This account of constitutional reform in the UK offers a detailed discussion of all the significant changes that have developed following the elections of 1997 and 2001. Issues discussed include the devolution of power in Scotland and elections of Assemblies in Wales and Northern Ireland; reform of the House of Lords and the system of hereditary peers; the influence of the Human Rights Act; changes to electoral systems and party funding; and the significance of the European dimension on the British Constitution.

A British colony of fifty souls in the Pacific Ocean, Pitcairn Island was settled by the Bounty mutineers and nineteen Polynesians in 1790. In 2004 six Pitcairn men were convicted of numerous offenses against girls and young women, committed over a thirty year period, in what appears to have been a culture of sexual abuse on the island.
This case has raised many questions: what right did the British government have to initiate these prosecutions? Was it fair to prosecute the defendants, given that no laws had been published on the island? Indeed, what, if any, law was there on this...

This text is a critical study of the public/private law divide in the common law tradition. Professor Oliver's starting point is that special substantive duties of legality, fairness and rationality are imposed by the common law on bodies discharging public functions, but not always on bodies discharging what are considered 'private' functions. She questions the validity of the traditional dichotomy, and proposes new criteria for imposing such duties in accordance with underlying values, including the control of power and respect for the individual's autonomy and dignity. Written by a leading...

Now available in paperback, this collection explores how constitutions change and are changed in a number of countries, and how the 'constitution' of the EU changes and is changed. For a range of reasons, including internal and external pressures, the constitutional arrangements in many countries are changing. Constitutional change may be formal, involving amendments to the texts of constitutions or the passage of legislation of a clearly constitutional kind. Change may also be informal and organic, in circumstances where court decisions affect the operation of the system of government, or...