Macroprudential policy focuses on the financial system as a whole, as distinct from individual institutions, and its objective is to limit the costs to the real economy from system-wide distress of the financial sector. This book offers a critical, contextual and comparative examination of the nature of macroprudential policy as an emerging legal domain. It explores why macroprudential policy is necessary and how best to design tailored legal, institutional and governance frameworks that support the various supervisory stages in macroprudential regimes. Questions addressed relate to the design of the macroprudential mandate and institutional structures, independence, transparency and accountability arrangements, the nature and limitations of macroprudential authorities' supervisory powers, as well as the challenges that are likely to be encountered during the generation, collection and analysis of data and the use of macroprudential tools. The book extends well beyond being a 'one-stop-shop' introduction on all aspects of macroprudential policy. It digs deeper and does the heavy lifting by analysing the unique features of macroprudential policy that set it apart from other policy areas; examining the pulling (and at times, contradicting) forces which affect it and surfacing its complex and evolutionary nature and the unique challenges confronting macroprudential authorities. In order to derive and capture the theoretical foundations of macroprudential policy and support the high-level suggestions made on how to operationalise it, the book draws on established scholarships from international law as well as theories developed in the Organisational Behaviour field. It presents and explains the law within the context of the most recent empirical research in economics, including research on the prevalent governance structure of macroprudential policy, its interaction with other policy areas and the effectiveness of macroprudential tools. The normative discussion in the book is also grounded in practical specificities through detailed critical analysis of macroprudential policy frameworks at the national level (UK and US), regional level (EU) and global level (FSB, IMF and BIS).

Commercial agency, distribution and franchising agreements form the backbone of cross-border commercial activity, and international lawyers are frequently confronted with issues relating to such agreements. This reference work describes the law of the European Union relating to commercial agency, distribution and franchising, together with a detailed comparative analysis of the legislation and case law of the 15 Member States, Switzerland and Norway. Each country report follows a similar structure and classification system to facilitate quick reference and comparison between jurisdictions. Since the second edition of this work was published in 1993, the Common Market has become a reality and the Treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam have had a significant impact on European law.

Contract plays a vitally important role in the delivery of public services today. Both central and local governments make extensive use of private firms to provide facilities, goods, and services. Government contracts vary considerably from the relatively straightforward competitive procurement of office supplies, to complex, long-term arrangements in which the contractor researches and develops a new piece of military equipment, or builds and provides a fully-serviced hospital over a thirty-year period.

English law's traditional approach to government contracts has been to regard them as ordinary private law arrangements. As a result, they have understandably been neglected by public lawyers in both teaching and research. This book argues that, on closer inspection, constitutional and administrative law (in the form of statute, common law, and government guidance) have been playing an increasingly important role in the regulation of certain key aspects of government contracting. The book analyzes these public law elements in detail and suggests ways in which they might appropriately be developed more fully, in tandem with the underlying private law regime. The book's aim is to raise the profile of government contracts as a proper subject for public law scholarship, whilst at the same time contributing to important contemporary debates on issues such as the public vs. private divide, the scope of the judicial review jurisdiction, and the reach of the Human Rights Act 1998.

Joint Winner of the 2001 SPTL Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship! In recent years there has been enormous interest in the law of restitution,with many new books and academic articles and a number of important decisions in the courts. However, there remains great controversy and some confusion, partly for historical reasons and partly as a result of continuing differences over the principles underlying the field. There are particular difficulties over the relation of the law of restitution to other areas of law, including contract and property law. In this new and innovative work the author advances a view of the framework of fundamental principles underlying the law of restitution which offers a means of understanding the tangle of conflicting authorities, and then proceeds to examine the case law in light of it. As part of his analysis, the author suggests new approaches to understanding the areas of overlap between restitution, contract, trusts and property law.

