English Law Research Articles (Page 1)

ABSTRACT Financial inclusion is an important policy tool for economic growth, reducing poverty and income inequality, but its impact on social outcomes, such as crime, remains largely unexplored. This study examines the relationship between financial inclusion and property crimes in 75 countries from 2004 to 2019. Our results show that higher financial inclusion, especially through increased bank deposits per capita, reduces property crime, with a notable effect on burglary rates. The influence of financial inclusion on property crime is also conditional on income inequality and unemployment rates, with a stronger relationship observed in countries with higher income inequality and unemployment. Furthermore, the impact is more pronounced in low-income countries, with higher institutional quality and those governed by the English legal system. The results are robust to different empirical methods, including the use of fixed effects instrumental variables estimation, where bank stability serves as an instrument to address potential endogeneity. These results show that financial inclusion not only supports economic development but also plays a critical role in reducing crime, highlighting its importance as a public policy priority with broader societal benefits.

ABSTRACT Without the authority of legislation in the United Kingdom, some bequeathed their bodies to physicians, surgeons and apothecaries to dissect and create anatomical specimens in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Those individuals included the legal and political philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who was publicly dissected and whose skeleton and preserved head were used to prepare the ‘Auto-Icon’. Other dissections were publicised in newsprints and periodicals, often alongside commentary on the prejudice against dissection and anatomy and calls for anatomy legislation. Such bequests attempted to interface with English law generally and anatomy law specifically, but how they did so and with what effect are less obvious. Accordingly, the author undertakes the study of body bequests before legislation, so to identify and analyse their significance to the law’s conception of what could be done with or to a human corpse. He argues that body bequests relied on a kind of legal somatics or somatechnics in the use of the body, through which alternate imaginaries of the corpse, and attendant normative understandings, were visualised and instituted. By doing so, testators, executors and dissectors sought to affirm the law as they thought it should be, by acting as if it already were the law.

The article offers a comprehensive analysis of the use of trusts and the presence of trust relationships in international financial transactions. Owing to its doctrinal nature – namely, the split of ownership into legal title and beneficial title – the trust provides a legal and organisational framework for asset management, investor protection, and the efficient performance of contractual obligations. The article shows that employing a trust and appointing a trustee has several benefits for international financial transactions, in particular it can reduce agency and transaction costs, enable flexible structuring of security, expedite collateral enforcement in the event of default and protect assets from claims by third parties in case of bankruptcy. It emphasises the Anglo-American origins of the trust and the absence of a direct analogue in civil-law systems, which is one of the reasons for the predominance of English law as the governing law in international financial transactions. It is established that the trust is an integral element in structuring international financial transactions, including eurobond issuance, securitisation, secured financing, and securities lending. The article examines how trusts are used and how trust relationships arise in each of these transactions. It analyses the trust model used in eurobond issuance and compares it with the fiscal agency model. It also studies and summarises the role and powers of the trustee or the security trustee in securitisation, secured financing, and securities lending. In jurisdictions that do not recognise the trust, the article identifies functional equivalents of trust, and the peculiarities associated with their use. The article posits that the trust is indispensable for the effective structuring of international financial transactions by virtue of its legal nature and that it may not be fully replaced with other instruments available in civil-law systems.

Normal Trauma and Abnormal Diagnosis: A Discursive Analysis of Sexual Violence Law and Policy in England and Wales

