Jubilee’s legal landmarks
In contrast to the BBC’s laughably amateurish commentary on Sunday’s river pageant, LexisNexis celebrated the Diamond Jubilee by asking its professional experts at LexisPSL’s to research the Top Ten most significant legal cases of Her Majesty’s reign.
Three involve R herself, but precedence must go to the United Biscuits Jaffa Cake case of 1991, which defined the difference between a cake and a biscuit. The result was that a Jaffa Cake became VAT exempt. Those who have enjoyed stackfuls of Jaffa Cakes during the weekend’s Jubilee parties are the historic beneficiaries of this sensational decision.
The other standout judgments arise from R v Penguin Books Ltd (1961), the Lady Chatterley’s Lover obscene publications prosecution; Dyestuffs (1972), which involved ICI and laid down the fundamentals for proving collusion between companies; Van Duyn v Home Office (1974), in which the first reference was made by an English court to the European Court of Justice; Eves v Eves (1975), where Lord Denning created the law of creative trusts “out of thin air”; Miller v Jackson (1977), which “waxed lyrical” about the joys of cricket to underline that “an occasional ball hit out of a ground is not negligence or nuisance”; W T Ramsay Ltd v IRC (1981) began the debate about what constitutes tax avoidance and its acceptability; Attorney General v Observer Ltd and Guardian Ltd (1990) made sense of the Spycatcher revelations; R v Brown (1993) known as “every law student’s favourite BDSM case”; and R v Paul Chambers (2010), the “Twitter joke trial” that dealt with a “menacing” tweet relating to Robin Hood Airport and is still being appealed.
Such are the issues of law that have shaped our lives. They reveal, maybe, almost as much about Britain today as the other Royal events of the past week.
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Bonds of faith
The Archbishop of Canterbury seems to have risen to the occasion at St Paul’s Cathedral on Tuesday with his reference to the importance of service and being part of the community. And that applies to the City as much as the flag-waving crowds in Green Park. No sooner had Rowan Williams finished speaking than Weil announced that it had advised Scope, a pro bono client, on its ground-breaking first issuance of bonds under its £20 million bond programme.
The £2 million issue will be used by Scope to develop a range of fundraising programmes.
“The response to the Scope bond programme has been unprecedented and demonstrates that there are investors looking for products that offer them social returns as well as financial ones,” said Richard Hawkes, chief executive of Scope. Weill also works with Oxfam, NSPCC, Plan, Tearfund and Barnardo’s. Public service, as William said, is possible — even in the private sector.