creates widespread protection for freedom of expression and freedom of the press and may also result in numerous frustrated privacy plaintiffs.

SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant: a systematic review of transmissibility and severity in children

Objectives: To review the evidence of the transmissibility and severity of infection with the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 in children.Design: Systematic review. Data sources: PubMed, Embase, medRxiv, Web of Science, and WHO COVID database.Study selection: English language original articles, case reports, commentaries, and letters with relevant primary data, which examined evidence for the transmissibility and severity of infection with the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 in children.Methods: Five databases were searched for articles from the period October 2020 to March 2022. Reference lists of eligible studies and grey literature were hand searched for additional studies for inclusion. Articles that provided adequate epidemiological data including infection, transmission, or severity (including hospitalisation and death) with probable or confirmed cases of the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 in children (aged ≤9 years) and adolescents (aged 10 to 19 years) were included. Data were extracted for country of origin; participant characteristics (age and sex); sample size; vaccination status; and outcomes, including incidence, secondary attack rate, hospitalisation, ICU, and mortality. All included studies were assessed for bias using the Joanna Briggs Institute Critical Appraisal checklists.Results: 298 studies were found through database searching. After screening, 21 studies were included in the systematic review. Of the included studies, all were deemed to be of moderate to high quality, therefore all were included in the final analysis. Increased incidence was reported in two population studies in the USA and Australia during the period of Delta predominance. Age-related data were available for 14 studies and showed higher rates of infection in older children compared to younger children. Attack rates in educational settings were higher when an adult was the primary case. Data on severity were available from 12 studies and showed that severe disease remained rare, with increasing hospitalisation numbers in proportion to increasing paediatric cases. Vaccination was protective for severe disease, with studies in the United States, Israel and Europe showing less healthcare encounters, emergency department presentations and hospitalisations amongst vaccinated adolescents. Several studies pointed to educational and household settings as key sites for paediatric infection with the Delta variant.Conclusion: A growing proportion of COVID-19 cases were diagnosed in children during the study period due to increased transmissibility of the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant, with an increasing number of outbreaks observed in household and educational settings likely attributed to low vaccine coverage among children. While severe disease remains uncommon, the impact of vaccination in both adults and adolescents has been shown to reduce paediatric hospitalisation rates.

Listening to British Nature: Wartime, Radio & Modern Life. By Michael Guida

Michael Guida’s book Listening to British Nature: Wartime, Radio & Modern Life is a fascinating account of how modes of listening to the natural world were configured in Britain between the First and Second World Wars. The book’s overarching thesis is that listening ‘brought nature closer’ (p. 12) to the everyday lives of ordinary British people between 1914 and 1935. To make his case, Guida has marshalled an impressive range of archival sources including poetry, newspapers, journals, films, and radio broadcasts. The literature on the history of sound, a sub-field of the wider study of sensory history, has until now focussed principally on urban modernity, especially in the work of Karin Bijsterveld, Emily Thompson and more recently in the British case, James Mansell. Guida, however, argues that ‘natural’ sounds, often romantically associated with rural England, performed an equally significant role in British culture during the 1920s and 1930s. These formed part of the sonic fabric of the modern world, even if they were often explicitly treated in direct contradistinction to the din of urban living. This tension—between nature’s association with tradition and the past, and listening experiences that presented nature in a ‘modern’ context—recurs across the book’s five chapters.

Bodies of knowledge: historians, health and education

ABSTRACT There are multiple vantage points from which historians have observed the ways in which both diseased and healthy bodies (as well as their constituent parts) have served as tools of knowledge generation, instruction and coercion in the hands of medical practitioners. From spaces of formal, specialist education such as the medical school to more informal environments and modes of learning, there is a seemingly never-ending array of environments, actors and materials to consider when trying to construct a representative survey of the two fields. Focusing primarily on the British case, this article takes a selective view of the different kinds of environments, actors and approaches historians have used to understand pedagogies of health and medicine in the modern period before suggesting new avenues of potential inquiry.

"N-Acetylcysteine for Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders in Children and Adolescents: A Review".

