No legal integration project can circumvent the matter of language. Yet, lawyers advocating one form or other of Europeanisation of law, apparently basing themselves on the unexamined view that everything is adequately translatable, do not seem prepared to address linguistic issues. But a move beyond law's disciplinary barriers – in particular, a foray into translation studies (or ‘translatology’) – compels one to challenge the effectivity of the uniformisation agenda. First, it shows that the inherently local character of language resists the establishment of uniform law. Second, it demonstrates that no uniform law, irrespective of the language in which it is written, can account for local legal experience. Both claims suggest that language simply cannot be made subservient to the lawyer's agenda and that the assumption that it can be ignored is mistaken.

There is increasing support in the contract literature for the view that the remoteness rule is essentially concerned with identifying an implicit allocation of risk made by the contracting parties. This paper argues that the remoteness doctrine is more accurately seen as a method by which the courts allocate risks which the contracting parties have failed to allocate, rather than an interpretative rule. Through analysis of the principles and their application in the recent case-law in England, Canada and Australia, the paper shows that the identification of an implicit allocation of risk does not and cannot determine remoteness cases in contract. The justice of the remoteness rule is not based on the notion that the defendant undertook responsibility for the risk in question, but on a concern that the defendant should have a reasonable opportunity to consider the risks that might arise from breach and take action to avoid them.

In determining whether an employer is vicariously liable for the torts committed by his employee, the House of Lords in the landmark decision of Lister v Hesley Hall proposed that courts should now focus on the relative closeness between the nature of the employment and the tort. Unfortunately, this touchstone test simply begs the question of how close must the nature of employment and the tortious action be before liability can be found. To say that the tort in question was inextricably interwoven or so closely connected with the nature of the employment is conclusory not prescriptive. The close connection test in itself merely provides the court with a formula to confirm its result, not reach one. This author seeks to argue instead that the following legal tests should be employed to determine whether an employee's wrong was committed in the course of his employment. (1) Where the employee has been negligent in the performance of his duties or where the employee has deliberately engaged in self-serving conduct (not amounting to a tort) and in doing so negligently causes injury to another, the employer would only be vicariously responsible if the injury suffered by the victim arises from the inherent risks of the employment. (2) Where the tort committed by the employee is trespassory/intentional in nature, the employer would only be vicariously liable if he has materially increased the likelihood of occurrence of an injury that arises from an inherent risk of the employment. Essentially, my suggested formula would only find liability when the injury suffered by the victim arises from the risks inherent in the tortfeasor's employment, ie the employer would not be liable for all risks he creates when the wayward worker is in his employ.

The tort of unlawful interference with economic relations is anomalous since it allows a plaintiff to sue a defendant for a loss that is occasioned by an unlawful act committed by that defendant against a third party. This parasitic liability is seemingly in violation of the basic tort law principle that in order to make out a claim what the plaintiff must show is a violation of her own rights, not merely a wrong to someone else. Thus, it appears that the tort is an instance of damnum absque injuria. This paper examines whether this is in fact the case by examining if there are any rights-based theories that can explain the tort in a way that is consistent with basic private law principle. In other words, is it possible to find an independent right of the defendant that has somehow been violated, one which explains why the defendant is able to sue in their own right? Upon examination, it appears that the ‘right to trade’, ‘remoteness’ and ‘abuse of right’ theories are largely incapable of providing such an explanation since they display many seemingly insurmountable problems of coherence and fit with the existing case-law. More promising are the arguments that the tort is a justified exception to basic principle or that it is an example of public rights being vindicated in private law, yet each of these theories is also problematic in some respects. The overall thesis of the paper is that the tort of unlawful interference with economic relations is radically under-theorised and that it, and the other economic torts, could benefit tremendously from more intense academic examination.

Recent judgments in England and Wales have confirmed and extended the High Court's inherent jurisdiction to make declarations about interventions into the lives of ‘vulnerable’, rather than simply ‘mentally incapacitated’ adults. We argue that this shift is problematic because of the ways that the ‘vulnerable adult’ has been constructed in order to justify such interventions. The accounts of vulnerability drawn upon in the constructive process highlight the person's inherent characteristics and/or the circumstances within which that person might be denied the ability to make a free choice. Such an approach parallels the public policy protection of ‘vulnerable adults’ from abuse in care services and the statutory protection of ‘vulnerable witnesses’ in the criminal justice system, and is built on an external and objective assessment of being ‘at risk’, rather than an understanding of the subjective experience of being vulnerable. We argue that this imbalance might act to disempower the ‘vulnerable adult’ by reducing that person's life to a series of risk factors that fail, first, to place him/her at the heart of the decision to intervene, and, secondly, to engage adequately with the experiences through which that person ascribes meaning to his/her life.

The landscape of legal duties imposed on financial investment intermediaries is characterised by the imposition of regulatory duties as well as duties arising under general law, in the realms of fiduciary duties and duties of care and skill. This article examines the relationship between public regulation and general private law in providing legal principles governing the conduct of financial investment intermediaries. This article also inquires into whether, in light of the Financial Services Authority's (FSA) desire to move into higher level ‘principles-based’ regulation of financial investment intermediaries, there may be a set of unifying principles that could govern financial investment intermediaries' relationships with their clients.

Richard Rorty died in June 2007. According to some he was the most interesting, perhaps even the most important, philosopher of his generation. His influence on legal theory, especially legal theory of the more critical and literary kind, was considerable. And yet, in comparison with his reputation in the philosophical and literary academy, for many legal academics Rorty remains a relatively hazy figure. The purpose of this paper is to provide an introduction to Rorty; to his broader philosophy of pragmatism, a philosophy as he termed it of ‘bricolage’ and ‘law cunning’, as well as to his writings which focused rather more closely on jurisprudential questions, most importantly those that addressed the nature of rights. It closes with some thoughts on Rorty's final, provocative, and timely, observations on the decline of American civil society. If lawyers and legal theorists have, in large part, neglected Rorty, it is unfortunate; for, in our present age of vaulting political pretence, rarely has the need for a strong measure of intellectual scepticism seemed to be more urgent.