Sentencing, Stephen Lawrence and the Rule of Law

Mr Justice Treacy's sentencing remarks in the Stephen Lawrence case are now available to view. As students - have a read and see if you can identify aggravating and mitigating factors referred to by the judge.

 The BBC also have a good clip here from an interview prior to the sentences being passed in which a barrister explains how the judge will approach matters.



As the offences in question were prior to Schedule 21 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 on sentencing for murder - the Act does not apply to Dobson and Norris. Accordingly they were sentenced as juveniles, under the law which applied at the time. Whilst some have expressed concerns that this means shorter sentences than they would receive under the modern law, it is in accordance with the rule of law that laws should not have retrospective effect. In other words, if a law is to be applied it should have been in force at the relevant time.

£10m tax bill? Forget it!

Ooops....

....appears to be have been the essence of the agreement between Goldman Sachs and an Inland Revenue official according to this story. My question to A2 Contract Law students is: in principle, would you expect such an agreement to be legally binding? Why/why not? Which case does it remind you of?


Comments please!

EasyDispute

This story about the (still) part-owner of EasyJet and entrepreneur Stelios Haji-Ioannu starting up a new airline has obvious contract law implications.
The Telegraph article says:

In a "comfort letter", Sir Stelios undertakes among other things not to "acquire an interest in any other airline" in the European Economic Area or Switzerland for two years, in return for £300,000 annually for five years.

We haven't reached this part of the syllabus yet... but if any Loreto Manchester A2 student can tell me what type of contractual issue this raises and provide a case, there may be a small prize!


Note I said "may".... once a lawyer....

Back to the Future: A Modern Legal Apprenticeship

As AS Law students will no doubt be about to learn, a legal education can be an expensive business when you factor in the cost of a degree as well as GDL/LPC/BVC depending on your chosen route into the profession. Perhaps it's not too surprising then to see that lawyers themselves are now arguing that the time is right for a new route into the profession in the form of Modern Legal Apprenticeships. Strangely, these almost hark back to the old days of doing your "articles" by on-the-job training. For an example, see the scheme run by prestigous firm Pinsent Masons in conjunction with ILEX. 


Another example of reform to the legal training process is shortened law degree programmes such as the one offered by the College of Law (if you want to find out more about this, they are holding a web seminar, or "webinar", on 5th Oct - click here for details).

Acceptance Mega MindMap!

Law of Contract Special Study Paper 2011

Open publication - Free publishing

Oceanbulk Shipping v TMT Asia

A big boat, yesterday.

This case, decided recently in the Supreme Court, makes useful reading for Contract Law students.


The court can consider the objective facts of the parties pre-contractual negotiations when trying to work out the true intentions of the parties - but NOT those negotiations entered into on a "without prejudice" basis.


Until now, that is. It appears that "without prejudice" negotiations may now be admissible if it helps the judge work out the intentions of the parties in order to rule on exactly how the contract should be constructed.


It may help A2 students to think of such negotiations as representations, but ones that carry a rider effectively saying "don't rely on this". This allows the parties to speak freely when negotiating.


So is it a good idea to create an exception to the without prejudice rule? Is this fair, or not? What's the impact on certainty? Have a think! 


Oceanbulk is also a case where the Court took into account the (persuasive) decision of a lower Court - namely the Court of Appeal in Unilever v Proctor & Gamble [2000] 1 WLR 2436.


If this case seems dry to you, you might want to consider the damages at stake - between three and four hundred million dollars. Yikes!