To evaluate clinical data using oral n-acetylcysteine (NAC) in obsessive-compulsive and related disorders (OCDRD) treatment. PubMed, Ovid MEDLINE (1946-July 2022), and the Cochrane Library database were searched using the terms NAC, children, adolescent, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), trichotillomania (TTM), excoriation, hoarding disorder, and body dysmorphic disorder. Bibliographies were reviewed for relevant trials and case studies. English language, clinical trials, or case studies analyzing NAC use in patients aged 3 to 21 years old with OCDRD as determined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition. Three randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trials of NAC in children and adolescents studied 121 patients with OCDRD. Trials assessed symptom severity from baseline to 10 to 12 weeks of NAC therapy. Two OCD trials identified statistically significant improvements, with only 1 trial demonstrating a clear clinically relevant difference from placebo. One trial in TTM found no difference between the NAC and placebo. Adverse effects were mild and included nausea, blurred vision, fatigue, tremor, and sweats. N-acetylcysteine titrated to 2400 or 2700 mg/day in divided doses was the most studied regimen. Many OCDRD patients fail to completely respond to first-line treatment with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and/or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) leaving practitioners with few additional treatment options. Preliminary efficacy and safety data are presented in this review. Limited evidence suggests children and adolescents with OCD refractory to SSRIs or CBT may benefit from NAC augmentation.

A macrohistory of legal evolution and coevolution: Property, procedure, and contract in early-modern English caselaw

We provide a quantitative macrohistory of the evolution and coevolution of three fundamental elements of English caselaw: property, contract, and procedure. Our dataset is derived from a comprehensive corpus of reports on early-modern English court cases. Leveraging existing topic-model estimates, we construct annual time series of attention to each of the three legal domains between the years 1552 and 1764 and estimate a structural VAR. Property and procedure are affected for decades by their own shocks. Procedure and property coevolve. In contrast, contract adjusts quickly to its own shocks and does not coevolve with the other two areas of caselaw. We identify the episodes and events outside the legal system that correspond to systemic shocks. Edward Coke was a shock to procedure. The commercial revolution raised attention to contract. The Glorious Revolution, interestingly, did not lead to elevated attention to property issues, but the Civil War and Interregnum did. The evolution of contract, while relatively autonomous from the internal dynamics of the legal system, was, of the three legal domains, least autonomous from society.

This deserves a brief mention

Abstract This article takes a doubly contrastive approach to spoken academic language. On the one hand, it explores genre differences between spoken and written academic English and French; on the other, it considers divergences between spoken academic discourse in the two languages. The corpora used for this purpose were purpose-built on the basis of YouTube video subtitles and other sources. The focus of attention is on keywords and key metadiscursive routines. The results suggest that, somewhat counterintuitively, the distance between academic speech and writing is smaller in French than it is in English, so that written routines can be more easily transferred to speech in French. French written and spoken discourse shows a greater degree of abstraction and self-referentiality than is the case in English. The article selectively illustrates that both French and English have a distinct set of spoken routines that are not used in writing; these need to be described and recorded in lexicographic resources to make them available for teachers and learners.

Parent company liability, forum non conveniens and substantial justice

This article examines the forum non conveniens doctrine in English parent company liability cases, focusing on the recent Vedanta, Unilever and Okpabi trilogy. It explains the dilemma that English courts, like other common law courts, have faced when confronted with arguments that foreign courts are unable to deliver ‘substantial justice’ to claimants. On the one hand, English courts do not wish to appear chauvinistic, but on the other they do not want to leave claimants without a remedy. This dilemma is even more pointed in the context of parent company liability cases which involve claims against English parent companies for harms caused by the operations of their subsidiaries in developing countries and, in particular, when the subsidiaries are of such economic importance (and are sometimes even partly owned or controlled by the developing country itself) that there is a real risk of corruption in the judicial process to protect those economic interests. The article shows that, in the recent trilogy, this dilemma has been sidestepped by allowing substantial justice arguments, but on less controversial procedural grounds, such as the absence of litigation funding in the foreign forum.

Lord Nicholls on the likelihood of crimes

In the decision to the British appeals case Re H (Minors), Judge Lord Nicholls, talking about criminal behavior, stated that “that the more serious the allegation the less likely it is that the event occurred”. There is actually quite a bit of discussion about the conclusions that should be drawn from this observation in the literature, but I have not found much discussion of the question whether the observation is right. I find this surprising, and in this essay I want to inspect this question.

