Derrida and the Philosophy of Law and Justice

Readings of Derrida’s work on law and justice have tended to stress the distinction between them. This stress is complicated by Derrida’s own claim that it is not ‘a true distinction’. In this essay I argue that ordinary experiences of the inadequacy of existing laws do indeed imply a claim about what would be more just, but that this claim only makes sense insofar as one can appeal to another more adequate law (whether the projection of a new law or an existing ‘higher’ law). Exploring how Derrida negotiates a subtle path between classical Platonism and classical conventionalism about justice, the attempt is made to take seriously Derrida’s aim to affirm the idea of a ‘mystical’ foundation of the authority of laws by taking ‘the use of the word “mystical” in what I venture to call a rather Wittgensteinian direction’.     

Understanding Contemporary Cryptography and its Wider Impact upon the General Law

As the move toward the wider regulation of cryptography, both within the United Kingdom and elsewhere, becomes increasingly irresistible, the degree of understanding afforded to cryptography at the level of policy formation remains underdeveloped, ambiguous and, at times, misleading. One corollary of such solicitude is that a number of the most important and pervasive legal issues that flow naturally from the widespread availability of cryptography remain largely unexplored. This article attempts to remedy these deficiencies. It begins by offering a brief historical perspective before progressing to consider more substantive issues such as cryptography's aims, power, limitations, effectiveness and future. Ignoring, to a large extent, issues of law enforcement, and focusing, in particular, upon both the law of data protection, and, to a lesser extent, the general law of obligations in the United Kingdom, this article argues that the decision to utilise cryptography will not simply prove a matter of choice, preference or expediency, but of legal and commercial necessity in order to avoid the potential imposition of widespread indeterminate liability.     

Measuring sex differences in violence victimization and perpetration within date and same-sex peer relationships

This study examines sex differences in the patterns of repeated perpetration and victimization of physical violence and psychological aggression within dating relationships and same-sex peer relationships. Data were obtained from the Youth Violence Survey: Linkages among Different Forms of Violence, conducted in 2004, and administered to all public school students enrolled in grades 7, 9, 11 and 12 (N = 4,131) in a high-risk school district. Analyses of adolescents who dated in the past year (n = 2,888) show that girls are significantly more likely than boys to report physical violence and psychological aggression perpetration within dating relationships. However, boys are significantly more likely than girls to report physically injuring a date. Boys are also significantly more likely than girls to report physical violence victimization and perpetration within same-sex peer relationships. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

The Land Registration Act 2002 – the Show on the Road

This article reviews the Land Registration Act 2002, taking advantage of the deeper perspective afforded by the intervening decade, and absorbing subsequent developments – and, in the case of the Act's electronic conveyancing project, non‐developments – that have also come to contribute to the picture. It suggests especially that while the Act's central idea of conclusive, indeed ‘constitutive’, registration can be beneficial, its deployment here has been problematic. In particular, the lapse of electronic conveyancing, and the possibility (resisted by the courts) that conclusive registration can be procured by fraudsters, have diminished the control that parties have over dispositions of their own title, to the detriment of their autonomy; and over‐preoccupation with the central idea has resulted in a failure to think carefully enough about problems to which it was never going to be the answer.