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Lord Rodger's last book examined constitutional issues arising from the Disruption of the Church of Scotland of 1843. This essay in honour of Lord Rodger looks at the Disruption anew through the lens of private law. It examines problems arising where a court is vested with jurisdiction over issues of religion by the regular operation of secular law as a source of private rights created at will by private actors. This is quite distinct from cases where religious practice collides with secular law created directly by coercive public command so as to bind all subjects. For example, where a group forms an association based on civil institutions of contract, co-ownership and trust in order to pursue a common religious life, then regular enforcement of those private-law agreements and shared property rights can give the courts a lever to decide matters of religion enshrined in the original constitution of the group. Thus if A and B vest property into common or entrusted ownership and agree that this will be used to support a certain form of religious practice, creed, and ritual, then A may sue B to force him by law not to vary the practice, creed, or ritual, as a matter of contract, property, or trust law. Successors may perpetually rely on the original agreements to enforce religious forms many generations later. And a religious form of life may be "double-entrenched" by making the original means of governance of the religious community a fundamental condition of the association and so immune to normal majoritarian vote. These issues were fought out in many great cases before and after the Disruption, and this jurisprudence forms a backdrop to Lord Rodger's important dissent in the Jewish Free School Case of 2009.

ISBN: 978-0-19-967734-4

An investigation of a flashpoint in the judicial control of insolvency. I examine how the equitable law of future assignments, designed to enforce paid-for promises and uphold the interests of assignees, is in tension with another 'equitable' policy established by statute, namely the jurisdiction to prevent preferential assignments that tend to defraud creditors by blocking recourse against debtors' assets. The High Court of Australia has been particularly active in this area, issuing an important judgments from the early 20th century to the present day. This body of law demonstrates the intermingling of equity jurisprudence and statute.

ISBN: 9781849462198

Brian Simpson's critique of Herbert Hart's The Concept of Law confronts abstract attempts to analyse law using the tools of linguistic philosophy with Simpson's preferred approach of dense historical narrative which strives to reconstruct the mentalities of past legal actors. Simpson's approach can be seen as a species of 'thick description' that ultimately shares much with the intellectual world of linguistic philosophy that he assails. Simpson's quarrel with Hart can thus be redrawn as a quarrel between two variant forms of British empiricism; Simpson's purposes are not so radically different to Hart's as he claims. The main difference is that Simpson relies on a shared (and often parodic) understanding with his audience of the nuances of common-law culture, whilst Hart is more interested in how linguistic usage common to contemporary lawyers can reveal general qualities of law. These are not rival enterprises.

This volume of essays by leading legal historians addresses significant topics in the complex history of judges and judging, with comparisons not only between British, American and Commonwealth experience, but also with the judiciary in civil-law countries.

ISBN: 9781107018976

Morice v Bishop of Durham (1804-5) is most definitely a leading case in the law of trusts. But it was not cited as authority for any 'beneficiary principle' or 'certainty of objects' rule in the general texts of trusts and equity until well toward the middle of the nineteenth century. Its real celebrity as a leading decision dates to the early and mid-twentieth century, as lawyers grappled with the challenge of amorphous beneficial objects in the new environments of family and corporate tax planning, corporate finance, pensions, and offshore jurisdictions. The urgent problems facing lawyers at the time of Morice were rather different, and harked back to two linked issues that had troubled the legal system since before the Reformation -- controlling the deathbed disherison of heirs, and restraining the putting of testamentary property into mortmain, that is perpetual or 'deadhand' control of property by ecclesiastical bodies or other corporations. This explains why Morice was early picked up by cases and texts on mortmain and charitable uses, and remained rather invisible in the key literatures on trusts. The beneficiary principle had to become controversial before it could be noticed properly as a foundational doctrine.

ISBN: 9781849461542