The development of private law across the common law world is typically portrayed as a series of incremental steps, each one delivered as a result of judges dealing with marginally different factual circumstances presented to them for determination. This is said to be the common law method. According to this process, change might be assumed to be gradual, almost imperceptible. If this were true, however, then even Darwinian-style evolution - which is subject to major change-inducing pressures, such as the death of the dinosaurs - would seem unlikely in the law, and radical and revolutionary paradigms shifts perhaps impossible. And yet the history of the common law is to the contrary. The legal landscape is littered with quite remarkable revolutionary and evolutionary changes in the shape of the common law. The essays in this volume explore some of the highlights in this fascinating revolutionary and evolutionary development of private law. The contributors expose the nature of the changes undergone and their significance for the future direction of travel. They identify the circumstances and the contexts which might have provided an impetus for these significant changes. The essays range across all areas of private law, including contract, tort, unjust enrichment and property. No area has been immune from development. That fact itself is unsurprising, but an extended examination of the particular circumstances and contexts which delivered some of private law's most important developments has its own special significance for what it might indicate about the shape, and the shaping, of private law regimes in the future.

Over the last few years increasing attention continues to be paid to the Principles of European Contract Law (otherwise known as the Principles, the Lando Principles or PECL). The drafters of the Principles presented their work in the form of articles accompanied by explanatory notes, averring that the main purpose of the instrument is to serve as a basis for a future European contract law. Can the Lando Principles, as their drafters claim, indeed offer an acceptable basis for a future European contract law? Dr. Busch, both scholar and practitioner, offers a detailed analysis, in response to this question, of the contractual aspects of indirect representation (Arts. 3:301-304 PECL). He evaluates these provisions in the light of Dutch, German, and English law, as well as with reference to the Geneva Convention on Agency in the International Sale of Goods. To introduce this important comparative study and make the background as complete as possible, this book devotes separate chapters to thorough discussions of indirect representation in Dutch law (middellijke vertegenwoordiging Arts. 7:419-421 Dutch Civil Code), in German law (mittelbare Stellvertretung) and in the English doctrine of the undisclosed principal. Lawyers in Europe and elsewhere who must deal with contract law in any connection, will find this thoroughly researched and well-thought-out text to be indispensable. Its value as a scholarly analysis can only grow with the coming years. D. Busch (b. 1974) graduated (cum laude) in Dutch law from the University of Utrecht in 1997. He attained the title of Magister Juris in European and Comparative Law at the University of Oxford (St. John's College) in 1998, and defended his dissertation in 2002 at the University of Utrecht. Until the end of 2001 he was attached as lecturer and researcher to the Molengraaff Institute of Private Law in Utrecht. Since 2002 he has worked as an attorney-at-law for the law office of De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek in Amsterdam. He has also been an honorary senior lecturer at the Molengraaff Institute since 2004.

This book contains the papers written for the seventh volume in the Oxford-Norton Rose Law Colloquium Series, which was held in St Hugh's College, Oxford, on 22nd-23rd September, 2006. As with past colloquia, this brought together practitioners (solicitors, barristers and Judges) and academics to examine and discuss an area of commercial law. The belief underpinning all the colloquia has been that the sharing of views on central topics of commercial law can only work to the mutual advantage of both academics and practitioners. The topic chosen this year was Contract Terms which is a topic of everyday importance to all commercial lawyers. It is also an area in which academics have become increasingly interested in recent years.
The book begins with an introduction by the editors which draws out the central features of the discussions at the colloquium. It is followed by an introductory practitioners' perspective written by Richard Calnan of Norton Rose.
The colloquium papers have then been divided into three main sections. The first on 'Construction and Interpretation' comprises the papers written by Gerard McMeel, Edwin Peel, Andrew Burrows, Robert Stevens and Stefan Vogenauer. The second on 'Legislative Control of Unfair Terms' has papers by Elizabeth MacDonald, Susan Bright and Hugh Beale. The third on 'Issues Related to Particular Types of Term' looks at entire agreement clauses, termination clauses, force majeure clauses, retention of title clauses and choice of law clauses. This third section contains chapters written by John Cartwright, Ewan McKendrick, Simon Whittaker, Louise Gullifer and Adrian Briggs.
The papers have all been written by eminent academics andtogether they provide a stimulating and up-to-date examination of Contract Terms. The book will be essential reading for all practitioners involved in drafting contracts or in commercial litigation, commercial barristers, and academics interested in contract and commercial law. The foreword has been written by the senior Law Lord, Lord Bingham of Cornhill.

