By the latter part of the sixteenth century the theory of liability on bills of exchange had been adapted to common law theory of contract so as to lie in assumpsit. In 1787 it was fully settled by the House of Lords that all “contracts in writing … [which are] merely written and not specialties … are parol” and require consideration. Promissory notes and bills of exchange fell into this category. Indeed, “bills and notes were contracts and being such there was no persuasive reason why the basis of liability on a bill or note should be any different from that on any other written contract for payment of money.” While there is no provision in the Bills of Exchange Act (“the Act”) directly to the point, it is well established indeed that consideration of “value” is needed for the creation of an obligation under a negotiable instrument. According to Chalmers, “where B, by way of gift, makes a note in favour of C, C cannot recover from B.”

A Question which is increasingly asked is whether there is a right to be a parent. The recent decision of the House of Lords in Re B (Adoption: Natural Parent) [2002] 1 F.L.R. 196 may provoke some debate about whether there is a right not to be one.

Traditionally, common lawyers are used to examining other jurisdictions of their legal family as a source of inspiration for law reform or even as persuasive authority for the development of case law. Developments in continental civil law jurisdictions are less noted. However, particularly in the field of public law, English law is now being influenced by civil law concepts through the mediation of Community law.1 Product liability provides an example in private law of rules shared by the civil and common law jurisdictions of the European Union due to harmonisation by the Product Liability Directive. An important new area of non-contractual liability is environmental liability. Firmly established in the United States, liability for damage to the environment is increasingly being introduced in many countries around the world.3 In the European Union, the first step towards Community-wide legislation was taken in March 1993 with the publication of a Green Paper by the Commission.4 One of the many controversial aspects of a possible environmental liability regime is the issue of standing to sue.

The circumstances in which a party to a contract for the sale of land may recover damages have been the subject of considerable judicial and academic discussion recently. That discussion has focused on those situations in which the contract has been terminated for breach. The purpose of the present article is to consider the position where the purchaser either wishes or is obliged to keep the contract on foot notwithstanding the breach by the vendor. There are at least three possible situations:

(1) Where the vendor misdescribes the property in the particulars of sale. That misdescription may take one of two forms. The vendor may either misdescribe the extent of the land (for example, he agrees to sell twenty acres when he has only fifteen) or the state of his title (for example, he contracts to sell as freeholder when the property is in fact leasehold). A purchaser may terminate the contract if the misdescription is substantial even if there is a conditien of sale which states that the contract will not be vitiated by reason of, or that compensation will be payable in the event of any misdescription.

The law of negligence invites scepticism, and it has attracted it from many sources. A brief survey of the tort's problems will indicate how broad the reasons to be sceptical have become—and how unusually broad the sources of that scepticism are.

The jubilee of the Journal happens to coincide with the centenary of Head v. Tattersall, the well-known but troublesome case in which the buyer of a horse was allowed to exercise a contractual right to return it (for failure to answer a warranty that it “had been hunted with the Bicester hounds”), despite the fact that it had been accidentally injured in the meantime and could be restored to the seller only in a damaged state. Most contract textbooks cite this as the classic instance of the condition subsequent, by virtue of which a contract or obligation, although initially effective, ceases to operate on the occurence of a specified event. It is apparent, however, on closer analysis that it was not the contract or any aspect of it which was terminated because the horse failed to meet the warranty, but the buyer's title: in other words, the property in the horse passed to the buyer immediately, but defeasibly, so that when he rejected the horse he divested himself of the title and revested it in the seller. Even this explanation leaves on one side the question of the damage sustained by the horse. In the language of the law of sale, it would be most natural to regard this issue as one of risk, and to say that the court held in effect, and indeed perhaps expressly, that the horse was at the seller's risk during the period allowed for its return.

