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The article discusses a case in which two appellants, who were 17 years old at the time of the appeal, were convicted of drug offenses and sentenced to Youth Rehabilitation Orders. They argued that they should be able to rely on the statutory defense provided in the Modern Slavery Act 2015, which states that a person under 18 does not commit an offense if they were a victim of slavery or exploitation and a reasonable person in the same situation would have done the same act. The trial judge incorrectly instructed the jury that compulsion needed to be established for the defense to apply. The Court of Appeal allowed the appeals and quashed the convictions, stating that the defense does not require compulsion. The article highlights the importance of correctly explaining the elements of the defense to the jury and suggests that closer attention should be paid to the wording of the statute and guidance provided. [Extracted from the article]

Indeed, in I Hussain i , the court confirmed the position taken in I Rowe i that submissions to the effect that, although the accessory's encouragement of the principal need not have caused the offence, the accessory must nonetheless have had some effect on the events, are "unarguable" (at [82]). However, she argued that, without further guidance on the (level of) contribution made by the accessory's action towards the principal's commission of the offence, the jury would not have been able to distinguish between an accessory who was merely present and one who by his presence had assisted or encouraged. In [82], it cited [132-134] from I Rowe i [2022] EWCA Crim 27 (which in turn had relied on the decisions in I Calhaem i [1985] QB 808 and I Stringer i [2011] EWCA Crim 1396) which had held 'that the accessory's conduct must be "relevant" to the offence of the principal and, in that sense, there must be a "connecting link"'. However, his grounds of appeal raise an interesting question of law, namely what suffices for the I actus reus i of complicity to link an accessory to the principal offender's commission of the crime?. [Extracted from the article]

The United Kingdom has accepted international obligations under the Palermo Protocol, the Council of Europe Trafficking Convention, and the EU Trafficking Directive, in relation to the non-prosecution and non-punishment of victims of trafficking for offences they commit which are linked to their trafficking. The obligations are given effect by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) discretion not to prosecute, the abuse of process jurisdiction, the common law defence of duress, and the statutory defences under s 45 Modern Slavery Act 2015. In relation to adult victims of trafficking, in each case the question arises of whether they were compelled to commit the offence with which they are charged. This article shows how the English & Welsh courts and the CPS have had insufficient regard to the United Kingdom's international obligations in interpreting 'compulsion', and that improvements are necessary to prevent breaches of the United Kingdom's obligations and the re-traumatisation of victims of trafficking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In England and Wales, the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, (CJA), s. 55(3) introduced into statute 'fear of serious violence' as a ground (or 'a trigger') for loss of control manslaughter. It was intended to take into account the circumstances of women who in self-preservation kill abusive and violent intimate partners. Despite this important reform, a woman who defends herself from a partner's abuse and violence in both manslaughter and self-defence pleadings continues to be assessed with reference to a masculinist interpretation of what is reasonable through the anthropomorphic 'reasonable man/person,' and loss of control still underpins voluntary manslaughter. In Canada, the homicide provisions in the Criminal Code, RSC 1985, c C-46, were amended in 2012 to reframe the law of self-defence (s. 34) and in 2015 to revise the law of provocation by which culpable homicide can be reduced to manslaughter (s. 232), with neither amendment accounting explicitly for the circumstances of women who kill abusive partners. In both jurisdictions despite revisions to the legal construct of 'loss of control manslaughter' (England and Wales) or the provocation defence (Canada), the common law underpinnings of these defences and jurors' perceptions of what constitutes or what can trigger 'loss of control' continues to inform such pleadings whilst the law on self-defence (with its masculinist requirements and interpretation of proportionality and reasonableness) remains largely inaccessible to the abused woman who defends herself from an intimate partner's violence and abuse. This article explores the legal developments in both jurisdictions and their limitations through an analysis of the substantive law and recent case law. The number of women who kill violent and abusive partners and the legal outcomes, the methods used to kill and the ways in which substantive law and legal actors disadvantage those who use a weapon eschewing women's disproportionate size and strength, are all considered. The article concludes with proposals for further reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The old common law defence of provocation has been abolished in many jurisdictions, including England and Wales and Northern Ireland, but it is still part of the law south of the Irish border. Up to now the Irish law of provocation has been built up solely by the courts, and has developed a number of peculiarities, not least the apparent rejection of the objective test by the Court of Criminal Appeal in the 1978 case of MacEoin. However, it is not until recently that the defence has come to the attention to the Supreme Court, in the 2020 case of McNamara. In this case the court set out to clarify the law, but the case has been criticised by commentators for its failure to clear up some of the existing ambiguities; indeed, it has been said that it has even introduced further ambiguities into the law that did not exist before. Be that as it may, this paper argues that McNamara is to be welcomed, in so far as it promotes a flexible approach and one which recognises the essentially normative nature of the provocation defence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opening the Door to Vindication: Reviewing the Evidential Bases for the "Householder Defence": R v Magson [2022] EWCA Crim 1064 Keywords: Householder defence; self-defence; murder; summing up; evidential basis; householder; trespasser EN Householder defence self-defence murder summing up evidential basis householder trespasser 372 376 5 10/12/22 20221001 NES 221001 Section 76 Criminal Justice and Immigration Act (CJIA) 2008, as amended by s 43 Crime and Courts Act 2013, introduced the so-called "householder case" into our domestic law. Lord Burnett CJ at [23] does make reference to the fact that the householder defence was not raised by the defence or trial judges: That, no doubt, explains why the point did not occur to two separate experienced and skilled criminal defence teams nor to two experienced trial judges. [Extracted from the article]