Acquisition of Genitive Case by Bilingual Guilaki-Persian English Learners

The present study focuses on recognition and production of the English genitive cases with similar structure in Guilaki (i.e., possessive determiners and possessive relations) or Persian (i.e., non-possessive relations) at initial state of EFL acquisition. In this regard, the researcher selected the most proficient Guilaki and Persian speakers-beginner EFL learners who were comparably aware of the structures under study to establish L3 and L2 groups. Both groups equally comprised 30 female third-grade junior high school English learners. The statistical analyses on GJT and Translation tests of the L3 group suggested different levels of cross-linguistic influence, and hence partially supporting FT/FA hypothesis, L2 transfer hypothesis or CEM for each form of genitive case. Moreover, the findings indicated a possible association between the L3 group’s poor performance and their incomplete L1 acquisition due to the intense contact with the majority language (i.e., Persian as L2). Consequently, EFL teaching through learners’ language background can improve their English and preserve their background languages.

A multi-criteria analysis framework for conflict resolution in the case of offshore wind farm sitting: A study of England and the Netherlands offshore space

Growing EU energy ambitions in the North Sea region are urging for an accelerated deployment of large-scale renewable energy (RE) infrastructure, with offshore wind farms (OWF) playing an essential role. However, implementing the current EU targets is limited by the competing spatial claims between existing sea uses and OWFs and uncertainties related to potential risks of interaction, creating important barriers to a swift roll-out of RE infrastructure. In tackling this issue, we are proposing a transparent and spatially explicit multi-criteria analysis tool to quantify and qualify the main risks and opportunities resulting from the interaction between OWFs and four other seas user groups (shipping, marine protected areas, fisheries and military activities). The multi-criteria analysis framework is accounting for sectoral activity specific risks of interaction with OWFs, classified through the respective available conflict resolution options, which allows for the quantification of the average conflict score (ACS) between the selected activities and OWFs. Using the resulting ACS and the geo-location of areas of interaction, we map areas of high and low conflict with OWFs and indicate management options for solving, minimizing or compensating the conflicts. Our results indicate that conflict resolution strategies in marine mammal’s habitats present the highest potential for unlocking medium value OWF sites both for the Dutch case (15.8 – 28 GWs) and English case (15.94-28.3 GWs), followed by pelagic fisheries in the Dutch case (15-26.9 GWs) and passenger/cargo routes in the English case (10.9-19.4 GWs). The strategic planning of increasingly larger and more complex OWF projects will require a better understanding not only of the level of conflict with the other sea users in relation to the valuable OWF sites, but also potential management options to solve, minimize or compensate those conflicts. As an example, accessing 6.8-12.3 GWs in high value OWF sites in the Dutch EEZ will require the relocating of military flying areas with forbidden access, while technical solutions such as “fill-in-the-gap” or relocation of lower airspace radars could unlock 10.25-18.16 GWs in the English EEZ. By avoiding high risk areas and prioritizing areas of low conflict, the bottlenecks, negative effects and inefficiencies related to space management options can be minimized, while synergies and positive effects of OWF deployment can be timely captured.

A Practical Note on Drafting Exclusion Clauses Learning from Selected Dutch and English Law and Cases

<b>A Practical Note on Drafting Exclusion Clauses</b> Learning from Selected Dutch and English Law and Cases

COVID-19 Related Myocarditis in Adults: A Systematic Review of Case Reports.

Despite the progress of its management, COVID-19 maintains an ominous condition which constitutes a threat, especially for the susceptible population. The cardiac injury occurs in approximately 30% of COVID-19 infections and is associated with a worse prognosis. The clinical presentation of cardiac involvement can be COVID-19-related myocarditis. Our review aims to summarise current evidence about that complication. The research was registered at PROSPERO (CRD42022338397). We performed a systematic analysis using five different databases, including i.a. MEDLINE. Further, the backward snowballing technique was applied to identify additional papers. Inclusion criteria were: full-text articles in English presenting cases of COVID-19-related myocarditis diagnosed by the ESC criteria and patients over 18 years old. The myocarditis had to occur after the COVID-19 infection, not vaccination. Initially, 1588 papers were screened from the database search, and 1037 papers were revealed in the backward snowballing process. Eventually, 59 articles were included. Data about patients’ sex, age, ethnicity, COVID-19 confirmation technique and vaccination status, reported symptoms, physical condition, laboratory and radiological findings, applied treatment and patient outcome were investigated and summarised. COVID-19-related myocarditis is associated with the risk of sudden worsening of patients’ clinical status, thus, knowledge about its clinical presentation is essential for healthcare workers.

