Judges communicate outside of the courtroom on a regular basis. They give speeches at universities and to societies; appear before select committees; write for a range of publications; and engage in both media and outreach activities. Existing literature has charted the value and perils of such extrajudicial communication. This paper contributes an explanation of what motivates judges towards such communication, and what shapes their discourse. The work draws on 13 semi-structured interviews with senior serving and recently retired judges, along with an extensive range of examples of judicial speech beyond the bench. It argues that extrajudicial communication is shaped by a shared conception amongst the judicial community of what is appropriate. This conception of propriety is principally motivated by a communal pursuit of sustaining public confidence in the judicial office. The conception also informs the limits of appropriate discourse and establishes the ramifications for breach.

The UK enacted its first legal measure to address gender pay inequity, the Equal Pay Act 1970, more than 50 years ago. Yet, in 2021, the gender pay gap (GPG) still stood at 15.4%. Departing from the remedial and individual approach that characterises equal pay legislation, the 2017 Gender Pay Gap Information Regulations (the Regulations) require private and voluntary sector organisations with 250+ employees to annually publish pay data broken down by gender. The long-term aspiration of the Regulations is to contribute to closing the GPG within a generation. It is also hoped that they will encourage the public disclosure of pay data and changes in workplace policies to reduce organisational GPGs (immediate aims) and improve employers’ accountability (underlying aim). This paper considers whether the Regulations have what it takes to meet those immediate and underlying aims. Our assessment framework is built on the premise that for public disclosure to be useful and for employers to tackle the causes of the GPG, the information reported must be of sufficient quality, meaningful and relevant. The paper draws on both doctrinal analysis and empirical data reported by FTSE 100 Index companies to assess the Regulations and determine whether they hold the potential to meet those aims.

This paper considers whether UK corporate insolvency law and the UK Insolvency Act 1986 have extra-territorial effect post-Brexit, and whether – and to what extent – it is for the courts or the legislature to extend any extra-territorial effect. It does not deal with ‘inward recognition’, ie the recognition of foreign judgments and orders in the UK.

Brexit has left something of a vacuum and provisions which might otherwise have applied extra-territorially, at least within the EU, may now have been deprived completely of extra-territorial effect. But all is not lost and Brexit here presents opportunities. There is room for clarifying that particular provisions which might otherwise have discriminated between EU application and application vis-à-vis the rest of the world can now be given a uniform global interpretation. Courts should, however, proceed incrementally in extending the extra-territorial scope of UK corporate insolvency law.

A bolder reform would be to enact legislation that specifies the exact extent to which the UK Insolvency Act applies extra-territorially. Legislation obviously depends on parliamentary time and requires detailed drafting but also provides the opportunity for the UK to showcase that it remains at the forefront of international insolvency developments.

This paper discusses the accountability gap problem posed by artificial intelligence. After sketching out the accountability gap problem we turn to ancient Roman law and scrutinise how slave-run businesses dealt with the accountability gap through an indirect agency of slaves. Our analysis shows that Roman law developed a heterogeneous framework in which multiple legal remedies coexist to accommodate the various competing interests of owners and contracting third parties. Moreover, Roman law shows that addressing the various emerging interests had been a continuous and gradual process of allocating risks among different stakeholders. The paper concludes that these two findings are key for contemporary discussions on how to regulate artificial intelligence.

The usage of delegated legislation as a means of governance deserves significant attention, in view of the enormous impact that it is capable of having on the lives of citizens. While reforms to the process of parliamentary scrutiny are an important means of minimising the inappropriate usage of delegated legislation, this paper explores the possibility of drawing more fruitfully upon judicial review as an additional control mechanism. It undertakes a theoretical analysis of what makes delegated legislation distinct from primary legislation and other types of executive action for the purposes of judicial review, with a view towards identifying the proper normative orientation of judicial review of delegated legislation – upholding the moral requirements of delegation relationships and safeguarding democratic accountability and the rule of law. It then argues that existing grounds of review applied towards delegated legislation go some way towards but are inadequately directed at this normative orientation. Drawing inspiration from Irish and US jurisprudence, the paper critically evaluates several possible means of filling this doctrinal space, and concludes that the non-delegation doctrine and a rule of law-based ground of judicial review directed at exercises of delegated law-making power can supplement the law of judicial review of delegated legislation.

The paper reports the findings of over a decade of pioneering, award-winning fieldwork which has explored how workplace experience, if embedded successfully in different stages of legal education, can accelerate the ‘speed to capability’ and skills development of early career lawyers. The benefits from initial experiments of graduate-level work placements carried out by the authors since 2008 are presented. The paper then explores the findings from almost 10 years of creating year-long work placements for law undergraduates, assessing student skill growth, and the impact of the work placements on degree results and employment outcomes, before and during the Covid-19 pandemic.

It is estimated that there are in excess of eight million unfit homes in England and that one in five excess deaths are attributable to poor housing conditions, costing the NHS some £1.4bn per year. While the policy focus tends to be on housing supply, it is the private rented sector (PRS) that is a key vehicle for provision. The pandemic has given rise to some unexpected outcomes, not least in regulating that sector. This paper will consider how strategies have changed and generated new modes of regulation in the sector, which may have important longer-term effects for the relation between tenant and landlord. Using the frame of vulnerability and risk theories as a starting position, the paper will critique the role of law in allocating landlord rights and responsibilities. It will look at the implications of moving towards an appreciation of the relational, as opposed to physical aspects of housing provision in regulating landlord behaviour and the attendant risks of so doing. It will be argued that the literatures of vulnerability and risk only make sense if a further element is added in this case: the notion of hope.

Shareholder say-on-pay voting allows institutional investors to influence the incentives of managers and, consequently, corporate behaviour. Surprisingly, the preferences of investors on executive compensation have been largely overlooked in the ongoing debates on the role of say-on-pay in corporate governance and the impact of shareholder stewardship on sustainable corporate behaviour. The analysis of investor disclosed explanations of say-on-pay votes in the FTSE 100 companies during 2013–2021 shows that institutional investors rely repeatedly on several dominant themes aimed at improving the incentives of corporate managers and controlling managerial rent extraction. But shareholder interests remain the core focus of say-on-pay votes, with only few investors demanding that companies reward executive directors for protecting the interests of a broader range of affected stakeholders. Additionally, most investors can be grouped into several clusters formed around the voting recommendations of proxy advisers. A group of UK-based institutional investors stands out by taking a more individualistic and diverse approach to the stewardship of executive compensation. These findings highlight the role of local investors in the oversight of executive pay, the growing influence of proxy advisers along with the increasing share of foreign institutional investors, and the influence of best practice governance codes in driving investor stewardship preferences.

Trans identities are increasingly subjected to contentious public and political debate in the UK, and this has resulted in resource to the law across various contexts. Against that background, this paper considers trans legal parenthood after the decision in R (McConnell and YY) v Registrar General for England and Wales. This judgment held that a trans man who gave birth was the legal ‘mother’ of his child. The wider consequence is that trans legal parenthood will not reflect trans identities, but birth-assigned sex/gender, regardless of whether the parent holds a gender recognition certificate. Separate from this underlying social and political context concerning trans identities, the paper argues that legal parenthood is a flexible and pragmatic concept, which lacks inherent normative content, and which has previously proved capable of accommodating a variety of different familial and reproductive circumstances. The paper argues that the gendered descriptors of ‘mother’ and ‘father’, while remaining the law's default, are not inherent to legal parenthood. Thus, the paper concludes that, despite the ongoing political and cultural debates concerning trans identities, the existing concept of legal parenthood is capable of properly recognising trans parenthood, without requiring any fundamental changes to the concept itself.