In England and Wales, rape complainants currently receive little by way of pre-trial support and preparation. This stands in sharp contrast to prosecutorial practice in the USA where prosecutors meet with complainants prior to trial with the specific aim of preparing them for the unfamiliar process of testifying in criminal proceedings. This paper considers the case for adopting similar arrangements in rape cases in England and Wales. This is assessed primarily from an evidentiary perspective although due consideration is also given to the need to protect vulnerable complainants from the risk of secondary victimisation within the criminal trial process.

This paper considers whether there should be the power to summon bilingual juries in criminal trials in Ireland and Wales. It will examine the relationship between jury service as an obligation and privilege of citizenship, and the eligibility for jury service of Irish and Welsh speakers as a linguistic group. It will also demonstrate the relationship between the citizenship argument in its collective context and the rights and interests of individual speakers of these languages within the criminal jury trial process. In doing so, it seeks to emphasise that this is a multidimensional issue which requires an evaluation from a combination of perspectives, both collective and individual. It is this combination of perspectives, taken conjunctively, that supports the case for bilingual juries. Moreover, this particular debate has a particular relevance to the wider debate on European citizenship and how Europe views the concept of multilingual citizenship within its constitutional framework. Indeed, it raises fundamental questions about how Europe manages its diverse cultural and linguistic heritage and how speakers of minority languages are integrated on a basis of equality and respect towards their cultural and linguistic autonomy. The paper also addresses the objections to bilingual juries and will explore how the advent of bilingual juries could continue to preserve the random selection principle (the primary objection to bilingual juries) sufficiently to bring about fair, impartial and competent tribunals.

Jeremy Bentham’s constitutional writings are innovative and radical. Unlike constitutional arrangements that sought to attain virtue though the institutional complexity entailed by the doctrine of Separation of Powers, Bentham’s constitution was socially dynamic and designed to facilitate constant and efficient interaction between amorphous public opinion and officials. Furthermore, it was in constant and free interaction between public opinion and officials that Bentham envisioned the determination and effectuation of constitutional limits, namely both the justification and limitation of coercion. The paper begins by outlining Bentham’s principles for a good constitution. It then discusses in detail Bentham’s proposals for incorporating public opinion into legal proceedings through radical reform to the jury. Such incorporation, he believed, would intensify and help to focus public gaze by which officials’ aptitude, and as a result a good government, would be attained with the minimal expense. The proposed institutionalisation of public opinion enabled Bentham to entrust the judiciary with a constitutional role. Judges were conceived as the interface between officialdom and focused manifestations of popular sovereignty. So entrusted, judges could determine constitutional limits, thus protecting against abuse of power. The reforms discussed in this paper are a testimony of the extent to which Bentham saw virtue both in the people and in free public debate.

The Land Registration Act 2002 (LRA 2002) has effectively curtailed the law permitting the acquisition of title through adverse possession in relation to most types of adverse possessor, including the paradigmatic urban squatter. While the traditional principles for the acquisition of title through adverse possession enabled a squatter to secure rights in land ‘automatically’ after 12 years, under the LRA 2002 an urban squatter seeking to defend their possession of land in this way must now apply to the Land Registry, who will serve a notice on the registered proprietor alerting them to his or her presence. This procedure provides the landowner with an opportunity to recover possession of the property before the squatter’s occupation has given rise to any claim on the title to the land. On the whole, these reforms have been presented as, and accepted as being, wholly justified in the context of a modern regime of ‘title by registration’. This paper argues, however, that the reform of adverse possession also implements a contentious moral agenda in relation to advertent squatters and to absent landowners. While these provisions of the LRA 2002 will have important practical and philosophical consequences, the Law Commission has attempted to close off any prospect of further debate on the subject, without explicit consideration of current social and housing issues associated with urban squatting, or of the matrix of moral issues at stake in such cases.

The paper examines conceptual barriers to incorporation of children’s rights – understood in the context of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms 1950, the Human Rights Act 1998 and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989 – in the law of England and Wales. It identifies traditions in law and policy on children and young people, and competing political imperatives which militate against effective implementation of children’s rights to protection and provision, but suggests that participative rights pose fewer problems. It argues that the scope for further judicial development is limited in the absence of substantial changes in the legislative framework. It then examines rights-based reasoning in administrative practice and considers the impact here of ideological differences between the UK Government and the Welsh Assembly Government. It considers the scope for differential implementation within the evolving devolution settlement, and the potential impact of such difference on child law and practice in the ‘single jurisdiction’ of England and Wales. It concludes by arguing for greater attention to executive as well as legislative and judicial functions, and to extra-judicial mechanisms, for promoting rights-based decision making.

This article seeks to argue that the new offence of causing death by careless driving is undesirable and ought not to have been created. From a legal perspective, the offence goes against some fundamental principles of criminal law and, from a practical view, it will fail to rectify previous problems with the pre-existing offences available as criminal charges in cases of road death. Furthermore, it will not satisfy the public’s appetite for a more punitive approach to drivers who kill. It will be argued that the law in this area should not be driven by this latter consideration but that it should be used primarily as a method of increasing road safety. A radical alternative offence structure of general driving offences is proposed with this as its objective.

Given the burgeoning of genetic research and proliferation of human genetic databases, especially in the biomedical sphere, this paper explores whether the existing laws and regulatory structures for governing genetic databases in England and Wales are adequate. Through a critical survey of relevant rules, bodies and practices, it argues that the current UK framework is far from ideal in at least five major areas: (1) forms and styles of law used, especially the separate legislative regimes for physical biomaterial and data; (2) core definitions; (3) formal regulatory bodies, licensing and notification requirements; (4) ethics committees and other advisory panels; and (5) enforcement powers and sanctions. Such shortcomings could have major implications for stakeholders, hamper efforts to achieve European or international harmonisation of genetic database principles and practices, and undermine the UK’s standing as a world leader in genetics and biotechnology. Drawing on comparative analysis of governance strategies adopted in Estonia, Iceland and Sweden, the paper identifies alternative options and lessons from experiences abroad, suggesting possible avenues for reform that may warrant serious consideration in the UK.