The past ten years have witnessed a renewed interest in the apprenticeship system of industrial training. Employers have been shown to carry a large part of the cost of essentially general training with apparent little return to the firm - a problem which has generated a wide range of literature that explores new theoretical models, comparative systems, and recent developments in systems of youth training and the economic theory of contracts. Using contract theory as the common underlying framework, this book brings together recent contributions to this literature, providing a complete and coherent economic analysis of the apprenticeship system. The authors begin with a comparative-historical perspective, and then go on to review a number of recent models of the training decision of firms, before offering a unique insight into the current debate on the future of the apprenticeship system. Well-written and well-researched, this book succeeds in achieving a perfect blend of theory, evidence, and history. It will appeal to scholars in the fields of labour economics and human resource management, as well as those in private and public sectors working on policy development and planning of vocational education and training.

Enrichment is key to understanding the law of unjust enrichment and restitution. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the concept of enrichment and its implications for restitutionary awards. Dr Lodder argues that enrichment may be characterised either factually or legally, and explores the consequences of that distinction. In factual enrichment cases, the measure of enrichment is the objective value received. This is the basis of many awards of money had and received, quantum meruit, quantum valebat and money paid. In legal enrichment cases, the benefit is the acquisition of a specific right or the release of a specific obligation. The remedy is restitution of that right or reinstatement of that obligation. It is demonstrated that specific restitution of the defendant's legal enrichment is often the basis for resulting trusts, rescission, rectification and subrogation. This book has profound implications for understanding restitutionary awards and the relationship between the enrichment inquiry and other aspects of the law of unjust enrichment, including the 'at the expense of' inquiry and the defence of change of position.

The essays in this volume are dedicated to Gareth Jones, the retiring Downing Professor of English Law at the University of Cambridge. His contribution to legal scholarship has been immense, particularly in the fields of legal history, the law of trusts, charities law and, most famously, the law of restitution. The publication of the first edition of the Law of Restitution, which he co-authored with Lord Goff, stimulated a renaissance in the study of a subject which had previously lain dormant. The effect of its publication on English legal scholarship has been profound and enduring. In these essays, written by a group of the world's leading restitution scholars, the opportunity is taken to conduct a fresh appraisal of the development of the subject - to look, in other words, at the past, present, and future of the law of restitution. Contributors: John Baker, Peter Birks, Justice Finn, Roy Goode, Ewan McKendrick, Justice McLachlin, Sir Peter Millett, Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead, Richard Nolan, Janet O'Sullivan, Graham Virgo (as well as shorter contributions from invited commentators).

It has many times been said that contracts involve assumptions of obligation or liability, but what that means, and what it is that is assumed, have not often been discussed. It is to further such discussion that some of the author's previously published writings around this subject have been brought together in this book. His basic premises are that contractual obligation and liability in this context are two sides to the same coin and that an assumption of one is an assumption of both. Parties are bound not because liability has been imposed upon them by law as a result of their having entered into a contract but because, in the act of assuming, they have imposed it upon themselves. Contract provides a facility the purpose of which is to enable this to be done within the limits prescribed by law. The implication of these premises are much more significant than might be supposed when applied to such areas of contract as formation, consideration, intention to contract, exception clauses, privity and damages. The book concludes with a treatment of the role of assumption in tort. Because of the importance of its subject matter and its wide-ranging treatment, this book should appeal not only to teachers and postgraduate students of contract but also to practitioners in the field and to anyone else with an interest in contract theory.

This book examines uniform contract law in all relevant areas of legal doctrine and practice, and considers the barriers which exist toward it in modern nation states, namely in the German and English legal systems. The author suggests ways to overcome these obstacles, and develops an autonomous methodology of interpretation of transnational contract principles. The book analyses existing uniform transnational law rules, such as the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts.

