This is the second edition of a book first published in 2006 and aims to provide a guide to the law governing higher education useful to decision takers, managers, and staff and students in higher education and their legal advisers. Both authors have the advantage of being or having been leading practitioners themselves in higher education as well as scholars in the field of higher education and it is their involvement in practice which gives this such relevance for professionals in the field. A notable add on is the companion website provided by OxCheps (http://oxcheps.new.ox.ac.uk) which gives an online updating to the text as new legal rulings become available. However, this offers rather more than a professional's handbook of legal traps not to fall into but also provides a valuable account for scholars of higher education as to the constitution of their institutions vis à vis the powers of the state and the extent to which institutional decision making must be undertaken within an increasingly complex framework of social legislation. It is important that this aspect of the book is not lost sight of in the more obvious assessment of its value to those who have an immediate practical interest in its guidance.

No book on higher education and the law could ever be utterly comprehensive but this takes us pretty close to it. Its chapters cover governance and constitutional issues, charity law and higher education, the law of meetings, the relationship of student unions and their institutions, employment law, discrimination, the student-institutional contract, academic freedom, intellectual property law and data protection, the legal aspects of establishing trading companies, making agreements and forming partnerships with overseas institutions, merging institutions, the legal issues arising from the ownership of premises, campus security, student residences and health and safety, together with questions arising from risk assessment and dispute management. It is impossible not to imagine the busy, and no doubt harassed, university registrar contemplating his or her electronic in tray turning repeatedly to a well thumbed volume on the desk and asking what Farrington and Palfreyman say about this, and about this, and about this. Its contents are designed to discourage the impulsive, over hasty action and to underline the guidance provided by case law or natural justice in the most heinous incidence of plagiarism, staff negligence or financial malfeasance. Governing bodies may be confident in the procedural guidance they receive if it is based on the advice provided in this volume. To sum up this book provides well written, well organised professional guidance as to the legal implications of a vast range university activity and no practitioner should be without easy access to it. In addition it provides a valuable account of European legal systems and their application in higher education which contextualises a mass of bureaucracy which researchers and others encounter in engaging in European research projects or student exchanges.

But, as stated above, this book offers a great deal more than a compendium of legal advice for hard pressed professionals. What is striking is the extent to which the law has invaded university processes in the last quarter of a century. The authors are right to point to the 1988 Education Reform Act which, inter alia, transferred advanced further education and the polytechnics from local authority to direct state control, as the first step in a long march of legislative intervention, although the massively intrusive Free Speech legislation of 1986, the fruit of Keith Joseph's attempt to muzzle student objectors to right wing speakers whom the Tories were unleashing onto the campus speaking circuit, marked an earlier example. What followed was an extraordinary burst of civil legislation in which the universities were necessarily implicated but in which they were not the main targets: the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1992, the Charities Acts 1993 and 2006, the Disability and Discrimination Act 1995, the Employment Act 1996, the Data Protection Act 1998, the Human Rights Act 1998, the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Equality Act 2010. To this must be added the specific higher education legislation of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, the Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998, the Higher Education Act 2004 together with parallel Scottish legislation. Besides providing a justification, if one were needed, for the publication of a book on higher education and the law, what this also shows is the extent to which a mass higher education system is inevitably enmeshed in the operations of the state and how, in a knowledge based society, the state itself adds complexity and regulation to the operations of civil society. Universities in the UK, as the authors make clear, have retained a remarkable degree of autonomy, as compared to many other countries, but this does not exempt them from compliance with a vast and growing national framework of legislation and regulation. What it still does do, however, and the legislation is always careful to safeguard this, is to protect them from a direct relationship with Ministers.