Prior to the advent of colonial administration in Nigeria, punishment and prisons were under the control of traditional institutions. However, the emergence of colonial rule in Nigeria witnessed the introduction of English penal codes by the British colonial administrators through various ordinances and proclamations. The English law and prison system protected British economic interests and was used to punish natives who were resisting and committing offences against the colonial order. The study examines the effects of the Nigerian Civil War on prisons in Nigeria from 1967 to 1970. The study used both primary and secondary sources of evidence. Using the historical method of analysis, the study finds out that, at independence in 1960, the Nigerian prisons inherited its feature from the colonial prisons system. Following the ethno-religious crises that engulfed the nation by 1966, and the setbacks witnessed in the Nigerian Prisons, government constituted the Gobir Panel which brought about the abolition of Native Authority prisons and the subsequent unification of the Prisons Service in Nigeria, marking the beginning of Nigerian Prison Service as a composite reality. However, the outbreak of the Nigerian Civil War in 1967, could not give room for this reform to take its full measure. Prisons in Nigeria became a horrifying scene as prisoners became victims of murder, prison abandonment, prison-yard violence, prison break, and tortures, among others. The study concludes that, prisons challenges and its attendant Nigerian Civil War within this period is associated with a failure of state capacity.

Lost Boys and Fairies is a BBC Miniseries that aired in June 2024. The programme is about a same sex couple – Gabriel (played by Sion Daniel Young) and Andy (played by Fra Fee) hoping to adopt a child. It is set in Cardiff, Wales. It follows their adoption journey, which brings up confronting memories for Gabriel who grew up as a gay young man in his Welsh community. It highlights how the influences of his Welsh Christian father, Section 28 (British law that existed from 1988–2003 which prohibited Local Authorities from “promoting” homosexuality), the AIDS crisis, the death of his mother as a boy and expectations of good Welsh boys created shame about his sexual orientation, and how he then dealt with this shame through anonymous hookups and chemsex. At the beginning of the show, Gabriel was in a fairly happy and stable place. The adoption process and the death of Andy in episode 2 re-invite these coping mechanisms.

This paper presents a critical examination of the concept of trespass to goods and chattels under Nigerian law. Trespass to goods, as a tortious wrong, protects possessory interests in personal property against unlawful interference, conversion, or damage. The study traces the historical evolution of the tort from the English common law tradition, upon which Nigerian jurisprudence is heavily predicated, and evaluates its adaptation within Nigeria’s legal framework. It interrogates the constituent elements of the tort—possession, wrongful interference, and intention—while distinguishing it from related torts such as detinue and conversion. Furthermore, the paper critiques the adequacy of existing legal remedies and judicial approaches in addressing contemporary issues such as digital property, motor vehicle disputes, and governmental seizure of goods. Through analysis of case law and statutory provisions, it is argued that the current legal position, though functional, remains conceptually narrow and outdated in dealing with emerging forms of property and technological realities. The paper concludes by advocating for doctrinal reform and legislative modernization to ensure that the law on trespass to goods and chattels remains responsive to modern commercial and social developments in Nigeria.

The ‘reasonable expectations of privacy’ test has become central to English information law. The fact-specificity of this test has obfuscated the scope of patients’ privacy rights. In both R (W, X, Y & Z) v Secretary of State for Health and Prismall v Google, the claimants were found to lack a circumstantially reasonable expectation of privacy when their identifiable information was disclosed outside the healthcare system, obviating the need for justification under Article 8 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). In response to these developments, this article argues for a legal presumption of privacy when patients’ data are used for purposes other than their healthcare. This would be a development of the courts’ existing ‘starting point’ of assuming reasonable expectations of privacy in identifiable medical information. The two cases explored in this article suggest that this ‘starting point’ is not enough, and still affords judges broad discretion to evaluate a (non-exhaustive) list of factors in each individual case. For the sake of the clarity and accessibility of patients’ rights, I argue that privacy should be presumed by default when their data are used for purposes other than their healthcare.

This article examines how annulment of marital property agreements occurs when consent is tainted by vitiating factors. The research object focuses on prenuptial agreements in Indonesia and financial settlement agreements in England. The objective of this study is to analyze the legal framework, judicial practice, and consequences of annulment caused by error, misrepresentation or fraud, or duress in both jurisdictions. Using normative legal research, this study employs statutory, conceptual, comparative, and case approaches, supported by deductive analysis of legislation, jurisprudence, and scholarly opinion. The results show that under Indonesian law, annulment is possible when an agreement is proven to be based on false or misleading information, as exemplified by Denpasar District Court Decision No. 1308/Pdt.G/2019/PN.Dps, which annulled a prenuptial agreement due to misrepresentation. Meanwhile under English law, annulment is recognized in cases of fraudulent misrepresentation, as highlighted in Sharland v Sharland [2015] UKSC 60, where intentional dishonesty invalidated a financial settlement agreement. The conclusion affirms that such agreements are voidable and although annulment safeguards fairness and genuine consent, the division of marital property must still be pursued through separate judicial proceedings as the consequences in both legal systems.