The comprehensive guide to all the essential legal and business considerations to be taken into account in structuring and negotiating technology-driven corporate alliances. Readers are provided with a clear and concise introduction to the nature and scope of the legal rights relating to new technologies and a framework for evaluating prospective business partners and for identifying the key contracting issues. An indispensable resource for consummating licensing, research and development, manufacturing and distribution, and corporate partnering arrangements, as well as managing relationships with university researchers and raising capital for research activities.

Entrepreneurs, executives, technology managers, lawyers, accountants and researchers will benefit from the step-by-step approach to each technology-driven transaction, beginning with the description of the law of technology and intellectual property; continuing with the initial investigation of the technology which is to be the subject of the transaction and the general contractual components of any transaction; and ending with the essential elements of each relationship, including permitted uses of the technology, compensation, representations and warranties, covenants, closing conditions, indemnification, and the procedures for ensuring that the technology remain a valuable asset for each party. The book covers each of the stages involved in developing, manufacturing, licensing, distributing, and financing technology-based products and will serve as an invaluable and constant resource in making sure that all of the important issues have been considered before the deal is sealed.

When infringement or wrongdoing is alleged against a corporation, where are we to look for the imputed reprehensible conduct or knowledge on which the case must depend? This is a question that is asked and asked again as each expansion and intensification of corporate activity gives rise to ever more complex issues of accountability and responsibility. This theoretical study builds on classic and recent work in the field to provide a systematic and coherent analysis of corporate liability in its current context. Focusing on rules of attribution developed in a notable series of English cases, the author explains in detail the various ways in which these rules may be applied in civil, criminal, and regulatory proceedings against corporate defendants. The book exposes the circumstances in which corporations, as legal persons, may incur personal liability for the acts or omissions of their servants or agents that were carried out in the course of their employment, defining the means through which corporate liability must be determined. It focuses on the personal liability of corporations, incorporating common law principles of vicarious liability and agency as well as exceptions arising from the Companies Act 1985 and other legislation. The study covers such important areas as the following: the "problem of many hands," in which individual servants or agents may be aware of only a portion of a corporate transaction or undertaking; the traditional "directing mind" theory as one of the means of identifying the relevant individuals whose conduct or state of knowledge may result in corporate liability; the development of "principles of attribution" as a framework for approaching different situations where liability may be established against corporations; a new concept of "aggregation" which allows, under particular circumstances, the collective knowledge of various individuals to be attributed to the corporation; the relevance of "Chinese Walls" in limiting the extent to which principles of attribution apply; and a comprehensive survey of the different circumstances in which corporations, including holding corporations in corporate groups, and their servants and agents may incur liability. This title is more than a mere legal device for practical purposes. It is rigorously based on the theoretical foundations of corporations, particularly the all-important interplay between the individualistic and collective aspects of the corporate persona.

Because of its enormous economic power and susceptibility to corruption, public procurement - the purchase by government of goods and services - has come under increasing regulation as world trade expands. Three international leaders in public procurement law fully explain how the procurement award process must be managed to achieve its goals in global market economy. This work should educate government officials, trade lawyers, and students in how to comply with existing and emerging regulatory schemes as they: select a contractor and plan the contract, with detailed attention to terms, conditions and specifications; allow for national security, national industrial development, and environmental protection; get value for money and avoid waste of public funds; publicize contracts; combat corruption; secure successful completion of contracts; balance pressures to buy from domestic sources with the economic benefits of international competition; harness procurement power to promote social and environmental goals; enforce compliance with public procurement rules; and recognize circumstances under which discretion-based (rather than rules-based) initiatives may be more effective.

