scholarly journals Property Rights of Husband and Wife: A Brief Survey

1969 ◽  
pp. 39
Author(s):  
Suraj Khetarpal

Under the Common Law a wife on marriage endowed her husband with all her worldly goods, and she also renounced all rights of ownership of any property she then, or in the future, might possess. The author examines the legislative departures from this position in England, Canada, Singapore and India. After establishing that the courts will apply "palm tree justice" where no definite intention as to the manner of ownership of property is ascertainable, the author concludes that this uncertainty in scope of judicial discretion should be removed as far as possible from the law.

2019 ◽  
pp. 3-22
Author(s):  
Paul S Davies ◽  
Graham Virgo

All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter discusses the concept of Equity and defines it as the body of law that has been made and developed by judges in the Chancery courts to modify the rigid application of the common law. It is grounded on rules, principles, and doctrines that are strictly interpreted, but their application and the remedies awarded can be tempered by the exercise of judicial discretion to ensure a just and fair result. It plays an important role in many contemporary aspects of the law, including commercial and corporate law. A distinction between property rights and personal rights lie at the heart of Equity, and there exists no substantive fusion between Common Law and Equity as bodies of rules — even if their administration has been conjoined into a single procedural system. The chapter also discusses a variety of equitable maxims that are useful generalizations of complex law.


2021 ◽  
pp. 136571272110022
Author(s):  
Jennifer Porter

The common law test of voluntariness has come to be associated with important policy rationales including the privilege against self-incrimination. However, when the test originated more than a century ago, it was a test concerned specifically with the truthfulness of confession evidence; which evidence was at that time adduced in the form of indirect oral testimony, that is, as hearsay. Given that, a century later, confession evidence is now mostly adduced in the form of an audiovisual recording that can be observed directly by the trial judge, rather than as indirect oral testimony, there may be capacity for a different emphasis regarding the question of admissibility. This article considers the law currently operating in Western Australia, Queensland and South Australia to see whether or not, in the form of an audiovisual recording, the exercise of judicial discretion as to the question of the admissibility of confession evidence might be supported if the common law test of voluntariness was not a strict test of exclusion.


Author(s):  
Daniel Visser

Unjustified enrichment confronted both civil and common lawyers with thinking which was often completely outside the paradigm to which they had become accustomed. The recognition of unjustified enrichment as a cause of action in its own right in English law created a new arena of uncertainty between the systems. This article argues that comparative lawyers can make an important contribution to the future of the fractured and fractious world of unjustified enrichment. It may help to uncover the enormous wealth of learning of which both the common law and the civil law are the repositories, and so bring the same level of understanding to the law of unjustified enrichment which has, over the years, been achieved between the systems in regard to contract and tort.


1999 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-248 ◽  
Author(s):  

AbstractWithin the common law world, the use of the term informed consent implies the American doctrine. Informed consent as a doctrine is not part of the law in the United Kingdom. However, it is possible to predict a way forward in disclosure cases yet to be heard in the courts of the United Kingdom. These predictions are based on current developments in the common law in the United Kingdom as well as those in Canada and Australia, on the European convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine and on trends within the medical profession itself in the light of the Bolam test.


Author(s):  
Paul Torremans

This chapter discusses the ways in which the common law, in the form of the law of tort, creates rights of action. It focuses on the torts of passing off and malicious falsehood, although attention is also paid to the ways in which defamation can assist. These rights are supplementary, and complementary, to the statutory formal rights. In particular, trade mark law and passing off closely overlap, although s. 2(2) of the Trade Marks Act 1994 preserves passing off as a separate cause of action.


2013 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-312
Author(s):  
Simon Gardner

AbstractThis article addresses and challenges recent comments to the effect that the common law rules about unmarried couples' property rights are uncertain, and (or but) that these rules yield an unfair result in a common scenario. It goes on to consider the Law Commission's proposed scheme aimed at reform of this area, raising the concern that this would violate Article 1 of the First Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Siyuan Chen ◽  
Eunice Chua

Abstract Sir James Fitzjames Stephen’s Indian Evidence Act of 1872 continues to govern the law of evidence in almost a dozen common law jurisdictions today. But the fundamental features of the IEA would undoubtedly be considered anomalous when viewed against modern notions of relevance and admissibility, foremost of which are the fact that the statute represents an attempt to codify relevance exhaustively in an inclusionary, rather than exclusionary way, and the judicial discretion to exclude relevant evidence finds no obvious expression in any of its provisions. The IEA has thus had a strained relationship with the common law, especially since judicial powers assume much greater importance in the latter realm. Recent legislative and jurisprudential developments in Singapore (a jurisdiction which has adopted the IEA) have attempted to minimise the applicability of the statute’s relevancy provisions and confer greater discretionary powers on the courts to exclude evidence. The result is that there are now at least five formulations of the court’s general power to exclude evidence, and this article considers if these formulations cohere inter se, and whether any of them can co-exist harmoniously with the IEA’s admissibility paradigm, given that its raison d’être has always been to simplify the admissibility process through exhaustive codification.


Author(s):  
Eva Steiner

This chapter examines the law of contract in France and discusses the milestone reform of French contract law. While this new legislation introduces a fresh equilibrium between the contracting parties and enhances accessibility and legal certainty in contract, it does not radically change the state of the law in this area. In addition, it does not strongly impact the traditional philosophical foundations of the law of contract. The reform, in short, looks more like a tidying up operation rather than a far-reaching transformation of the law. Therefore, the chapter argues that it is questionable whether the new law, which was also intended to increase France's attractiveness against the background of a world market dominated by the Common Law, will keep its promise.


Author(s):  
Molly Shaffer Van Houweling

This chapter studies intellectual property (IP). A hallmark of the New Private Law (NPL) is attentiveness to and appreciation of legal concepts and categories, including the traditional categories of the common law. These categories can sometimes usefully be deployed outside of the traditional common law, to characterize, conceptualize, and critique other bodies of law. For scholars interested in IP, for example, common law categories can be used to describe patent, copyright, trademark, and other fields of IP as more or less “property-like” or “tort-like.” Thischapter investigates both the property- and tort-like features of IP to understand the circumstances under which one set of features tends to dominate and why. It surveys several doctrines within the law of copyright that demonstrate how courts move along the property/tort continuum depending on the nature of the copyrighted work at issue—including, in particular, how well the work’s protected contours are defined. This conceptual navigation is familiar, echoing how common law courts have moved along the property/tort continuum to address disputes over distinctive types of tangible resources.


1993 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Braham Dabscheck

In October 1992 the federal coalition released Jobsback, a statement of its industrial relations policies. The article situates Jobsback in the context of the evolution of the coalition's industrial relations policies since the Fraser years, outlines its major features, and provides a critique. Jobsback erects a new regulatory schema under a banner of deregulation. Three key elements are contained in Jobsback. They are tribunal avoidance and the use of the common law, legislatively imposed employment rules to ‘aid’ the transition from an award to a non-award system, and enterprise confinement. The article draws attention to the coalition's views concerning industrial conflict, constitutional issues, transitional problems associated with establishing legislatively imposed workplace rules, minima in workplace agreements, the Office of the Employee Advocate, equality before the law and good faith bargaining.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document