Judicial reviews are rarely comfortable for governments, but few people would have predicted how rapidly the Hutton Inquiry into the death of the weapons expert Dr David Kelly exposed the deepest internal processes of key British institutions. And certain things will never be quite the same again: there will surely be lasting consequences for foreign policy, security, the operation of government. Significant, too, is the fact that dispensing with the 30-year-rule and disclosing dozens of contemporary emails and documents from the heart of government has, with no observable harm to the country, blown a hole in the case against greater freedom of information (pll). The inquiry has been uncomfortable for the media, too, revealing much about editors' relationships to their journalists, about journalists' commitment to protect their sources (p26), about the practice of journalism itself and the power of the media something that John Lloyd (p84) and Julian Petley (p75) address from different perspectives but with critical concern. Secrecy, hidden agendas, freedom of information all aspects of Index's business have been crucial to this inquiry. But it has also exposed the clash between those who deal •with words as a means to presentation, spin, exaggeration and half-truths, and those who believe that words matter, must be chosen with care, mean what they say. In short: it has told us a great deal about the world we're living in. Thrown up more starkly than ever has been the question of trust in authority, or rather the lack of it — something that does not bode well for democracy. This issue of Index looks at the law and its authority at a seminal moment, examining in particular its relationship with free expression nationally and internationally. While Marcel Berlins reports on how the courts have been treating freedom of expression since the 1998 Human Rights Act (p36), Anthony Scrivener is disturbed by the recent erosion of civil liberties in the UK (p54), Bob Woffmdon by the role of the tabloid press in preventing fair trials (p67) and Philippe Sands by the dangers globally of the US abandoning international law (pi 16). Imran Khan discusses how impact cases break taboos (p62), Irena Maryniak analyses the curious relationship of countries of accession in Eastern Europe to the 'rule of law' and Anthony Hudson looks at the law's complex relationship with hate speech (p45).