General clauses or standards (Generalklauseln, clauses generales) are legal rules which are not precisely formulated, terms and concepts which in fact do not even have a clear core. They are often applied in varying degrees in various legal systems to a rather wide range of contract cases when certain issues arise - issues such as abuse of rights, unfairness, good faith, fairness of duty or loyalty or honesty, duty of care, and other such contract terms not lending themselves readily to clear or permanent definition. Here, for the first time, is a systematic discussion of this kind of rule in the evolving and dynamic context of European contract law. A collection of twelve insightful essays by leading European law authorities, the book is based on a conference organized jointly by the Society of European Contract Law (SECOLA) and l'Association Henri Capitant, held in the 'grande salle' of the French Supreme Court in Paris in 2005. The subject is approached along three distinct but interconnected avenues: comparative contract law, in which the different models to be found among Member States - particularly the Germanic, French, and English common law systems - are explored with an eye to differences and common ground; EC contract law, in which the general clause approach has tended to focus on labour law and consumer law, and in which the European Court of Justice more and more assumes the final say; and, the European codification dimension, in which a potential instrument on the European level would compete with national laws and develop closely with them. The authors demonstrate that a focus on general clauses in contract law, embracing as it does a wide range of types of contracts, helps enormously with the necessary integration of legal scholarship and economic approaches, and of legal science and legal practice in the field. Numerous analytic references to relevant cases and EC Directives give a practical impetus to the far-reaching but immediately applicable theory presented in this important book. As European contract law continues to develop rapidly, this seminal contribution is sure to increase in value and usefulness.

The EU is committed to making the Single Market fit for the digital age, by enhancing the protection of consumers and data subjects, while providing businesses with the legal certainty they need to invest in this field and support growth and innovation. In this context, European Contract Law and the Digital Single Market, an edited collection consisting of carefully selected contributions by leading scholars, addresses the impact of digital technology on European Private Law in light of the latest legislative developments including the EU Regulation of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on free movement of such data, as well as the European Commission's proposals of 9 December 2015 for a Directive on the supply of digital content, for a Directive on online and other distance sale of goods and for a Regulation on the cross-border portability of online content services in the internal market. The book analyses new and urgent issues in the field of contract, data protection, copyright and private international law: namely the EU approach to personal information as a tradeable commodity and as the object of a fundamental right of the individuals concerned, the protection of consumers' and users' rights in contracts for the supply of digital content and on online and other distance sales of goods, the cross-border portability of online content services, the new features of standard contracts in the digital market and the issues surrounding the emergence of the so called platform economy.Written for both scholars and practitioners, this edited collection provides clear answers to the challenges posed by the digital revolution and acts as a solid basis for further developments of EU law.

The ongoing debate on the harmonisation of European contract law has metamorphosed into an important recognition: that none of the existing national systems of contract law, even the most 'modern,' have been able to keep pace with the extensive and radical changes in the world which contract law must reflect. The nineteen outstanding contributors to this deeply insightful book concur in envisioning a fundamentally new systematic concept of contract law that, while preserving the essential 'architecture' of the existing European codes, would nonetheless find cogent ways to integrate such modern developments as mass transactions, chains and networks of contracts, regulation of markets and contracts to protect consumers, and service and long-term contracts into an optional European code. The book is organised along three major avenues: the systematic arrangement of a contract law code - how it deals with core questions of formation and performance or breach of contract, such as mistake and misrepresentation, standard contract terms, and remedies in the case of breach of contract; the apparent necessity to merge consumer contract law (i.e., such issues as product safety and liability, warranties, and consumer debt and insolvency) with traditional core contract law concepts; and, the importance to substantive contract law of the pre-contractual phase, in which information duties are becoming steadily more paramount. The authors' perspectives cover a wide range of jurisdictions, including new EU Member States. The book's overall commitment to an integration of comparative law, EC law, and the debate on European codification gives it both an authority and an immediacy that offer interested practitioners and academics fertile ground for the development of a new model of contract law that is more than a common denominator of what has been in force so far, a model which might serve as a basis for Europe-wide and perhaps even worldwide discussion.

