The puzzle underlying the law of public interest immunity (PII) is well known. In ordinary proceedings all relevant evidence should be placed before the court and the parties, including when the government is one of those parties.1 But what if some of the relevant evidence – due to reasons in the public interest – cannot be disclosed to the other parties involved?2 The traditional way in which English law tackles this puzzle is by invoking the law of PII. Ever since the landmark decision in Conway, it has been settled that ‘the courts should balance the public interest in the proper administration of justice against the public interest in withholding any evidence which a Minister considers ought to be withheld’.3 If the public interest favours disclosure of the evidence, the evidence is admitted and made ‘available to both parties and to the court’; but if the contrary is true the evidence will be excluded altogether from the proceedings and made ‘available neither to the other parties nor to the court’.4

The enforcement priorities set by competition authorities carry significant socio-economic consequences: their decisions affect market structures, determine what constitutes legitimate business conduct, and influence how economic power and welfare are distributed. Yet, in most jurisdictions, priority-setting remains a largely reactive, insulated process, guided by a narrowly defined consumer welfare standard and disconnected from wider social, economic, and democratic concerns. Consequently, the benefits of enforcement, such as correcting market failures or enhancing consumer savings, are often unevenly distributed among members of society, and without specific accountability to the broader public. This issue is particularly pressing today, in a turbulent world shaped by geopolitics, geoeconomics, the politicisation of competition law and regulation, and growing pressure to deliver rapid and efficient results. By relying on insights from the theory of responsive regulation, social accountability of independent regulatory authorities, and deliberative and participatory governance models, the paper investigates how priority-setting can be theoretically rethought and practically restructured to be more responsive, strategic, and socially accountable to broader concerns. Our proposed approach remains within the scope of competition authorities’ administrative discretion and does not entail changes to the current substantive, procedural, or institutional frameworks.

User interfaces – on the web, standalone apps, or internal systems – are now central to the design and operation of the welfare state, with profound implications for access to legal entitlements and the exercise of administrative discretion. While socio-legal scholars have begun to examine how interfaces mediate state-citizen relations, research has been constrained by limited access to these systems. This paper applies a novel socio-legal methodology to analyse prototypes developed by software engineers working in the UK’s welfare administration by drawing on the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) GitHub account – a platform where the DWP’s digital team stores, manages, and shares code on an almost daily basis across more than 500 repositories. By analysing this code, this paper moves beyond the handful of public-facing examples that have dominated scholarship to date to present a new account of how digital interfaces mediate access to legal entitlements. The analysis reveals three interlinking patterns: (i) ‘happy path’ processing that assumes ideal user journeys; (ii) prompting and priming mechanisms that shape decision-making; and (iii) interfaces designed specifically for official workforce management and control. This paper argues that these findings have significant implications for socio-legal analyses of public services and administrative justice in digital contexts.

Constitutional theory remains obsessed with high-profile constitutional decision-makers, but front-end constitutional actors that provide key support and advice to decision-makers also help protect and defend constitutions. This paper profiles a group of front-end constitutional actors that I call ‘the influencers’, which is composed of: statutory drafters, permanent secretaries, government lawyers, and house officials. After detailing the roles and responsibilities of these actors, I then look at how they influence frontline decision-makers. Next, I examine the perspectives, values, and mentalities that the influencers operate on, all of which are key to further understanding these constitutional actors. This exploration into the influencers contains significant implications for the UK constitution, such as: disregarding influencer advice can often boil over; back-end constitutional actors are not the sole preservers of the rule of law; and front-end actors may help fill a decisive scrutiny gap regarding legislation. The influencers also contain implications for constitutional theory, in that they challenge some typical narratives found in constitutional scholarship, and they can also significantly impact constitutional success (or failure). Ultimately, deeper insight into the influencers can help us understand how to better protect and defend constitutions on the front-end.

The powers relating to social security devolved to the Scottish Parliament by the Scotland Act 2016 have been utilised at scale, with Social Security Scotland now responsible for delivering more than a dozen different benefits in Scotland.1 Though the governing law remains the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018, the regime of devolved social security has recently been tweaked. In the Social Security (Amendment) (Scotland) Act 2025, the Scottish Parliament created a regulation-making power which will be used in time to modify the legal basis of the Scottish Child Payment (SCP), the most prominent of the new devolved benefits. This note considers that change in the context of a discussion of how social security was devolved (in part) to the Scottish Parliament and the manner in which the devolved competence has been deployed in the intervening years. Against that background, it comments on the operation of the so-called ‘shared powers’ model of devolution which applies to social security.

