Law Reform In England Research Articles

The efficacy of Clare’s Law in domestic violence law reform in England and Wales

In 2011 the high profile murder of Clare Wood led to the introduction of the national domestic violence disclosure scheme (‘Clare’s Law’) in England and Wales. The scheme aims to prevent the perpetration of violence between intimate partners through the sharing of information about prior histories of violence. Despite already spreading to comparable jurisdictions in the UK and Australia, to date the merits of a domestic violence disclosure scheme have been the subject of limited scholarly review and analysis. This article provides a timely critical analysis of the need for and merits of Clare’s Law. It examines the data impediments to the scheme, the need to balance the right to protection with the right to privacy and the question of victim empowerment versus responsibilization and victim blaming. The article concludes that there is a need to heed caution in adopting this policy elsewhere.

Protections for children before the law: An empirical analysis of the age of criminal responsibility, the abolition of doli incapax and the merits of a developmental immaturity defence in England and Wales

The law’s response to child offenders has long animated debate and sparked doctrinal law reform in England and Wales. The provision of legal protections for children in trouble with the law has been central to such debates, and questions surrounding the age at which a child should be held criminally responsible remain a contested area of law both domestically and internationally. In 1998 England and Wales abolished the presumption of doli incapax and retained the minimum age of criminal responsibility at 10 years old; two years below the United Nations’ recommended standard. This article examines the legal protections provided for child offenders under English criminal law with a focus on the adequacy of the age of criminal responsibility, the now abolished presumption of doli incapax and the merits of a developmental immaturity defence. Drawing on data obtained from interviews conducted with members of the English criminal justice system, this article analyses the extent to which legal practitioners perceive that the existing provisions are adequate and concludes by reinvigorating debate surrounding the need for future review and reform.

Equity without Chancery: The Fusion of Law and Equity in the Field Code of Civil Procedure, New York 1846–76

The Field Code of Civil Procedure – enacted in New York in 1848 and adopted by a majority of American jurisdictions thereafter – helped develop the modern American trial and influenced law reform in England. Leading accounts of the Code, however, ignore nineteenth-century New York practice which spurred its development, particularly the problems of fusing the separate systems of common law and equity. This article recovers that context and shows that despite scholarly claims to the contrary, the Code's drafters mainly sought to extend New York's equitable procedures to all civil cases. They expected, however, that equitable remedies and procedures could be divorced from the structures of chancery. In the Code, a paradigm of substantive rights and procedural remedies replaced the old division between law and equity. David Dudley Field's influential theory of fusion thus sought to expand the practice of equity, but without the courts of equity.

The Longer You Can Look Back, The Further You Can Look Forward: The Origins of the Scottish Law Commission

A. INTRODUCTION B. LAW REFORM IN ENGLAND (1) Law Reform Now (2) How soon is now: why 1965? (a) Social reasons (b) Legal reasons (c) Political reasons C. WHY SCOTLAND? (1) T B Smith (2) The Secretary of State and the Lord Advocate D. THE LAW COMMISSIONS ACT 1965 (1) Passage through Parliament (2) The SLC’s five duties (a) To propose and research ideas for law reform (including the presentation of draft bills) (b) To consolidate, repeal and generally “tidy up” existing law (c) To codify the law (d) To report to and take instructions from the Scottish Ministers (e) To co-operate with the LCEW E. CONCLUSION

Two Degrees of Murder: Homicide Law Reform in England and Western Australia

Two Degrees of Murder: Homicide Law Reform in England and Western Australia

Insurance Contract Law Reform in England and Scotland – An Update

the purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the progress of the English and Scottish law commissions’ project to reform insurance contract law and the response of the insurance market (to include policyholders, brokers, academics, lawyers, insurers and reinsurers) to the commissions’ proposals. this article is not intended to provide the reader with a detailed discussion of the commissions’ proposals for reform. these details may be found through the commissions’ web sites at www.lawcom.gov.uk and www.scotlaw.go.uk where the commissions have published a consultation Paper, a Summary of Proposals and a Summary of Responses in respect of their consumer proposals. A summary in respect of business proposals will be published later this year.

Law reform in England and Wales: a shattered dream or triumph of political vision?

Article by Sir Terence Etherton (Chairman, Law Commission) published in Amicus Curiae - Journal of the Society for Advanced Legal Studies. The Journal is produced by the Society for Advanced Legal Studies at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London. This is a slightly expanded version of the address delivered by the Hon Mr Justice Etherton, Chairman of the Law Commissiom, as the 2007 Sir William Dale Lecture at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies on November 1, 2007, and of the address delivered as the 2007 Bar Law Reform Committee Lecture delivered in the Inner Temple Hall on November 14, 2007.

Law reform in the twenty-first century

In this paper, which is the text of a lecture given at the official launch of the Law School at the University of Bradford on 11 May 2006, the history of law reform in England is traced, the role of the Law Commission is analysed and future prospects are considered.

'A field for private members': The Wolfenden committee and Scottish homosexual law reform, 1950-67.

The proceedings and report of the Wolfenden Committee on Prostitution and Homosexual Offences (1954-7) figure prominently in the historiography of homosexuality in later twentieth-century Britain. However, in the main, research has centred on the social politics of the Committee and its implications for sexual law reform in England, and there is a notable lack of regional studies. Using a range of government archives, this article focuses on the written and oral evidence of Scottish witnesses to the Committee. It documents the pre-existing legal and medical provisions for the treatment of 'homosexual offences' in Scotland, and surveys the Scottish evidence for and against the decriminalization of homosexual practices. Thereafter, it examines the views of the Scottish members of the Committee in the context of the Wolfenden Report. The article then surveys the wide-ranging opposition to homosexual law reform within Scotland in the period 1957-67, culminating in its exclusion from the 1967 Sexual Offences Act. Finally, it evaluates the implications of the Scottish experience and concludes that, in some important respects, it does not conform to the innovative and transitional picture advanced in many previous interpretations of the Wolfenden Committee and its aftermath.

