Respect, man: that is what it is all about. I have done plenty of cases where the motivation behind the alleged offending appears to be something to do with “respectâ€, and “dissing†that respect due. Now respect in these cases is a funny old thing – a bit of a one-way street to be honest. In these cases the defendant's sense of his own self-respect normally exists in a bubble that appears not to allow space for respect for others. You know the sort of thing: the defendant's right to respect is mutually exclusive to the victim's right not to have a knife stabbed in their guts or a glass shoved in their face and so on.
On the face of it the Yearworth case has merely resolved a narrow point on the ownership of sperm but it also re-opens a range of ethical and legal questions on the status of live body parts, says James Lawford Davies
A more restrictive definition of 'hunting' has helped to clarify some of the more ambiguous provisions of the Hunting Act but cases yet to be decided will bring further changes, say Kris Lines and Pippa Wilding
Legal departments in local authorities are taking back in house the work they were once told to outsource and are even offering services to new 'clients', but will the new generation of lawyers have the requisite skills, ask Suzanne Bond and John Emms
Spike Charlwood and Alice Nash review the latest cases on limitation for loss claims, the standard of care expected of barristers and solicitors, and liability for future trading losses
