This article explores the case for excluding all prisoners from the electorate, and argues that the European Court of Human Rights was justified in ruling that the UK had been in breach of human rights law when disenfranchising virtually all convicted prisoners irrespective of their crime.

This article explores the development of human rights law in the context of examing a UK Supreme Court decision restricting the rights of soldiers. A judicial decision can arrest the development of law. In holding that the Human Rights Act 1998 does not apply to armed forces on foreign soil, the Supreme Court recoiled from an important opportunity to underline the true significance of human rights.

Some lawyers have been a bit wry about the penalties of the law. The American attorney F. Lee Bailey once observed that ‘I have knowingly defended a number of guilty men. But the guilty never escape unscathed. My fees are sufficient punishment for anyone’. None the less, punishment is the skeleton of the criminal justice system. It gives structure to the criminal law and makes it solid. Punishment is also a way of manifesting and ranking a society’s league table of wrongdoing by reflecting the idea, for example, that a rapist has done something worse than a graffitist. It is a widely shared principle that the worse the crime, the worse should be the punishment. There are many nuanced exceptions to that proposition—for example, however bad the crime of a four-year-old, we would not use the criminal justice system to punish him. In general, though, a serious crime entails a serious sentence. In light of the principle that the worse the crime, the worse the punishment, one might expect that unlawfully killing people would be among the most seriously punished offences. It certainly is where individuals commit murder or manslaughter, but where a corporation is found guilty of manslaughter it is now not certain that the culprit would, under a new sentencing guideline, receive an appropriately serious sentence. The new sentencing guideline should be set in its brief historical contact. The first chapter of corporate manslaughter law in the UK began on 2 February 1965, but it was rather an empty chapter. The Times reported what was then an important innovation in English law: the first time a company had stood trial for manslaughter. But since then over 40,000 people have been killed at their work or in commercial disasters like those involving ferries and trains while prosecutions for corporate manslaughter have totalled at just 38. The old common law made it very difficult to prosecute companies because the ‘doctrine of identification’ required the prosecution to pin all the blame on at least one director whose will was identified as the ‘mind’ of the company. As companies commonly had responsibility for safety matters distributed across more than one directorial portfolio, pinning all the blame on one person was difficult. Various directors

Justice is not traduced by the 'instant-solution' of penalty notices for disorder solely in terms of guilty people getting a soft sanction; it is also traduced because it is likely that a proportion of innocent people caught in unfortunate circumstances are persuaded to accept a penalty notice or caution as a better risk than going to court and exposing themselves to a full hearing. There is a significant risk that suspects will feel pressured to accept a caution (and necessarily admit guilt) unaware that this will remain on their record.

This article critically explores the ways in which the principle 'no-one should be a judge in his own cause' has been violated in recent times.

This article examines the ways in which the legal system tries to expose lies that are told to the police or in court.

This article examines the circumstances in which the civil law has been used by citizens who are dissatisfied with the way that an alleged wrongdoer has been allowed to escape proper conviction by the criminal law.

This article explores the lessons from civil procedure that might be used to the advantage of criminal jurisprudence

In 1873, Baron Martin stated that 'The criminal law ought to be reasonable and intelligible' (R v Middleton (1873) L.R. 2 Crown Ca. Res. 57). That proposition is just as potent today as when it was made. As the branch of law incorporating the ultimate powers of control which the state exercises over citizens, criminal law should be consonant with common sense and be perfectly clear to the public. It is difficult to argue that current law on drugs is clear, coherent, and understood by the public.

The most significant thing about anyone's beliefs is that they are just that: beliefs. We inhabit a society comprised of a considerable palate of supposed fundamental truths, many of which are oppositional. Society is organic. It is not inert. It develops, and the best way for it to develop smoothly and peaceably is for all ideas to be subject to rigorous public debate. No set of ideas should enjoy legal prtection from criticism.

The criminal law is sometimes accused of being applied disproportionately against the weaker and poorer elements of society. It is true that what seem to be large-scale offences are often unprosecuted. If a crime is big enough it can cease to be seen as a crime. Thus, in an old proverb, if you steal a chicken you become despised as a chicken thief whereas if you steal a Kingdom you become a King. The idea is also reflected in the observation of HonorA© de Balzac that 'Laws are spider webs through which big flies pass and the little ones get caught' (La Maison Nucingen, 1838). The largest scale crimes can be committed by agencies of government. There is an argument for criminalising some sorts of organisational omission to act that result in death.