EMPLOYERS’ LIABILITY FOR STRESS AT WORK DUE TO AN EXCESSIVE WORKLOAD: NEW POINTERS FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM

Stress-induced illnesses experienced by employees due to excessive workloads are an alarming problem facing employers in the United Kingdom. Not only are stress-induced illnesses a major cause for concern, but these illnesses have moreover been recognised as the second most common work-related ill-health problem in the UK. Workplaces in South Africa are not shielded from the problematic consequences of the work pressures experienced by employees. So far, these problems have mostly been addressed by utilising the provisions of existing legislation. However, despite the existence of legislation in the UK which deals with safety and health issues in employment, a number of employees have successfully claimed damages from their employers by proving breach of contract. In this article, the possibility of South African employers being held contractually liable for stress-induced illnesses based on the excessive workloads of their employees is analysed from a comparative point of view. It is concluded that contractual liability may very well be a reality should the guidelines which emanated from British case law be followed.

Bauer and Beyond: The Changing Interpretation of Article 8 of Directive 2008/94/EC and Its Impact on EU Member State (and UK) Pension Protection Arrangements on Employer Insolvency

In this article, the interpretation of the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) of Article 8 of Directive 2008/94/EC (protecting employee pension rights on employer insolvency) (‘Art. 8’) over the last 14 years is reviewed. In six cases the ECJ has ruled on the correct transposition of Article 8: Robins, Hogan, Webb-Sämann, Hampshire, Bauer and TMD. Initially the ECJ decided that Article 8 required a 50% minimum level of protection of the value of pensions. This raised a lot of further questions. More recently it decided, in Bauer, to add a further underpin based on the Eurostat at-risk-of-poverty threshold. The Bauer decision, in the authors’ view, makes two possible errors, discussed in this article, which might create legal uncertainty as to how the additional underpin can, in practice, be administered. The Bauer underpin was unforeseeable and suggests possible (excessive) judicial activism. Our review of the Article 8 ECJ case law identifies continuing gaps in compliance in the UK (the lack of protection for unfunded pension schemes) and in the Netherlands (if an employer has agreed to provide additional funding to make good benefit shortfalls). In contrast, we identify that Article 8 does not require the protection of early retirement benefits (or invalidity benefits) in contrast to the ECJ decision in Beckmann. We discuss the use, in an English case (Hughes), of an age discrimination argument to remove a compensation cap in the UK Pension Protection Fund (PPF) for those below normal pension age using Article 21 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Our review may help identify potential areas of noncompliance with the transposition of Article 8 in other Member States.

The Sociology of the Sociology of Work in the UK

The Palgrave Handbook of the Sociology of Work in Europe (ed. Paul Stewart, Jean-Pierre Durand and Maria-Magdalena Richea) is the product of an ambitious project that seeks to locate the evolving character and role of the sociology of work within wider social, economic, and institutional settings. Separate chapters explore the contents and contexts of such social research and theorizing in eleven European nation-states since 1945. In doing so, the Handbook provides rich resources for a ‘sociology of the sociology of work’, which embraces discussion of changes and continuities in empirical and methodological preoccupations in each country, together with an examination of the dominant and competing analytical frameworks in play. Some of these features are seen as responsive to the interests and concerns of the powerful and advantaged, and when they dominate the intellectual agenda they are seen as ‘hegemonic’, whereas others, characterized as ‘counterhegemonic’, may potentially articulate the interests of the relatively powerless but also risk marginalization or exclusion. This review considers the strengths of the resulting analyses of the sociology of work, with particular attention to the British case study, and identifies some unresolved issues associated with mapping the institutional locations, intellectual currents, and hegemonic and counterhegemonic features that may characterize evolving sociologies of work.

Economic Evaluation Evidence for Resource-Allocation Decision Making: Bridging the Gap for Local Decision Makers Using English Case Studies.