Had those decisions been available to the prosecution the prosecution would have been discontinued, or if not it could have been successfully challenged as an abuse of process. Hoshi acknowledged, however, that there was no hard, binding international law requiring a causation-based defence, and that both the CoE Convention Against Trafficking and the EU Trafficking Directive contained requirements that were compulsion-based or at best ambiguous. Keywords: Human trafficking; expert evidence; decision to prosecute; abuse of process; appeals EN Human trafficking expert evidence decision to prosecute abuse of process appeals 212 215 4 06/23/22 20220601 NES 220601 In three conjoined appeals, the Registrar of Criminal Appeals invited the Court of Appeal to give guidance on various matters relating to the prosecution of victims of trafficking ("VOTs"). [Extracted from the article]

The common law doctrine of mistake of fact or civil law works as denial of offending, but dishonesty works as one of the definitional elements of crimes such as theft and fraud. It is argued in this article that the rulings in R v Barton [2020] 3 WLR 1333 and Ivey v Genting Casinos (UK) (trading as Crockfords Club) [2018] AC 391 do not change the doctrine of mistake of fact or civil law but do change the law in respect of mistakes about what is honest. A defendant whose conduct is taken as dishonest according to community standards may well avoid criminal liability if he was genuinely mistaken about a fact or civil law right. It is submitted that since the doctrine of mistake of fact or civil law is already provided for, the law is not expanded greatly by the rulings in Ivey and Barton which merely bring back the objective test of dishonesty that had long been established before the Ghosh test. The decision in Barton is substantively welcome, even though the change in the law arose from a civil law case where dishonesty was not an issue before the court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the facts of I Neale i , since the appellant was suspected of having breached the Coronavirus Regulations and was refusing to provide his name and address, his arrest was clearly lawful. The appellant was acquitted on a separate charge, that of being in a public place without a reasonable excuse contrary to regs 8(1) and 12(1)(b) and (4) of the Coronavirus Regulations, on the basis that since he was homeless he was entitled to rely on the exception provided for in reg 8(4). They did so on the basis that the police officer had been carrying out his duties during lockdown in enforcing the Coronavirus Regulations and that the appellant's behaviour had made it more difficult for the officer to engage with him regarding a potential breach of the Regulations. [Extracted from the article]

It also makes it clear that while the s 45(1) defence applies to an adult who was the victim of modern slavery or human trafficking prior to the commencement of the 2015 Act, it only relates to criminal offences alleged to have been committed by them after 31 July 2015, and which are not listed in sch 4. On 28 June 2015, CS pleaded guilty in the Magistrates' Court to two offences of possession of a Class A drug (crack cocaine and heroin) with intent to supply. Moreover, the Lord Chief Justice drew attention to the "unusual" nature of the s 45 defence given that it applies to all criminal offences (other than those excepted by sch 4), rather than just to offences provided for under the 2015 Act (at [23]). [Extracted from the article]