As he faced conviction for sedition in 1793, Thomas Muir lamented ‘this trial is no trivial matter. It affects me, but it affects the country more.’ This statement echoes the sentiment of the time wherein the carrying out of British penal policy impinged on the autonomy of Scots law, which was protected by the 1707 Act of Union. During a period of heightened political tensions at home and abroad the state looked to deter challenges to authority, including sedition, by ensuring that justice was enacted in the harshest sense without provoking accusations of tyranny. However, the case of Muir and his fellow ‘Scottish Martyrs’ posed major contentions to the authorities in Edinburgh, Whitehall and New South Wales. This article examines the spaces in which the bounds of criminality, the definition of punishment and the distinctions between English and Scots law were played out—namely, the courtroom, the transport ship and the penal colony. It demonstrates that the journey of the Scottish Martyrs through the legal system was shaped by political and legal frictions between Scotland and England, which encouraged British and imperial discussions around freedoms, legislative power and penal policy.

Abstract The article examines the recent calls to reform of the House of Lords ( hl ) through two lenses: theoretical and prescriptive. Theoretically, it revisits the classics of constitutional theory to underscore the nexus between the function of a second chamber and the concept of ‘constitutional subjecthood’. This pertains to the criteria governing majority formation and representative voting. The article demonstrates a conceptual tension within the UK’s territorial constitution. Despite the multi-layered nature of the constitution, the House of Lords’ voting structure rejects multi-layered subjecthood in favour of a unitary conception. This inconsistency exacerbates territorial disparities and undermines the House of Lords’ function, weakening the role of devolved territories in ‘shared rule’. To address this conceptual tension, the prescriptive part of the article proposes a Standing Order for the hl analogous to the English Vote for English Laws ( evel ) framework, albeit with an inverse scope and fortified by a robust theoretical foundation. This proposal promises to harmonise the theoretical tension and provide political teeth to the Sewel Convention, while at the same time not being contingent on a full reconstruction of the hl ’s function, nor composition.

People living with dementia face a disproportionately high risk of abuse and neglect, yet safeguarding responses remain underexplored, particularly within the context of English legal and care systems. This realist review investigates how safeguarding practices for people with dementia operate in England, examining what works, for whom, in what circumstances, and why. Drawing on 44 studies published between 2014 and 2024, supplemented by extensive stakeholder engagement with individuals with lived experience, carers, practitioners, and community representatives, the review synthesizes evidence through Context-Mechanism-Outcome configurations. Five core domains emerged: stakeholder roles, conceptualization of abuse and neglect, safeguarding processes and diversity, safeguarding law and policy, and partnership working. Findings reveal that effective safeguarding depends not only on statutory frameworks like the Care Act 2014 and Mental Capacity Act 2005, but also on professional judgement, relational dynamics, and inter-agency collaboration. Significant barriers include inconsistent training, conceptual ambiguity, cultural stigma, and systemic under-resourcing. Importantly, safeguarding outcomes improves in environments where legal literacy, trust, and communication are strong, and services are culturally competent and person-centered. The review highlights the need for integrated, rights-based approaches and greater inclusivity in safeguarding systems to better protect diverse populations of people living with dementia.

