Section I shows that the idea, founded on the “principle of legality”, that all legal flaws make a decision void as a matter of law is erroneous. Infringing a legal requirement may not affect validity, or may make a decision only voidable. Section II shows the significance of distinctions between various stages of decision-making processes, and between different types of issues for judges, and argues that case law shows that seven guiding principles operate alongside the “principle of legality”. Section III concludes that these common-law principles reflect professional practice and provide a realistic basis for predictable, normatively legitimate administrative law.

The epithet ‘quasi-judicial’ has become familiar, if not popular, in administrative law. It is commonly used to describe certain kinds of powers wielded by ministers or government departments but subject to a degree of judicial control in the manner of their exercise. Generally speaking, it is applied to powers which can be exercised only when certain facts have been found to exist, and it indicates that these facts must be found in conformity with a code of rules called ‘natural justice’. As a term ‘quasi-judicial’ has for some years been falling into disfavour. ‘I do not like it’, observed a learned judge to whom it had been a source of recurrent difficulty in the well-known series of cases under the Housing Acts. More recently the Master of the Rolls has spoken of ‘what is loosely called a quasi-judicial proceeding—an expression well adapted to mislead unless the context in which it is used is kept closely and accurately in mind’.

The conflict between common law and equity on the question of when time should be regarded as being “of the essence” for the performance of a contract has often been debated, as has the impact of its resolution by the Judicature reforms in favour of equity's more relaxed approach. Even so, it is tolerably clear that the two approaches have been substantially assimilated within general principles of discharge for breach. If, as a matter of construction, a time stipulation is a condition, then time is of the essence. Alternatively, time may have become of the essence by an effective notice to perform served by a promisee. If the contract has been validly discharged on either basis, specific performance will not be ordered in favour of the promisor.1

At this juncture it is convenient in connection with the older authorities concerned with obtaining money or chattels by false pretences to mention a point of some importance in relation to the Theft Act 1968. That is an Act designed to simplify the law—it uses words in their natural meaning and is to be construed thus to produce sensible results; when that Act is under examination, this Court deprecates attempts to bring into too close consideration the finer distinctions in the civil law as to the precise moment when contractual communications take effect or when property passes.

IT IS now 18 years since the Law Commission Report which led to the introduction of the reformed R.S.C., Order 53,1 the procedure which still governs all applications for judicial review in England and Wales. The Law Commission has now returned to the field with its 1994 Report entitled Administrative Law: Judicial Review and Statutory Appeals.2 During the interval between the two reports, judicial review has undergone enormous change in terms of both thequantity of claims brought3 and the substantive and adjectival developments in the jurisprudence. Moreover, important additions to the reform agenda have been made from a variety of sources.4 The Law Commission's latest contribution could thus hardly be better timed.

If a pebble is dropped into a pool of water, ripples will spread on the surface of the water; how far the ripples will spread and with what strength depends on a variety of factors, but there will always be a ripple of some kind. The same is true of a decision of a court of law. Notwithstanding what Professor Chayes has accurately described as the “bipolar” character of traditional civil litigation, it is almost inconceivable that the outcome of a civil action will affect no one but the parties to it: unless an exception can be found to John Donne's famous axiom that "No man is an Island, entire of itself”—and such a man, if he exists, is unlikely to bring an action in the first place—the ripple effect even of, say, a simple decision that an individual defendant must pay a sum of money by way of damages to an individual plaintiff will extend to their respective families and beyond. It is not wholly absurd to say of such a case that, for example, the retail traders, the banks, and so on with whom the parties have dealt or may deal in the future have an “interest” which an action by an injured individual may “protect” and, if they do, that interest is certainly "diffuse" and "fragmented" even if it is not “collective.”

The word “practice” does not occur frequently in the pages of H. L. A. Hart's book The Concept of Law. Yet the notion of a practice is, if not the key to the science of jurisprudence, at least the key to the central foundations of Hart's theory. The validity of a law, according to Hart, can be established by reference to certain social (or official) practices: in this way questions of legal validity are separated from questions of moral justification. The theory can profitably be read as a study of the connection between the characteristic forms of legal discourse and the existence of social practices.

It is surprising that the already voluminous literature on the Hart v. Dworkin dispute has neglected the issues I intend to raise. One of Dworkin's arguments attacks Hart's claim that the existence of a rule is, in some cases, the existence of a social practice. The argument, if successful, would refute everything Hart has to say about the rule of recognition. Can Hart's theory meet this criticism? I shall sketch the hint of a shadow of an analysis of practices which offers Hart an escape, but an escape which has its price. By adopting something resembling my analysis, Hart can preserve major elements of his theory. I will attempt to isolate those features which are valuable and which can be salvaged. The price that Hart must pay, however, is the abandonment of his extreme positivism. If my suggestions about practices are correct, then the ultimate questions concerning legal validity are moral or political questions.