Best-practice economic evaluation methods for health-related decision making at a national level in England are well established, and as a first principle generally involve attempting to maximise the amount of health generated from the health system’s budget. Such methods are applied in ways that are broadly transparent and accountable, often at arm’s length from explicit political pressures. At local levels of decision making, however, decision making is arguably less likely to be applied according to established overarching principles, is less transparent and is more subject to political pressures. This may be owing to a multiplicity of reasons, for example, undesirability/inappropriateness of such methods, or a failure to make the methods clear to local decision makers. We outline principles for economic evaluations and break down these methods into their component parts, considering their relevance in the English local context. These include taxonomies of decision-making frameworks, budgets, costs, outcome, and characterisations of cost effectiveness. We also explore the role of broader factors, including the relevance of assuming a single fixed budget, pressures resulting from political and budgetary cycles and affordability. We consider the data requirements to inform such deliberations. By setting out principles for economic evaluation methods in a clear language aimed at local decision making, a potential role for such methods can be established, which to date has failed to emerge. While the extent to which these methods can and should be applied are a matter for continued debate, the establishment of such a mutual understanding may assist in the improvement of methods for such decision making and the outcomes resulting from their application.

Personal Unions and the Question of Diplomacy in the 18th Century: The Anglo-Hanoverian Case (1750s)

This article sheds new light on the personal ties between several Hanoverian and English ministers of George II, as well as on the nature of their diplomatic collaboration, and consequently, on the political dimension of the Anglo-Hanoverian Personal Union. Beyond the English case, the aim of this article is to propose a new interpretation of the diplomacy of European personal unions during the eighteenth century; to understand how political actors were doing and understanding diplomacy in the very frequent context of personal unions. The existence of two ‘territorial’ interests is undeniable – an Hanoverian and an English one – which could be more or less separated or unified. However, if we take more into account the political culture of these ministers, it enables us to bring into relief the importance of another aspect of their duties: a defence of the King’s interest, of this common master to whom both the German and English ministers were personally bound. Thus, the well-known friendship between the Duke of Newcastle and the Hanoverian Prime Minister Münchhausen in fact concerned an entire group of ministers who were friends and relatives. I argue that these personal relations, which still had a deep political significance, helped create an ‘informal’ Council which had as a political basis the idea of serving this shared master, and which sometimes even led to the development of a common diplomacy of the Personal Union as a whole. The principal sources for this article are Münchhausen’s Papers (Hanoverian Archives) and his correspondence with Newcastle (British Library).

AR Construction Technology of Blended English Teaching Mode in Colleges

Because the educational goals set by the traditional teaching mode are too single, students gradually lose interest in learning. In the information age, there are more and more cases of various emerging technologies being applied to the field of education, and college English education should also be strengthened. The application of these technologies will help to realize the diversified development of the presentation of teaching content. AR has developed rapidly. It can help people connect with the virtual world, obtain information in real time, and apply it in teaching classrooms to help students participate in knowledge exploration and strengthen student-student and teacher-student interaction. This research designs and develops a blended English case teaching resource based on AR, applies the teaching resource to the classroom of universities, and then tests the application effect of the resource.

THE REQUIREMENT FOR TRANS AND GENDER DIVERSE YOUTH TO SEEK COURT APPROVAL FOR THE COMMENCEMENT OF HORMONE TREATMENT: A COMPARISON OF AUSTRALIAN JURISPRUDENCE WITH THE ENGLISH DECISION IN BELL.

This article outlines the Australian legal position relevant to minors and the commencement of hormone treatment for Gender Dysphoria (GD). It traces the significant Australian legal developments in this field and compares the Australian jurisprudence with recent English caselaw. In Quincy Bell and Mrs A v The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust and Ors, the English High Court held that minors below 16 years are not likely to have the requisite competency to lawfully consent to the commencement of puberty suppressing drugs. The Court of Appeal subsequently overturned this decision, but there are important aspects of the High Court's reasoning that warrant further analysis, particularly some of the underlying reasoning about the nature of GD as a condition and its treatment. This article highlights several common themes when comparing the High Court's reasoning in Bell with Australian jurisprudence and highlights how the Australian position has advanced significantly since the firstAustralian cases in this field were decided. This comparison shows that the Australian perspective is important in demonstrating how judicial views can advance over time alongside a deeper understanding of GD, its treatment, and the broader impact of a requirement to involve the court in such cases. It is concluded that the Australian perspective should be considered in future English cases.