Abstract The combination of technological advancement of generative AI with the ever-increasing importance of participation and presence in the digital world for one’s overall quality of life makes the harm from deep fakes a pressing problem. There is a need to both regulate deep fakes and remedy the harm they cause. In the paper, I focus on tort law, privacy-based response to a subset of the deep fake problem: nonconsensual intimate fakes (‘intimate fakes’). I make the following claims in the paper: (1) Those who distribute intimate fakes of identifiable real persons where the image appears to be real should be liable to the plaintiff for breach of their privacy. Those who make these images (with a self-use exception) and those who host and view them should be likewise liable, but I will focus on distributors here. This follows from the position that false private information, even if defamatory, implicates the plaintiff’s privacy interest and should allow the plaintiff to sue for breach of privacy for reasons both pragmatic and conceptual (including an analogy I make between information and genome). This position is largely endorsed by existing English law. (2) There should (and probably could) be no tort liability for the distribution of intimate fakes of fictional characters not reasonably understood to refer to a real person. However, liability for breach of sexual privacy manifested in intimate fakes should extend also to cases of look-alikes (including of an invented character) and in this sense as well liability should be strict. (3) A strong case exists for imposing liability also in cases in which the intimate fake is a known fake: ostensibly fake, or accompanied by disclaimer that it is. I first explain why these known fakes merit liability, highlighting what makes their distribution both harmful and (civilly) wrongful. I then explain that liability could be conceptualised as (also) vindicating the claimant’s privacy interest. (4) There should be no tort liability for the creation of an intimate fake for self-use. However, the creator should be strictly liable for the distribution of the intimate fake; moreover, there is much to support liability of the creator towards the subject of the image should the latter learn that the image exists even if the intimate fake itself was not distributed.

This paper aims to define and outline the legal framework governing whether insurers’ liability, and therefore insurance coverage, remains valid in the presence of concurrent causations. It uses a comparative qualitative methodology, with an analysis of case law, statute, and academic literature to attempt to understand where responsibility lies and whether the apparent simplicity of the French Civil law contains useful legislation that could be applied to future reforms for English and Welsh law. The paper aims to find that the law in England and Wales lacks clarity and strong precedent. There is an overlap between insurance law and liability, and the complexity with respect to concurrent causation affects the validity of many insurance claims. This causes legal difficulties where insurance claims cannot easily be concluded. The paper recommends reform to the law of England and Wales to adopt a legal principle similar to French civil law, where damage is fully compensated, regardless of cause, removing the complexity of concurrent causation entirely, providing better consumer support, and reducing a drain on court resources by speeding up processes.

ABSTRACT The article examines the production of English colonial legal spaces in seventeenth-century North America. Particularly in Virginia, their production revolved around the concept of ‘plantation’, which points to several legal-horticultural acts, such as planting seeds, improving the land, and civilizing non-Western environments. Made up of gardening, agriculture, and fences, the legal geography of these settlements was built at the expense of the landscape previously created (and inhabited) by Indians. Colonizers transplanted new plants, seeds, and new legal regimes into American soil, which meant dispossessing the Natives, outlawing their titles to the land, and completely reshuffling the landscape. The article focuses on how the colonizers introduced such changes so as to make the landscape reflect their own cultural and legal imaginaries. This was achieved through a legal-horticultural title, the creation of which was part of a broader process of politico-legal invention, also based on exotic legal imaginaries and landscapes. The English socio-cultural capital brought to America was reinvented so as to maximize the profits of the colonial enterprise and reinforce colonial legal geographies.

The foundation of the colony of South Australia coincided with the influence of philanthropic evangelicals in the Colonial Office and British parliament, and the colony’s founding documents seemingly sought to protect Aboriginal people’s rights to land. But whether the colonists would find such rights existed according to British law was another matter. Lutheran missionaries Clamor Schürmann and Christian Teichelmann arrived in South Australia in October 1838, and this article demonstrates that the two missionaries – linguistically, ethnically and religiously distinct from the settler society that encompassed them – were the colonists’ source of knowledge of Aboriginal customs of land ownership. On realising that Aboriginal people’s proprietary rights were not being respected, Schürmann and Teichelmann voiced their concerns to colonial authorities (both in the colony and in the metropole). That their complaints were ineffective suggests that the British were never genuinely committed to protecting Aboriginal people’s rights to land.