This paper explores select themes relating to legal culture in European criminal justice post-Brexit by focusing on aspects of the common law trial process in the Irish courts. The incorporation of EU law and the ECHR within the domestic legal order has necessitated the nurturing of a constructive co-existence with the country's longer standing constitutional and common law traditions. Ireland and the United Kingdom have collaborated closely as common law Member States and the departure of the UK from the EU will affect Ireland's position in EU criminal justice in many and varied ways. Using the examples of victim participation in criminal trials and pre-trial access of suspects to legal assistance, the paper seeks to illuminate trends of consonance and dissonance in Ireland's relationship with European law. Drawing on the shared commitment to the protection of fundamental rights in the EU and the ECHR, the discussion reflects on some of the longer term implications of Brexit for the common law presence in European criminal legal culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the legal developments in both jurisdictions and their limitations through an analysis of the substantive law and recent case law. A new template for loss of control as a partial defence to the crime of murder became effective in English criminal law from 4 October 2010 by the provisions contained within sections 54-56 of the Coroners and Justice Act (CJA) 2009. This article considers how the current parameters of the criminal law and our increased understanding of intimate partner violence are in conflict, and further legislation will most certainly be necessary to be inclusive of non-physical abuse. [Extracted from the article]

'Temporality': Clarifying the Extent to Which Self-Defence, Defence of Property and Prevention of Crime Operate: R v Williams [2020] EWCA Crim 193 In relation to prevention of crime, any alleged robbery of W's property, or wounding of W, was complete before the victim fled from the flat. I Williams i , therefore, concerns W's renewed application for leave to appeal against his conviction on the basis that the learned trial judge erred in not leaving the defence of self-defence to the jury. In relation to prevention of crime, Flaux LJ confirmed that: 'This defence is only available in relation to preventing crimes in progress not in relation to reacting to crimes already committed' (at [21]). [Extracted from the article]

In this article, I shall try to outline some grounds for resisting enacting new treason-type offences. It shall be argued that an offence of treason based on the wrongness of 'betrayal' would add nothing extra to the protection that is already provided for in a plethora of terrorism offences that cover preparation, inchoate acts concerning terrorism as well as consummated terrorism attacks. I shall try to demonstrate that what supplies the normative case for criminalisation in these sorts of cases is culpability plus harm, not betrayal in itself. Betrayal is a minor aggravating feature that can be dealt with by sentencing judges. I also argue that there is no evidence that the sentences available in our terrorism legislation are not ample to deal with those who go abroad to fight in armed conflicts involving British forces. Finally, it is argued that while the common law offence of outraging public decency might plug gaps where returning Islamic State of Iraq and Syria brides make outrageous comments, it should be used only as a last resort when the speech involves hate speech of a serous kind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a court case related to the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. It mentions that Dean Curtis and the two appellants, Jordan Towers and Anthony Hawkes were involved in two separate incidents. The first involved the murder of Kevin Johnson who was stabbed by either Hawkes or Curtis.

The article offers information about the Supreme Court decision in Golds [2016] UKSC 61. It clarified the courts' approach to cases involving mental health considerations outside the jury's experience where the sole issue at trial was the partial defence of diminished responsibility and the psychiatric experts were substantially agreed as to the mental health of the killer at the time of the homicide.

It was alleged that the refurbishment and decoration were a bribe made to the defendant who was subsequently charged with an offence of bribery. The appeal against conviction was dismissed; however, the defendant's sentence was reduced from 20 months of imprisonment to 12 months. The defendant further appealed to the Court of Final Appeal against his conviction. [Extracted from the article]

R v BM is the latest case to consider the exceptions to the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 (OAPA). The exceptions allow an action causing injury that would be a criminal offence to become lawful if the person injured consents to the action. The consequences of this judgment is that body modifications are categorised as medical procedures (and therefore subject to the medical exception only) and new exceptions should not be developed on a case by case basis, instead allocating development of the exceptions to Parliament. Two implications follow from the BM judgment. First, it provided a limited definition of body modifications which are now categorised as medical procedures. Secondly, their Lordships have restricted further development of the lawful exceptions to offences against the person. This is a lost opportunity for developing the common law exceptions to the OAPA through an autonomy-based liberal judicial interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses court case of The Court of Appeal of England and Wales (EWCA) on regarding of common law for self defence. Topics include the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act (CJIA) 2008 for clarify the operation of the existing defences; The Court Martial Appeal Court on concerning of second issue of trespasser victim; and views of chief justice Lord Burnett on statement of victim was a trespasser.

