Project status: Complete
Nearly a third of the population of Wales – just under 400,000 households – rent their homes. The law governing their relationship with their landlords is an irrationally complicated mess. This project seeks to replace it with a modernised, understandable, and just legal structure. The project The Welsh Government announced in 2012 that it would … Read more >
Project status: Complete
Where a claimant in a civil action has been involved in illegal activities, how far should this prevent them from enforcing their normal legal rights? This project looks at the way that the law of trusts, contract, unjust enrichment and tort responds when a claimant has been involved in some form of illegal conduct connected to … Read more >
This is a joint project with the Scottish law Commission. We began work in January 2006 when the teams at the two Commissions issued a scoping paper, inviting views on which areas of insurance contract law were in need of reform. In the light of the responses received, the teams published a second paper setting … Read more >
Project status: Complete
Increasingly, investors no longer hold stocks, shares and other investment securities directly. Instead securities are “intermediated”, that is they are held indirectly through a chain of one or more intermediaries. In this way, global custodians and securities brokers hold and trade huge volumes of securities on behalf of their customers. At the same time, computerised records have … Read more >
Project status: Complete
Many crimes, particularly crimes of violence, are committed when the offender is in a state of extreme or partial intoxication, usually as a result of the voluntary consumption of alcohol but often because of his or her use of (other) drugs, or a combination of alcohol and drugs. This view is supported by a number … Read more >
Project status: Complete
Download the report Download the summary The problem Kidnapping is an offence created by judges in the seventeenth century. There are generally 600 to 750 cases per year in which a person charged with kidnapping is brought before the courts. Many involve parents and children. The current definition is that kidnapping is an attack on … Read more >
Project status: Complete
The project set out to reform the means by which a landlord can terminate a tenancy where the tenant has not complied with their obligations. We published our final report on 31 October 2006. Our report was based on a consultation we conducted in January 2004. That consultation followed from a number of previous pieces … Read more >
Project status: Complete
Download Murder report (1): Partial Defences to Murder Download Murder, Manslaughter and Infanticide The problem The law governing homicide in England and Wales has some rules which have remained unaltered since the seventeenth century. This is even though it has long been acknowledged that they are in dire need of reform. In our 2004 report, … Read more >
Project status: Complete
Download the report Download the report summary The problem The primary purpose of professional regulation is to ensure public safety. In the UK there are nine regulatory bodies responsible for regulating 32 – consisting of approximately 1.44 million professionals. For healthcare professionals. regulation is one element of a much broader system of ensuring patient and … Read more >
Project status: Complete
There is a rule of law, known as the forfeiture rule, which states that a person may not inherit from someone whom he or she has unlawfully killed. In 2000 the Court of Appeal decided that the forfeiture rule, when applied alongside the rules on intestate succession, disinherits not only the killer, but also the … Read more >