The government's recent Green Paper “Trade Unions and Their Members” contains several radical proposals for the reform of labour law, among them the suggestion that no union member should be subject to penalties by his trade union for disobedience to the union's call to take strike action. This proposal is based partly on a philosophy of committed individualism—everyone has a right to decide to work whatever a trade union has to say about the taking of industrial action—and partly on the government's concern over the well-publicised sanctions which unions such as the N. U. M. and the N. U. J. have recently imposed on members who have rejected official calls to participate in industrial action. The suggestion is made at a time when the actual impact of strikes (measured in terms of working days lost) is at its lowest point for twenty years and at a stage when, as one commentator has observed, “[t]he trend in this area of law, as developed in the courts and by Parliament, is towards strengthening the position of the union member who refuses to participate in industrial action”. Given its conviction that the taking of industrial action should be a matter left to individual choice (para. 2.22), it is hardly surprising that the government appears to view sympathetically the possibility of extending to members disciplined by their union (by expulsion or some lesser sanction) the right of complaint to an industrial tribunal.

According to traditional wisdom, although the public and academic writers are entitled to criticise the judges—and, in recent times, have not hesitated to do so most strenuously—judges do not reply publicly to their critics. To engage in open debate is unbecoming of the dignity of the English bench. However, every rule has its exception and on one notable occasion no lesser personage than the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Alexander Cockburn, incensed at criticism of one of his rulings, published a 24-page pamphlet replying to his censor, John Pitt Taylor. This unedifying episode illustrates how even the holder of highest office can make a spectacle of himself. If ever a judge again feels disposed to respond to public strictures, he might first do well to ponder the experience of Cockburn C.J.

This paper is concerned with the way in which the verb occidere was treated in the Lex Aquilia and with the explanation for this.

Professor Dieter Nörr appears to have offered the most recent explanation of the narrow scope given to the verb in the first chapter of the statute. He makes two points. First, he traces the distinction between direct killing (occidere) and indirectly causing death (mortis causam praestare or praebere) to early Greek law and speculates that this distinction was transmitted into Roman law through the Greek schools of rhetoric. Secondly, he suggests that the Lex Cornelia de sicarüs et veneficis included the phrase mortis causam praestare. If true, this second point would show how firmly the distinction had become established. The phrase would also have provided an obvious parallel for the jurists when engaged in interpreting the Lex Aquilia.