This article critically examines the development of statutory restrictions on the common law right to silence in the UK, providing insight from common law, jurisprudence and historical legal contexts, and considering the broader context of the privilege against self-incrimination, and critically evaluates the development restriction of the right, by ss 34–38 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crime of unlawful act manslaughter (otherwise known as constructive manslaughter) exists in English and Australian common law. It is also an offence contrary to the Canadian Criminal Code. In all three jurisdictions the offence shares the same essential elements, including the requirements that the accused commit an act which is both unlawful and dangerous. This article will explore the case law on unlawful act manslaughter in Australia, Canada and England, focusing on the elements of an unlawful act and dangerousness, in order to identify similarities and differences in the application of the law in the three jurisdictions. Where differences are found, consideration will be given to the question whether English law should be reformulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In its 2011 report Expert Evidence in Criminal Proceedings in England and Wales (Law Com No. 325), the Law Commission recommended that the admissibility of expert evidence in criminal proceedings should be governed by a new statutory regime comprising a new statutory reliability test in combination with codification and refinement of existing common law principles relating to ‘assistance’, ‘expertise’ and ‘impartiality’. The government declined to enact the Law Commission’s draft Bill due to a lack of certainty as to whether the additional costs incurred would be offset by savings. Instead the government invited the Criminal Procedure Rule Committee (CrimPRC) to consider amendments to the Criminal Procedure Rules (CrimPR) to introduce, as far as possible, the spirit of the Law Commission’s recommendations. The consequent amendments to CrimPR Part 33 (now CrimPR Part 19) in combination with the making of the new Practice Direction CrimPD 33A (now CrimPD 19A) by the Lord Chief Justice resulted in what he described in his 2014 Criminal Bar Association Kalisher Lecture as ‘a novel way of implementing an excellent Report’. This paper considers the possible evolution of the common law in light of these amendments, the challenges associated with adopting such a novel approach to reform and the potential opportunities for the improvement of expert evidence in criminal proceedings that the changes were intended to create. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All forms of secondary liability require justification as an exception to the rule that one should not be held criminally liable for the actions of another. Such a justification is particularly difficult to find for parasitic accessory liability, as distinguished from other forms of joint enterprise. Although the doctrine has significant practical benefits, there remain problems with the same kind of liability being imposed on both principal and secondary offenders. This uniform imposition of liability is the primary problem with the joint enterprise doctrine in its current form, and the importance of the type of liability imposed means that differences in sentence are an inadequate way of accounting for the differences in culpability between principal and secondary offenders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Crime and Courts Act 2013 has amended s. 76 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 on the amount of force a person can use in self-defence. The amended provision poses a dilemma for the courts: it states that only reasonable force can be used by a householder against a trespasser, but adds that force is unreasonable if it is grossly disproportionate. Until now, the courts have treated reasonable force and proportionate force as synonyms. This article suggests that the amended s. 76 should be interpreted to comply with the rule of law, incorporating the idea of equality before the law and legality. The courts should respect the traditional common law concept of reasonableness which is an impartial, objective concept that plays an important role across the whole of the criminal legal system. In addition, the article points out that the Act must be interpreted, where possible, in accordance with the European Convention on Human Rights to avoid the problems that arose with the defence of lawful chastisement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a court case wherein the Supreme Court of Ireland held that s.23 of the Criminal Procedure Act 2010 allows the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to make a with prejudice appeal against an acquittal wherein a ruling was made during the course of a trial that erroneously excluded compelling evidence. It notes that the exclusionary rule in Ireland is unusually rigid as compared to other common law jurisdictions.