One of the pleasures of the book is discovering some of the cases with which universities have become involved and which offer vignettes of the inner life of universities. Take for example the case of a former College Bursar who made a Freedom of Information application to seek disclosure of governing body minutes relating to the termination payments made by the governing body to the outgoing college head. The College argued that the information sought qualified as restricted as personal data; the former Bursar argued that the payment was excessive and should be exposed. Correspondence between the complainant, the College and the Information Commissioner was voluminous and, as Farrington and Palfreyman describe it, the judgement was “long and complex” but ultimately upheld the confidentiality of the minutes. One can only imagine how this C. P. Snow-like drama played out within the college. A second case concerns a medical school member of staff in another university. Initially employed by a hospital with a part time lectureship in the university the member of staff also undertook highly profitable work in his working time with outside clinics. Appointed a full time lecturer he continued the outside work both in the UK and abroad often engaging his colleagues in the work. The member of staff, who argued that his university line manager was fully aware of his activities, became the highest paid staff member in the university. The university decided to vary his contract, the member of staff resigned and set up a private clinic of his own. The university sued him for breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty. However, the court ruled that since the university had suffered no loss by the member of staff undertaking the work in university time and since the university would not have taken on the work itself had he not done so, the university was not entitled to demand repayment except in respect to the work of those other members of staff who he engaged to assist him. A third case records a university required by the Funding Council to repay £850k from its Research Assessment Exercise funding because it had counted £3.8m as research income won in open competition whereas in fact the grant was made by a charity to whom only two institutions were eligible to apply. The university challenged the ruling: it lost on the competition argument but won on the grounds that the Funding Council decision was technically flawed in that the decision was taken by a committee of the Funding Council which the chief executive merely attended and the Funding Council had no formal scheme of delegation to give the committee power to act on its behalf. It must have been drinks all round when the university heard the Court's decision. Perhaps one needs a particular masochistic interest in how such issues should be dealt with or how to avoid the legal pitfalls which they offer, to enjoy such anecdotes but for those who are fascinated by how idiosyncratic the management of universities can be this book offers a veritable cornucopia of cautionary tales.

One of the inevitable difficulties of preparing an authoritative statement of the law of higher education in the present volatile environment is keeping up with a changing picture. Thus an excellent account of the history of the granting of degree awarding powers and the designation of university status has been rendered out of date by the decision of the Coalition Government to give university status to a group of small higher education colleges which in terms of student head count fell far short of the previous published criteria. The description of the powers of the Office of Fair Access (OFFA), of the powers exercised by the Funding Council through the Financial Memorandum and in particular the Funding Council's power to ‘fine’ institutions for exceeding or failing to reach student number targets are all severely weakened by the transformation of the funding mechanisms embodied in the decisions of the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review. These have left the Funding Council seemingly unable to levy financial sanctions on institutions that are either not in receipt of any funding from it or are prepared to challenge OFFA should it wish to seek to enforce its power to impose conditions on student recruitment and support to encourage widening participation. The absence of legislation to clarify the situation offers an open goal to legal marksmen. A further edition of the book will be urgently required when these areas of uncertainty are resolved.

When this next edition emerges the opportunity should be taken to review the sections on institutional governance. There is, for example, no reference to Moodie and Eustace's Power and Authority in British Universities (Allen and Unwin 1974) a major, if now dated, account of university governance, which in its chapter on the evolution of charters and statutes would have corrected the authors' rather dismissive description of the powers of senates vis a vis councils in pre-1992 universities. No reference is also made to the Committee of University Chairs' series of Guides on governance which would have added depth to the overall picture but in particular would have highlighted the ambiguities inherent in the role of the clerk to the governing body. More space might also be given to the complexities of academic governance and in particular to the new roles of pro-vice-chancellors and deans, the creation of colleges and schools and the place of individual members of staff in these changes. It is difficult not to believe that internal governance issues will offer more, rather than less scope for legal intervention in the future.

These latter comments should take nothing away from the signal achievement of the authors. The book is eminently readable when it could so easily have been otherwise, effectively structured for instant interrogation, offers a high standard of legal scholarship and is encyclopaedic in scope. It makes a significant contribution to the literature of higher education.