The Review

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articles

Regulatory Agencies and the Inclusion Trilemma

Regardless of economic cycles, financial regulation can be understood to be bound by an uncomfortable social policy trilemma. When faced with 1) providing market integrity, 2) fostering innovation, and 3) enabling financial inclusion, regulators have long been able to achieve, at best, only two of these three goals. In this article, based on the 2023 Chorley Lecture, I argue that addressing the trilemma will require novel innovations.

Chris Brummer

A Privileged and Conventional Relationship: Legal Professional Privilege and the Law Officers’ Convention

Motions in the UK and Scottish Parliaments demanding the publication of legal advice to government from its Law Officers have tested the Law Officers’ Convention that the existence and content of their advice is only disclosed exceptionally. This article provides the first coherent explanation of the relationship between legal professional privilege and the Convention.

Rebecca Mitchell and Michael Stockdale

A New Self-Defence Framework for Domestic Abuse Survivors Who Use Violent Resistance in Response

This article criticises the government's rejection of proposals by the Prison Reform Trust that would have extended self-defence in householder cases to victims/survivors of domestic abuse. The authors argue that the Prison Reform Trust proposals should be enacted, and further supported by novel complementary reform of the option to retreat, and the exclusion of intoxicated mistaken belief in self-defence claims.

Vanessa Bettinson and Nicola Wake

legislation

Will the New UK Subsidy Control Regime Help ‘Level Up’ the Economy?

There is an emerging political consensus in the UK that greater devolution of spending powers will bring benefits in terms of reducing economic disparities between regions, enhancing social cohesion, and improving the economy's prospects for productivity, growth and the transition to net zero. This paper examines whether the new regime does indeed make it easier for awarding bodies to grant beneficial subsidies.

Andreas Stephan

cases

Modern Slavery and the Commercial Activity Exception to Diplomatic Immunity From Civil Jurisdiction: The UK Supreme Court's Decision in Basfar v Wong

In Basfar v Wong a majority of the UK Supreme Court decided that the exploitation of labour in circumstances of modern slavery constitutes ‘exercising’ a ‘commercial activity’ for the purposes of the exception to diplomatic immunity contained in Article 31(1)(c) of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. The Court's reasoning also leaves unanswered some important questions.

Sophie Ryan

Discrimination in Abortion Law and the Message the Law is Sending: R (Crowter) v Secretary of State for Health and Social Care

Crowter involved a legal challenge to the law on abortion under the Abortion Act 1967, on the basis that the disability ground ‘expresses’ a negative message about disabled people, based on negative stereotyping, and that this expression is incompatible with Articles 8 and 14 of the ECHR. The case is significant because of the way that rights-based arguments about abortion were framed.

Heloise Robinson

book reviews

The Review

Published January 2024
Frequency Bi-Monthly
Volume 87
Issue 1
Print ISSN 0026-7961
Online ISSN 1468-2230

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