The article discusses the clarification of the law regarding mercy killing, euthanasia and assisted suicide. It also mentions that the conjoined appeals to die at the time of one's choosing engages fundamental common law rights as well as the right to private life protected by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It states the examples by appellants and commentary saying that the event of conflict with legislation, statute must prevail and the common law must give way.

This article considers the recent decision of the Second District Court of Appeal of California in People v Julio Morales. The California Court of Appeal controversially quashed the conviction for rape of the appellant who had had sexual intercourse with the victim seemingly whilst she had initially been asleep. With there being conflicting accounts as to whether the victim had been awake or asleep during the intercourse, the appellant had been convicted of rape by the jury on the alternative bases of her either: (1) having been unconscious (asleep) during the intercourse or; (2) having been awake during the intercourse, but mistaken as to the identity of her sexual partner, believing him to be her boyfriend. In a restrictive judgment, displaying more concern for principles of statutory interpretation than criminal justice, the appeal court quashed the appellant's conviction. The reasoning of the court was that the jury might have convicted on the basis of (2) above and that the California Penal Code recognised the offence of rape as being possible in personation cases only where the person being impersonated is the spouse of the victim. This article suggests a number of ways that were open to the appeal court to avoid this unsatisfactory outcome, both by application of other provisions of the Penal Code itself and by reference to the history of the spousal impersonation rule traceable back to old English common law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illuminates the possession element of the new offence under s. 62 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, which outlaws certain non-photographic images of child sexual abuse. To this end, the analysis draws upon the case law concerning the offence of possession of extreme pornographic images, with which the new offence shares many common features. The article also presents the latest figures relating to convictions obtained since s. 62 came into effect in April 2010. Lastly, it considers the proposed amendment to widen the provisions of the 2009 Act and argues that the already broad scope of the offence should be limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the hackneyed expression that 'judges should interpret the law and not make it', the fact remains that there is some scope within the separation of powers doctrine for the courts to develop the common law incrementally. To this extent, the courts can effectively legislate, but only to this limited extent if they are to respect the separation of powers doctrine. On occasion, however, the courts have usurped the power entrusted to Parliament, and particularly so in instances where a strict application of the existing law would lead to results that offend their personal notions of what is fair and just. When this occurs, the natural consequence is that lawyers, academics and the public in general lose respect for both the judges involved as well as the adversarial system of criminal justice. In order to illustrate this point, attention will focus on the case of Thabo Meli v United Kingdom in which the Privy Council, mistakenly believing that it could not reach its desired outcome through a strict application of the common law rule of temporal coincidence, emasculated the rule beyond recognition in order to convict the accused. Moreover, the discussion to follow will demonstrate that not only was the court wrong in its belief that the case involved the doctrine of temporal coincidence, but the same result would have been achieved had the Council correctly identified the issue as one of legal causation and correctly applied the principles relating thereto. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In DPP v Morgan, the House of Lords correctly concluded that an accused who entertained a genuine belief that a woman was consenting to carnal knowledge of her person could not be convicted of the common law crime of rape as such a belief and the requisite mens rea to convict were mutually exclusive of one another. Though England and Wales have resiled from this position by virtue of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, s. 1 (b), which allows for conviction upon proof that the accused did not reasonably believe that the complainant was consenting, the Morgan principle has retained its vitality at common law as well as under the various statutory crimes of rape that exist throughout Australia, most notably the provisions of s. 38 of the Crimes Act 1958 (Vic). Despite a long line of Victorian Court of Appeal decisions which have reaffirmed the Morgan principle, the court has construed s. 37AA(b)(ii) of the Act as leaving open the possibility of an acquittal despite the fact that the accused acted with an awareness that one or more factors that are statutorily deemed as negating consent under s. 36(a)-(g) of the Act were operating at the time of his or her sexual penetration; specifically, the court held that the foregoing factors do not necessarily preclude a jury from finding that the accused acted in the genuine belief that the complainant was consenting. This article endeavours to explain how the accused could be aware of such circumstances at the time of penetration, yet still entertain such a belief. The article ultimately concludes that such an anomaly can only be explained through a combination of the poor drafting of s. 37AA(b)(ii) and the court's apparent refusal to follow the longstanding precept that ignorance of the law is never a defence to a crime, ostensibly prompted by its adherence to the cardinal precept that legislation is not to be construed as superfluous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically the common law allowed the prosecution to prove the defendant's guilt by adducing not only factual evidence, but also evidence of his bad character. The latter could take the form of evidence that the defendant had done the same thing on previous occasions as he was charged with today. This was known as similar fact evidence (SFE). Under the Criminal Justice Act 2003 the common law rules as to the admissibility of evidence of bad character were abolished and replaced with a statutory scheme which is capable of being used to admit some, but by no means all, of what was SFE at common law. This article considers alternative meanings of the two-word phrase 'bad character'; whether SFE which is not admissible under the Act is nevertheless admissible at common law; the relationship between the statutory scheme and the common law; and crucially, the jury direction at common law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the aspects of corporate punishment. He agrees with the aim of the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 in Great Britain on criminalising corporate offense without pinning the blame in only one individual which has been the difficult practice of the old common law. Also investigated are the role of the Sentencing Guidelines Council, the range of fines to be imposed on a convicted company or an organisation and the role of the Centre for Corporate Accountability.

