Sentencing, Crime and Justice

Almost 90 years ago, Professor Arthur Goodhart, who served for a record 50 years as editor of the Law Quarterly Review, published an article in that journal in which he lamented the proliferation of law reports in England at the time. By his estimation, 18 different law report series were then being published, and the total cost of an annual subscription to all of th...

The issue the UK Supreme Court had to decide in Rukhadze v Recovery Partners GP Ltd [2025] UKSC 10; [2025] 2 WLR 529 was undoubtedly an important one. It concerned the scope of the so-called profit rule as it applies to trustees and other fiduciaries such as company directors. In the words of the Court, this rule requires that “fiduciaries will act with single-minded...

On 16 December, those of us who are fans of Jane Austen celebrated her 250th birthday with tea and crumpets though, sadly, we can no longer have a nice peat briquette fire at which to toast them. It also brought to mind the fairly recent English case of Ben John who, at the time of his arrest, was a 21-year-old student (studying criminology and psychology). He was found to ha...

A convicted person who appeals against sentence to the Court of Appeal naturally hopes to achieve some reduction in their sentence, but there is always the possibility that it will be increased. And since the sentence in question is almost invariably one of imprisonment, the risk of this happening must always be taken seriously. Further, the appellant is not normally made awa...