Reforming Liability for Psychiatric Injury in Scotland: A Recipe for Uncertainty?

It is widely acknowledged that the common law rules governing liability for psychiatric injury in the United Kingdom are in an unsatisfactory state. The Scottish Law Commission has now published a report, Damages for Psychiatric Injury (Scot Law Com No 196, 2004), which recommends wholesale statutory reform of this area of the law. In this paper, the report is summarised, and its recommendations subjected to detailed critical analysis. It is concluded that, while the proposed statutory scheme is both coherent and imaginative, the Commission's consistent preference for flexible, fact-oriented rules means that implementation of the report's recommendations could give rise to an unacceptable degree of uncertainty.     

Contributory Negligence in the Twenty‐First Century: An Empirical Study of First Instance Decisions

In this article we report the results of an empirical study of 368 first instance decisions on the contributory negligence doctrine handed down in England and Wales between 2000 and 2014. The two central questions at which we looked were: how often a defendant's plea of contributory negligence was successful; and by how much a claimant's damages were reduced when a finding of contributory negligence was made. We also considered the extent to which the answers to these questions depended on the following variables: the claimant's age; the claimant's gender; the type of damage suffered by the claimant; the contextual setting of the claim; and the year of the decision. Our study uncovered several important truths about the contributory negligence doctrine hidden in this mass of case law, some of which cast significant doubt on the accuracy of widely held views about the doctrine's operation.     

The Effectiveness of Human Rights Due Diligence for Preventing Business Human Rights Abuses

Netherlands International Law Review - Human rights due diligence is today a key aspect of the international, regional and national debates about corporate accountability for human rights abuse. It...     

Who ‘Tweets’ Where and When,and How Does it Help Understand Crime Rates at Places? Measuring the Presence of Tourists and Commuters in Ambient Populations

Journal of Quantitative Criminology - Test the reliability of geotagged Twitter data for estimating block-level population metrics across place types. Evaluate whether the proportion of Twitter...     

Racism and Xenophobia: A Brief Note on the Scottish Experience

This short article plots expressions of racism andxenophobia in Scotland from the 15th to the 20th Centuries andnotes that in modern Scotland social divisions on the ground ofrace or religion have been dealt with without bloodshed. Theauthor hopes, that with the introduction of the EuropeanConvention on Human Rights into the domestic laws of the UnitedKingdom, this will continue to be the case in the 21st Century.     

New Options for Lawyer Retirement Plans Under the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981

Recent changes in the tax laws governing retirement plans may offer significant tax advantages to lawyers and other self-employed persons. The author discusses the provisions of the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 as they affect self-employed lawyers and compares them with the advantages that may be obtained by incorporation—both firm incorporation and individual incorporations within a firm. He explores a variety of tax issues, including important related Tax Court decisions, and makes recommendations with respect to adopting a strategy by a particular lawyer or firm.