By removing the common law rules on a duty to act from liability for manslaughter by omission, the law would more accurately reflect the intention of the House of Lords in R v Adomako (1995). The current duplicitous requirement of both a duty to act and a duty of care appears to be confusing both the trial judge and the jury. The causing of a harm by an omission does not automatically mean the conduct was less morally reprehensible than where harm is caused by an act and this reform would therefore potentially bring the law more closely into line with society's moral values. The law would be rendered clearer and simpler and injustices would be avoided due to the other requirements of the Law Commission's proposed offence of killing by gross carelessness, including causation and gross carelessness. Through this reform justice could at last be offered should a stranger choose to walk by a drowning baby. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a court case where the judge admitted evidence of the defendant P's 3 convictions as evidence of his propensity to be untruthful and held that the matters in issue between defendants P and M were factual disputes about their respective locations in the guest house. The Court of Appeals dismissed P's assertion that the convictions cannot be relevant to credibility and that the judge had relied on a common law decision.

The author outlines the common law and the statutory interventions with particular reference to human rights. According to him, at common law a parent has the chance to exclude expressly the possibility of chastisement when giving a lawful control of his child to another. He notes that this power is provided in a section from the Children Act 1989. A parent or a person in loco parentis can raise the defense of chastisement when given an assault charge against a child.

The article discusses an offense for breach of peace, contrary to Irish common law in Ireland. Details of the case including the ambiguity regarding the trial, the penalty for such type of offences and the violation of human rights that is attracted upon sentencing the guilty, are discussed. The article mentions that the Irish legislature retained breach of peace contrary to common law as an offense under Irish law.

Comments on problems brought about by the trial of serious and complex fraud. Criteria set by the Serious Fraud Office; Confusions on substantive law, a mixture of common law, conspiracy and theft; Difficulties in gathering and presenting admissible evidence.

Focuses on the occurrence of a massive explosion in Larkhall, Lanarkshire in Scotland on December 22, 1999 which completely destroyed a dwelling house in Carlyle Road. Indictment charges against Transco PLC with regards to the explosions; Consideration of the common law crime of culpable homicide; Function and responsibilities of the company for the transmission and distribution of gas in areas including Larkhall.

The article discusses various updates to English common law as of 2010. It cites provisions made to the Crime and Security Act 2010, and the Bribery Act 2010, which were both ratified on April 8. Amendments to the Criminal Justice Act 2003, take effect in England and Wales on May 1. A consultation paper has been issued by the Law Commission on reforming the law on public nuisance and outraging public decency.

In this article, the author presents a criticism of English law, particularly with regards to the prosecution of Paul Chambers. He states that Chambers' threat to blow up the Robin Hood airport in Doncaster due to heavy snowfall, was made in jest. The police response, however, was not, resulting in Chambers being arrested, interrogated, fined and later fired from his job. He accuses British counter terrorism efforts as destroying the spirit of English common law, bringing the country into totalitarianism, and accuses the Freedom Bill of hypocrisy.