The shape of the unfair prejudice remedy—sections 459–461 of the Companies Act 1985—owes much to the influence of Lord Hoffmann, for throughout his judicial career he has played a leading role in the remedy's development (see, e.g., Re a Company [1986] B.C.L.C. 376 and Re Saul D. Harrison & Sons plc [1995] 1 B.C.L.C. 14 (C.A.)). In Re a Company (No. 00709 of 1992) [1999] 1 W.L.R. 1092 (O' Neill v. Phillips), the House of Lords considered sections 459–461 for the first time. In a strong, wide-ranging judgment, Lord Hoffmann delivered the opinion of the House. By reasserting the remedy's contractual focus, he sought to bring greater certainty to its operation; in so doing, he signals a restriction in the remedy's ambit.

I hope that I shall not either dissatisfy you or disappoint you in what I have got to say to-night, in offering you some observations on the Permanent Court of International Justice, but I confess that it is a pleasure to me to feel that I can cast away all such taints and disadvantages as may attach to a member of the Government, and speak to you as a Trinity man.

In Case C-188/95 Fantask A/S and Others v. Industriministeriet (Erhvervsministeriet) [1997] E.C.R. I-6783 the European Court of Justice provided further guidance on the interpretation of Council Directive 69/335 EEC of 17 July 1969 concerning indirect taxes on the raising of capital (O.J. English Special Edition 1969 (II), p. 412), as most recently amended by Council Directive 85/303/EEC of 10 June 1985 (O.J. 1985 L 156, p. 23), and elaborated its case law concerning Member State remedies and procedural rules. More particularly, it was held that a national rule which would have allowed Danish authorities to escape the duty to refund charges levied in breach of the Directive on the ground of “excusable error” rendered Community law impossible in practice or excessively difficult to enforce (Case 199/82 Amministrazione delle Finanze dello Stato v. San Giorgio [1983] E.C.R. 3595), while a five-year time limit for bringing proceedings under Danish law was upheld as a reasonable limitation period (cf. Case C-208/90 Emmott v. Minister for Social Welfare and the Attorney General[1991] E.C.R. I-4269).

The contract of employment is still the basic structure in individual employment law. There is, however, much literature the argument of which is that the contract of employment is in many ways an unsuitable legal framework to govern individual workplace relations. In particular, the resolution of individual employment disputes would not, one might realistically imagine, be best achieved by the application of rigid contractual principles derived frequently from the resolution of commercial and other unrelated problems. In this vein it has been stated by Winn L.J. that:

This paper traces a key example of the overlap between tort and crime and explains the impact of how disjointed English legal thinking has been. For about 400 years English civil courts have accepted some form of pre-eminence of the criminal law where civil and serious criminal liability co-exist. This has often been described as the rule that “a trespass merges in a felony” though a more neutral term would be a “timing rule”. The development of the timing rules casts light on how English legal reasoning has approached the relationship between the victim and the state, the procedural context of substantive rules and the impact rules in one area of law can have elsewhere.

The position of applicants for judicial review has been drastically ameliorated by the new Order 53. It has removed all those disadvantages, particularly in relation to discovery, that were manifestly unfair to them and had, in many cases, made applications for prerogative orders an inadequate remedy if justice was to be done … Now that those disadvantages to applicants have been removed and all remedies for infringements of rights protected by public law can be obtained upon an application for judicial review, as can also remedies for infringements of rights under private law if such infringements should also be involved, it would in my view as a general rule be contrary to public policy, and as such an abuse of the process of the court, to permit a person seeking to establish that a decision of a public authority infringed rights to which he was entitled to protection under public law to proceed by way of an ordinary action and by this means to evade the provisions of Order 53 for the protection of such authorities.

(per Lord Diplock in O'Reilly v. Mackman [1983] 2 A.C. 237 at 285)

BLACKSTONE'S Commentaries on the Laws of England was on its appearance received with unbounded admiration. It was felt to be a work of untold originality. The author became at once the Great Commentator. In the eyes of his earliest readers he was not only an erudite lawyer and a charming writer, but also a profound jurist. The Annual Register for 1767—then edited by Burke—contained a lengthy eulogy of the book. The review may well have been written by Burke himself.

In Sutradhar v. Natural Environment Research Council [2004] EWCA Civ 175 the claimant, who lived in Bangladesh, suffered arsenic poisoning from drinking contaminated water. 699 other villagers suffered the same harm. The defendant, a research organization paid for by the British overseas development budget, had written a report for the Bangladeshi authorities which those authorities reasonably and foreseeably took to indicate that the water supply in the claimant's area was safe to drink. In fact, the researchers had omitted to test for arsenic and to tell the Bangladeshis that their tests did not include arsenic. The claimant sued in negligence. The defendant applied to strike out the action. The defendant failed at first instance, but, by a majority, the Court of Appeal (Kennedy and Wall L.JJ.; Clarke L.J. dissenting) dismissed the claimant's action.