Book Review: Evangelicalism, penal theory and the politics of criminal law reform in England, 1808-!30

Book Review: Evangelicalism, penal theory and the politics of criminal law reform in England, 1808-!30

Evangelicalism, penal theory, and the politics of criminal law reform in England, 1808-30

Mitigating the Bloody Code: an Introduction * Raising the Hue and Cry, 1808-1810 * Romilly, Bentham, and Utility * Evangelicalism and Penal Law Reform * The Evangelical Approach to Criminal Law Reform * The Conservative Resistance * Mobilizing Opinion, 1811-1818 * The Partnership: Mackintosh and Buxton, 1819-1823 * Consolidation, Mitigation, and Conclusions

Proposed mental incapacity law reform in England — What ethical and legal issues arise for demented people and their carers?

Proposed mental incapacity law reform in England — What ethical and legal issues arise for demented people and their carers?

"... Equality from the Masculine Point of View ...": the 2nd Earl Russell and Divorce Law Reform in England

"... Equality from the Masculine Point of View ...": the 2nd Earl Russell and Divorce Law Reform in England

Changing the nature of adoption: law reform in England and New Zealand

In both England and Wales and New Zealand adoption law is under review. A series of discussion papers followed by a Report to Ministers has been published in this country, while New Zealand has published an interim proposal for amendment ofexisting legislation prior to a later full review The time is right therefore, to consider and compare the basis upon which adoption law reform is proceeding. The opportunity to question the nature of adoption as a legal construct and examine the particular patterns offamily morality that it promotes is timely. Equally, it is timely to re-assess the philosophical underpinning of the Adoption Act 1976 in light of the particular ideology imported into family law in England and Wales by the Children Act 1989. The Act stresses the durability of parenthood and establishes the concept of parental responsibility which survives both divorce and a child care order. While containing points of confluence with adoption law, the new ideology nonetheless clashes with the existing concept of adoption in certain fundamental ways.

Law Reform in England and Wales

Law Reform in England and Wales

A Woman's Issue: The Politics of Family Law Reform in England. By Dorothy M. Stetson. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982. Pp. xiii + 278. $29.95.)

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A Woman's Issue: The Politics of Family Law Reform in England

A Woman's Issue: The Politics of Family Law Reform in England

Law Reform in England and New England, 1620 to 1660

I N the seventeenth century Sir Edward Coke and his disciples believed that the common law of England represented the perfection of human reason; as a result, there was no compelling need or justification for tampering with its intricacies. Lawyers participated extensively in the disputes over parliamentary and royal sovereignty but showed little enthusiasm for substantive changes in legal procedure. At times, leaders like Oliver Cromwell and Sir Matthew Hale suggested that law reform was a nice idea but not really practicable or desirable on a large scale. Historians of the law have tended to follow this lead in arguing that the Puritan Revolution had little influence on English law. Sir William Holdsworth's sixteen-volume history of English law devotes only a few pages to law reform during the period of the Civil Wars, the Commonwealth, and the Protectorate. Theodore F. T. Plucknett's survey disposes of the subject in a few sentences.' Traditional legal histories give the impression that law reform and revolution were not proper activities for the gentlemen of the bench and bar. Other historians, however, have devoted more serious attention to the movement for law reform in seventeenth-century England. Several excellent monographs have illuminated the extraordinary variety of legal grievances in Stuart England and the even greater diversity of legal reforms proposed after i640, affecting nearly every dispute at the time about politics, the constitution, society, economics, and religion. Such indispensable studies have pro-

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this articleConservative Politics In France. By Malcolm Anderson.Making Institutions Work. By Sir Geoffrey Vickers.The Consumer and Corporate Accountability. Edited by Ralph Nader.The Radical Attack on Business. By Charles Perrow.Contemporary Thought And Politics. By Ernest Gellner.The Private Government Of Public Money. By Hugh Heclo and Aaron Wildavsky.Divorce Law Reform IN England. By B. H. Lee.Marx And Mill: Two Views Of Social Conflict And Social Harmony. By Graeme Duncan.The Ideology Of Order: A Comparative Analysis Of Bodin And Hobbes. By Preston King.With Great Truth AND Respect. The Memoirs Of Paul Gore‐Booth.Against The Stream: Critical Essays On Economics. By Gunnar Myrdal.Transport Organisation In A Great City—The Case Of London. By M. E. Collins and T. M. Pharoah. Foreword by Professor A. Robson.The Conservative Party 1918–1970. By T. F. Lindsay and Michael Harrington.The Conservative Party. By Peter Lane.The Origins Of The Cultural Revolution. By Roderick Macfarquhar. Vol. 1: Contradictions Among The People.The Abyssinian Crisis. By Frank Hardie.

Companies in Private International Law

September 10, 1965, and recommended to all States to adopt ... rules in order to resolve conflicts of law with regard to companies formed under a municipal law. I In a period of company law reform in England, consideration of these rules becomes particularly relevant and main purposes of this article are, first, to evaluate recommended rules and, secondly, to set out such rules of English law as exist on systems of law governing companies and their of business. The recommended rules fall into four groups: (A) Rules on the law governing company ; (B) Rules on recognition; (C) Rules on places of business ; (D) Miscellaneous rules.