Large grant-making philanthropic foundations in the UK and the EU can have a significant influence over environmental law and as such are worthy of more attention from environmental law scholars. Through analysis of publicly available documents, we identify in this paper an absence of consistent transparency by these foundations. This makes their influence hard to understand, hard to research, hard even to see at work in the world. Transparency is complex and challenging, however. And so, rather than berating problematic approaches, we explore through interviews with actors in the field, as well as the academic literature, both the difficulties that foundations experience in pursuing transparent practices and the benefits of transparency. We conclude by identifying some principles for improved visibility of foundation work.

The study is one of the first in its field to be grounded in extensive, original qualitative data on the lived experiences of senior managers in financial firms. Its principal aim is to construct a comprehensive, empirically-based typology of culture in finance, drawing on findings from 29 semi-structured interviews with current and former senior managers in UK financial firms and regulatory personnel. The study employs a rigorous participant selection and thematic analysis process that reflects the diverse array of financial firms, sectors, roles and perspectives on culture. It does so by applying appropriate theoretical frameworks on organisational culture to unearth the nuances and typology of culture in the UK finance industry. Our findings indicate that financial firms are in a state of transition between two distinct types of culture, from an old and heavily criticised archetype (which still holds sway) towards a not yet fully realised vision of a new transformed culture. Beyond its theoretical interest, our analysis reveals ways to improve culture in finance and provides recommendations for the development of financial regulation and broader policymaking, aiming for a whole-hearted shift from principles-based regulation to outcomes-based regulation.

In what was his last decision as a Justice of the Supreme Court, Lord Walker delivered the judgment of Pitt v Holt.1 Amongst other issues, the judgment re-examined the ‘rule in Hastings-Bass’.2 Twelve years on, the Privy Council in Ashley Dawson-Damer v Grampian Company Trust Ltd3 was called upon to further clarify Lord Walker’s analysis of the reformed rule. While the Privy Council offered welcome guidance, it left certain aspects of the rule uncertain. This comment critically analyses the decision, and offers further points of reflection.

Seema Elizabeth Isoy wrote in a condominium owner Whatsapp group that developer David Chiu had been arrested for fraud several years earlier. She knew but left out that he had later been acquitted. In holding her liable for defamation, the Malaysian Federal Court in Seema Elizabeth Isoy v Tan Sri David Chiu Tat-Cheong relied on the concept of a half-truth – a statement that is literally true but omits key information that would change the statement’s meaning – raised by Lord Shaw in Sutherland v Stopes. This note suggests that, while the Federal Court’s conclusion ultimately may have been justified, it should have more carefully considered whether a report of a preliminary act such as an arrest or charge necessarily implies guilt and whether an acquittal actually lessens the sting of an arrest and charge. Judgments cited by the Federal Court – from India, the US, Malaysia, Canada and South Africa – did not adequately address these issues, making this note of potential interest to readers across the common law world.

The Irish Supreme Court’s decision in Kelly v UCD1 is a significant ruling on judicial bias and disqualification. It is the first case to consider the implications of familial connections between judges and law firms representing parties since the Judicial Conduct Committee published its Guidelines on Judicial Conduct and Ethics in 2022.2 The case clarifies the legal test for objective bias, delineates its boundaries, and addresses the role of judicial conduct guidelines in disqualification decisions. It also has broader implications for other common law jurisdictions, particularly England & Wales, where similar issues of judicial propriety and public confidence in impartial adjudication arise.

This paper explores the interplay between intellectual property and gender in modern design law and practice, with a focus on the New Zealand Designs Act 1953 and references to Australian, United Kingdom and European Union law. It highlights how law and practice favour technical, utilitarian design principles (that coded masculine), but neglect the dynamic, sensory and affective (embodied and emotive) aspects of designs (that coded feminine). Through its focus on the technical, design law and practice ignore the socio-legal reality that the dynamic, sensory and affective are often central to a design’s success. The paper frames the foregoing in standpoint theory and affect. It challenges the focus on that which can be reduced to technical-based representation and the perception that this creates an objective master copy. The paper calls for a reassessment of what design law protects and how it protects it, to better align the system with the socio-legal realities of design creation and use.

Prevailing wisdom suggests that sentencing guidelines may constrain judicial discretion and hinder individualised justice; however, our cross-jurisdictional analysis indicates that they might actually better protect these principles than unrestricted discretion. Utilising two large-scale datasets from England and Wales, and Hong Kong, we examine sentences for burglary, assault, and drug trafficking. The results reveal a paradox: guidelines in England and Wales contributed to greater consistency in retributive proportionality and enhanced consideration of personal mitigating factors. Conversely, Hong Kong’s discretionary approach resulted in inconsistent application of sentencing considerations and personal mitigating factors. Both systems prioritised procedural efficiency, with guilty pleas markedly reducing sentences across various offences. These findings challenge the ‘bias effect’ critique by demonstrating that well-structured guidelines can safeguard individualised justice better than unfettered discretion can. The study offers robust empirical evidence for institutional design in criminal justice systems.