The best interests rule – the central fiduciary duty of company directors in a number of common law jurisdictions – encapsulates loyalty between director and company. Its multifaceted nature means that it is employed to impose a number of requirements, as demonstrated in the multi-jurisdictional analysis in this article. Contemporary commentary and cases (such as Moulin Global Eyecare Holdings Ltd. v Mei (2014) 17 HKCFAR 466, recently analysed in this Journal) have, however, doubted the fiduciary classification of the rule. This article defends the rule's fiduciary classification. After examining key facets of the rule, it demonstrates that, although flexible, the rule cannot be stretched to protect stakeholder interests independently of corporate benefit.

ON 16 May 2017, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) delivered its Opinion 2/15 concerning the competence of the EU to conclude the Free Trade Agreement with Singapore (EUSFTA) (ECLI:EU:C:2017:376). The Opinion was requested by the Commission which argued, with the support of the European Parliament (EP), that the EU had exclusive competence to conclude the EUSFTA. The Council and 25 of the Member States countered that the EUSFTA should be concluded as a mixed agreement – that is, by the EU and each of its members – because some of its provisions fell under the shared competence of the organisation or the competence of the Member States alone.

THE decision of the Court of Appeal in AB v CD [2014] EWCA Civ 229; [2014] 3 All E.R. 667 concerned a distinctive feature of equity's auxiliary jurisdiction. Unlike situations in which a claimant invokes equity's exclusive jurisdiction to enforce or protect the claimant's purely equitable rights, a claimant seeking equitable relief in aid of his or her legal rights must show that the relief available at common law, if any, would be inadequate to do justice. Thus, a contract party (for example) must cross a threshold before an injunction or specific performance will be granted. Equity's refusal to intervene where adequate relief is available at law properly makes equitable relief in the auxiliary jurisdiction special. The ordinary operation of the law of contract, and that of the courts, could be unjustifiably disrupted if every threatened or actual breach attracted these forms of discretionary equitable relief. But can a contract party tilt the balance of discretion towards the grant (or the refusal) of such relief by relying on a particular term in the contract?

This article argues certainty in trusts is better understood by recognising a fourth certainty: “distributional certainty”. Distributional certainty is required in private trusts that involve dividing the property between beneficiaries: their shares must be clear. Distributional uncertainty is not, as usually understood, merely an instance of uncertainty of property: it has differing consequences, special resolution techniques, and may explain “administrative unworkability” in discretionary trusts. Distributional certainty is not required in charitable trusts. But this is not, as usually understood, merely an instance of the rule that charitable trusts do not need certainty of objects: it is an independent proposition.

This article seeks to uphold the Interest Theory of legal rights by arguing that such a theory can withstand objections and handle difficulties that are often posed against it. Building on the author’s previous defences of the Interest Theory, the present article also seeks to expose some serious shortcomings in competing theories. Among the topics covered are the role of legal powers of enforcing or waiving legal rights; the possibility of rights to be mistreated; and the status of inoperative rights. In each case, so the article argues, the complexities of the issues involved can best be handled by a theory which maintains that the essential function of legal rights is the protection of various aspects of people’s well-being.

In Jogee and Ruddock, the Supreme Court/Privy Council decided that the law on secondary liability took a “wrong turn” in 1984 in the Privy Council's decision in Chan Wing-Siu. Chan Wing-Siu's contemplation/foresight-based fault element for secondary liability was alleged by the Supreme Court/Privy Council to have bucked a legal trend towards requiring that the secondary party intended to encourage or assist every one of the principal's offences. This article presents an alternative history of secondary liability that explains a wider selection of cases from 1553–1984 than were considered in Jogee and Ruddock. On this alternative account, Chan Wing-Siu was simply a more explicit and intellectually honest decision than its predecessors. If this alternative view of history is accepted, the Supreme Court/Privy Council's claim to be merely “correcting” (rather than substantively reforming) the law of secondary liability should be rejected. Doing so would make more critical a question that was side-stepped in Jogee and Ruddock, namely whether this reform should have been undertaken by the judiciary, rather than the legislature.