POLICE AND PUBLIC ORDER

Does economic deterioration in a developed country such as Great Britain inevitably mean increasing disorder and lawlessness? How would the forces of law and order react to authoritarian governments of the political left and right? These two questions and the likely answers form the first part of this essay. The Royal Commission on the Police (1962) faced the question of either retaining a police system based on local government or recommending its replacement by a national police force under the Home Secretary. With one powerful dissension they chose the former. They claimed to have solved the problem of democratic accountability of the police, but in recent years cracks have begun to appear in the system. The vexed question of the prospects of schism between a chief constable and his police authority committee is examined. Finally, it is suggested the British governmental institutions, including Parliament itself, are insufficiently democratic, and that a Bill of Rights protecting civil liberties is long overdue.     

DENTISTRY AND MANAGEMENT OF THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE: 1974–1982

The paper examines some inter-relationships between dentistry and the national health service, particularly the way in which it was slotted into the management arrangements in 1974. The aspirations of dentists during the pre-1974 period are compared with government intent and the management structure achieved. Analysis of the managerial or officer structure at each level of the service highlights the ways in which the patterns laid down for dentistry varied from the norm. Dentists' expectations and the officially declared intent were seldom synonymous; both were very different from the final system. In some ways dentists lost out in relation to the management arrangements. Their major organization was at area level rather than in the health districts. Whether or not this unusual structure was to the disadvantage of the profession and of dental care, time alone would have told. However, no such assessment is now possible. In April 1982 area health authorities disappeared: area dental officers have therefore been abolished.     

Continental Normativism and Its British Counterpart: How Different Are They?*

Abstract
The separability thesis claims that the concept of law can be explicated independently of morality, the normativity thesis, that it can be explicated independently of fact. Continental normativism, prominent above all in the work of Hans Kelsen, may be characterized in terms of the coupling of these theses. Like Kelsen, H. L. A. Hart is a proponent of the separability thesis. And–a leitmotiv– both theorists reject reductive legal positivism. They do not, however, reject it for the same reasons. Kelsen's reason, in a word, is the normativity thesis. Hart, however, grounds his theory in social fact. In place of the reductive thesis of the legal positivist tradition, and in sharp contrast to Kelsen's normativity thesis, Hart defends a non-reductive version of what the author terms the facticity thesis.