This paper offers a novel conceptual framework for understanding fraud in the digital era by introducing the idea of industrialised fraud. Unlike existing literature that focuses on the mechanics of cyber-enabled and cyber-dependent fraud, this work situates fraud within the social, structural, technological and economic transformations of the digitalised economy. It argues that fraud is no longer an outlier but a systemic feature of unregulated digital markets, operating at scale and across borders. Through the analytical lenses of fraud’s footholds and fraud’s lifecycles, the paper reexamines fraud’s core legal and moral norms – means, purposes and fault. It demonstrates how they are being reshaped by the transactional contexts in which fraud is now designed, facilitated and perpetrated. This reconceptualisation provides a firmer foundation for principled debate on fraud governance and criminalisation in an era of rapid technological transformation.

In the post-Brexit world it is generally considered that parliamentary sovereignty is the ultimate Grundnorm of the English/United Kingdom sovereignty. The author contends that this truism is largely borne out by recent decisions of the UK Supreme Court in a series of major constitutional cases (Gina Miller (No 2), Privacy International, Scottish Independence Bill and Re Allister and Peeple’s Application). Yet two of these decision (Gina Miller (No 2) and Privacy International) show that the position is slightly more nuanced than this. The latter case shows that the UK courts will not give effect in practice to legislation which ousts the general judicial review power of the High Court. It is also possible that Gina Miller (No 2) will over time lay the foundation for a new Grundnorm whereby the UK courts can review executive decisions on the ground that they are inconsistent with a higher norm of fundamental democratic principles. By contrast, the Irish example shows in one way how far Ireland has travelled from its original common law constitutional roots. The existence of a Kelsenian-style written constitution with a defined hierarchy of norms and system and an express system of judicial review of legislation has over time produced very different methods of judicial thinking and reasoning, so that popular – and not parliamentary – sovereignty view of the referendum process is now the ultimate Grundnorm in the Irish constitutional system.

Despite the Supreme Court ruling on the matter in July 2023, the correct test for police misconduct for use of force (the use of force test) in England and Wales remains contested. This paper explores how the largely subjective criminal law test preferred by police stakeholders is inconsistent with addressing the institutional racism within the Metropolitan Police highlighted in the Casey Review. In doing so, it makes a novel contribution to police accountability debates by developing a new analytical framework which allows arguments concerning police accountability processes to be more clearly articulated and assessed. The framework envisages three axes of accountability. The conduct axis relates to the actual levels of force used against citizens. The cultural axis concerns the extent to which police accountability processes provide meaningful oversight of police managers and professional standards departments, while the constitutional axis is engaged with the balance of power at the various parts of the police accountability system. Plotting the relative impact of more subjective or objective use of force tests along each axis allows clarity of debate concerning the consequences of the preferred test and thereby highlights the mitigation necessary in relation to the negative consequences of a choice in either direction.

The application of a contract involves ascertaining whether the components of a contract term are met on the facts. It is a matter of categorisation or classification. There are at least three methods of categorisation: by criteria; by factor-balancing; and by analogy. The process of application is distinct from the processes that are engaged to define contract terms, including in particular interpretation. However, both the process of application and the process of interpretation address problems of linguistic indeterminacy, that is, cases where the words do not fit the facts. And these problems are usually resolved through interpretation; the relevant term is defined with such specificity that it is clear how it is to be applied. It is only when the court cannot define the term precisely that the court engages in categorisation or classification in a complex and meaningful way.

Hate crime legislation was introduced in Ireland for the first time in 2024 through the Criminal Justice (Hate Offences) Act 2024. The Irish legislation draws heavily on the Scottish Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 and uses both the ‘motivation test’ and ‘demonstration test’ for establishing liability. We explore how the demonstration test might be interpreted in Ireland given the absence of a stated mens rea in the legislation to accompany the actus reus of demonstrating hatred. We explore whether a mens rea is necessary in the operative part of legislation through the lens of recent Irish case law on the issue, examine analagous case law from Britain, and ask whether the 2024 Act can withstand judicial scrutiny.

The UK Supreme Court has recently clarified the principle of bad faith in UK trade mark law in the case of SkyKick UK Ltd v Sky Ltd.1 This commentary examines the UK Supreme Court’s approach and provides a brief analysis of its implications on UK trade mark applications made for defensive purposes.