Abstract Sir Patrick Elias occupies a unique position in modern British employment law as an academic, practitioner and judge during the period of its expansion from the 1970s to the present day. His insistence on the need for conceptual clarity in legal reasoning has helped prevent the law falling into atrophy and confusion during a time when the volume and granularity of statutory texts was increasing year on year. His employment status case law, while clear, is nonetheless cautiously expressed and is consistent with an approach more widely shared across the British judiciary, of avoiding purpose-orientated reasoning when interpreting legal concepts in their statutory context. A tendency towards formalism in legal reasoning does not necessarily make the law more predictable or straightforward to apply. The emergence of a highly elaborate jurisprudence on the employment status question has fuelled litigation over matters which could have been settled more straightforwardly had a more policy-aware approach to interpretation been adopted. There are historical precedents for retiring the courts from the task of determining employment status to which policy makers might wish to give due consideration.

The article examines the main historical events of the Meiji era related to the establishment of the University of Tokyo as one of the first and leading state centres for legal education in Japan during the reign of Emperor Mutsuhito. It describes the contribution of foreign lawyers hired by the Japanese government to the process of establishing legal education at the University of Tokyo in the early years of its existence, as well as the contribution of foreigners to the organisation of the work of the University of Tokyo’s predecessor, the Kaisei School. The article points out the historical significance of the fact of rivalry between proponents of the study of French law and proponents of the study of English law and German law. This rivalry accompanied the development of professional legal education in Japan throughout the Meiji era.

Background. Law English is the language of documents and normative legal acts characterised by precise and fixed wording. Currently, in the translations of non-linguistic universities students there is a tendency to substitute the meaning of lexical units of the law language with the commonly used meaning or to use calques and transcriptions of words, which makes it necessary to study law vocabulary in more detail in order to correct mistakes in the interpretation and understanding of the specific words and phrases meaning. The process of determining the most difficult vocabulary is currently complicated due to the reduction in the number of hours allocated to practical classes, as well as the increase in the number of people in one foreign language group. The use of multimedia presentation is one of the ways of visual systematisation of lexical units of the law language, performed by each student individually. Purpose. The main objective is to identify and systematise the most problematic aspects in the law vocabulary study through the students' performance of a multimedia presentation for the subsequent integration of the obtained data into the process of teaching foreign languages at law majors in non-linguistic universities. Materials and methods. The theoretical analysis method of scientific and pedagogical literature was used to evaluate the effectiveness of multimedia presentation as a pedagogical tool in teaching a foreign language. The pedagogical experiment made it possible to identify the most problematic areas in the study of professionally oriented vocabulary. The descriptive method was used to determine the order of data collection and its subsequent interpretation. Results. In the course of the experiment, students of non-linguistic universities systematised difficult English law words and presented them in the form of a multimedia presentation. The analysis of the obtained material allowed us to identify three main sources of mistakes in learning English law vocabulary: reading, writing and incorrect understanding of the words semantics. The use of multimedia presentation helps to increase students' involvement in the process of learning a foreign language through independent identification of lexical units problematic for understanding, as well as to introduce elements of individual work in practical foreign language classes.

The legal pluralism in Pakistan has a very complicated history of overlaying indigenous, colonial, and religious systems of law. This pluralistic system was a legacy of the pre-colonial tradition and changed dramatically by the introduction of the British colonial law, as well as being further complicated after 1947 by the integration of Islamic beliefs into the legal identity of the state. Through other critical historical events, including the Islamization process of the 1970s and 1980s, a duality that existed between secular state courts and parallel systems such as jirgas and panchayat became fixed. This coexistence usually brings conflict in delivering justice and human rights, and poses a great challenge in terms of uniformity in the law. The historical evolution can be important in understanding the current discussions on legal reform, minority rights, and constitutional reconciliation with various customary and religious patterns in the context of a sociopolitical setting peculiar to Pakistan.