This is a prime example of how radical a court can be in its eagerness to protect human rights. In Jones v. Ministry of Interior of Saudi Arabia [2004] EWCA Civ 1394, the Court of Appeal reached an unprecedented decision by disregarding the relevant legislation, by going against its own previous decisions and higher authorities, and by reading an extremely liberal understanding into an international convention. In this case, the claimants sought damages in tort in civil proceedings against the Ministry of Interior of Saudi Arabia and a number of Saudi officials, including the head of the Ministry of Interior, alleging, among other things, systematic torture while they were in official custody in Saudi Arabia in 2001. What is remarkable about this case is that the alleged torture took place in Saudi Arabia, and that none of the individual defendants was present at any time on UK territory.

IN the 2001 census, nine per cent of the population of England and Wales were not classified as white. Racial tensions undeniably exist and it is probable that amongst the individuals randomly selected from the electoral roll to serve as jurors there will be some with race-related prejudices. By this we mean the inclination to prejudge others using pejorative stereotypes based on perceptions of “race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin”.

The constitutional implications of the decision of the Court of Appeal in Cream Holdings Ltd. v. Banerjee [2003] EWCA Civ 103, [2004] Ch. 650 (noted [2004] C.L.J. 4) to grant an injunction restraining a newspaper from publishing allegations of corruption in local government on the grounds of breach of confidence were such that it was not surprising that leave to appeal to the House of Lords was readily granted and that the matter has been speedily resolved: [2004] UKHL 44, [2004] 3 W.L.R. 918.

A disgruntled former employee of Cream Holdings had approached a local newspaper alleging that her former employers were engaged in the corruption of a local authority official by offering money to secure entertainment licences. The employers sought an injunction restraining both the employee and the newspaper from publication on the grounds of breach of confidence (but no defamation was alleged by those running the company).

English law traditionally draws no distinction between the liability of public bodies and that of private individuals. There is no general right to recover damages in respect of loss caused by an administrative act, even where that act is unlawful according to public law principles. An aggrieved individual must establish an ordinary private law cause of action: Supreme Court Act 1981, section 31(4). One of the most important innovations contained in the Human Rights Act 1998 is the creation of a form of public law liability. Section 6(1) states that it is unlawful for a public authority to act incompatibly with a Convention right. Section 7 enables a victim of an act contrary to section 6 to bring proceedings against the offending authority. Section 8(3) empowers the court to award damages if it is satisfied that such an award is necessary to afford just satisfaction to the victim.

“The law is a ass!” said Mr. Bumble upon being told that he was considered more guilty than his wife in the eye of the law, for the law (quite contrary to Mr. Bumble's humble personal experience of the matter) supposed that his wife acted under his direction (see Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, ch. 51). A similar sentiment must have stirred in the breasts of Mr. and Mrs. E, the paid carers of Mr. L, a 49-year-old man suffering from autism and severe learning disabilities, when they heard that the highest court of the land had declared that L's prolonged stay in a mental hospital following his informal admission as a ‘‘compliant incapacitated patient’’—devoid of any of the procedural safeguards enjoyed by patients admitted compulsorily under the Mental Health Act 1983—did not amount to unlawful detention.

A Written constitution is a “living instrument” (see, e.g., Commonwealth v. South Australia (1926) 38 C.L.R. 408, Dennis v. United States 341 U.S. 494 (1954) and Tyrer v. United Kingdom (1978) 2 E.H.R.R. 1). The judgments in Bovce v. The Queen, Matthew v. Trinidad and Tobago and Watson v. The Queen [2004] UKPC 32, 33, 34, [2004] 3 W.L.R. 786, 812, 841 accept this proposition but disclose profound disagreement as to its implications in practice.

In Reyes v. The Queen [2002] UKPC 11, [2002] 2 A.C. 235 (noted [2002] C.L.J. 505), the Privy Council held that the mandatory death sentence for murder in Belize was inhuman and degrading and thus contrary to the Constitution. In Boyce, Matthew and Watson the question was whether the same was true in Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica.

IN any season, it would be an honour to speak as a Sir David Williams Lecturer. But no season could be better for me than this one. For my daughter, Jane Ginsburg, is here at Cambridge, thriving in her year in the Arthur Goodhart Visiting Chair, thoroughly enjoying her affiliation with the law faculty and Emmanuel College, Sir David’s College (and, from 1627 to 1631, John Harvard’s too).

The House of Lords may have pondered the proper limits of the criminal law when hearing Attorney General's Reference No. 4 of 2002; Sheldrake v. DPP [2004] UKHL 43, [2004] 3 W.L.R. 976, conjoined appeals which concerned the interpretation of section 5 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 (a blood alcohol offence) and section 11 of the Terrorism Act 2000, but the specific questions they were asked were rather narrower and the answers rather unsatisfactory.

In R. v. Dica [2004] 3 W.L.R. 213, the Court of Appeal decided that a man who knows that he is infected with the HIV virus but who infects his unsuspecting sexual partner through unprotected sexual intercourse should be punishable for inflicting grievous bodily harm, contrary to section 20 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. The Court did in fact quash the conviction of the accused, because the judge at the Old Bailey had not instructed the jury to decide whether or not the two infected partners of the accused had known of his infection and agreed to take the risk of contracting it themselves (this having been in dispute at the trial). Yet the case was sent for retrial, and if the next jury, properly directed, should find that his partners did not agree to take the risk of contracting the potentially fatal virus, then Dica would be properly convicted under OAPA, section 20.