The French projet d'ordonnance, which reformed contract law, the general regime of obligations and the proof of obligations appeared in February 2015. One year later, in February 2016, the final version of the ordonnance was published. The ordonnance thoroughly reforms French contract law and the law of obligations and will enter into force in October 2016.This book results from the Contract Law Workshop of the 20th Ius Commune Conference held 26-27 November 2015. The theme of this Workshop was: 'The French Contract Law Reform: a Source of Inspiration?' Since the conference in November 2015, all authors have incorporated comments on the final version of the ordonnance. Whereas Van Loock briefly sketches the antecedents and the outcome of the reform, the other authors each tackle specific topics of the reform that surprised and/or excited the legal community. Pannebakker tackles the precontractual phase and assesses the attractiveness of the reform for international commercial transactions. Peeraer gives a critical overview of the doctrine of nullity in the ordonnance. Leone explores the potential impact of the 'significant imbalance' test in the new ordonnance on employment contracts. In their contributions, Lutzi and Oosterhuis discuss the much-debated provision that introduces the theory of imprvision. The contributions by Jansen and Verkempinck are both focused on remedies: the newly introduced price reduction remedy and damages. Storme criticises the new rules on set-off in the ordonnance, and Mah addresses the question why the final version of the ordonnance omitted the issue of interpersonal effects of fundamental rights on contractual freedom.

This book analyses share purchase agreements governed by Belgian law used for company acquisitions, whereby a purchaser acquires control over a Belgian target company through the acquisition of a controlling shareholding. The object of such sale and purchase agreements is not a static, inanimate object, but consists of a shareholding in a company whose business and balance sheet evolve while the parties negotiate its acquisition.Such share purchase agreements and the negotiations leading up to them create a particular triangular interaction and relationship between the seller, the purchaser and the target company. These aspects make share purchase agreements different from, and often more complex than, sale and purchase agreements relating to other objects.The analysis set out in this book is written from a practitioner's perspective and focuses on the application of classic civil and corporate law concepts in the particular context of share purchase agreements. The theoretical background of all legal concepts is discussed and analysed, with due consideration for the practical relevance of the analysis.The reader is guided through the successive stages of a share purchase agreement. Each chapter includes a section containing sample clauses and concludes with an overview of relevant legislation, case law, legal doctrine and other sources of law.The book concludes with an index of the concepts used and a separate lexicon of the corresponding Belgian law terms in Dutch and French.

Technological and economical developments require contracting parties to be informed and advised: informed about the characteristics of the services or the goods they order; well advised about their choices and options; informed about the remedies that may be used against them; and well protected from the consequences of a lack of information or notification.This book analyses several aspects of these information and notification duties. It is the result of fruitful collaboration as part of the Ius Commune Research Schools Contract Law and Law of Obligations research programme. Information and notification duties were the theme of a contract law workshop during the 19th Ius Commune Conference in Edinburgh in November 2014. This book contains the proceedings of that workshop, with contributions by Sanne Jansen (Leuven), Johanna Waelkens (Leuven), Johan Vannerom (Leuven), Carien de Jager (Groningen), Joasia Luzak (Amsterdam), Gerard de Vries (Amsterdam), and Mark Kawakami and Catalina Goanta (Maastricht), with an introduction by Ilse Samoy (Leuven) and Marco B.M. Loos (Amsterdam).

This book analyses the theory of efficient breach in English sales law, European Union contract law and Chinese contract law. It analyses the framework of the efficient breach theory and reconsiders the implications of this theory. According to the traditional efficient breach theory, the remedy of expectation damages is able to motivate efficient breach, which brings the breaching party economic surplus without making the non-breaching party worse off. The essential problems are how to motivate contract parties to make rational decisions and how to solve cases where performance of a contract turns out to be less efficient after its conclusion. The second part of the book further extends the efficient breach theory to the study of contract law systems by analysing how exactly those laws react to breach and what solutions are adopted by them.The comparison of these three systems is more than a mere description of the differences and similarities in the content. More importantly, this comparative research also analyses whether or not the differences between these systems will influence the level of efficiency produced by each legal system by taking account of the different traditions and the concepts of contracts involved in each legal system. Researchers in contract law will also be interested in this approach, particularly for re-thinking the question of whether one legal system is definitely better or worse than the other two.

This book charts the significant increase in Britain over the last 25 years in the deployment of contract as a regulatory mechanism across a broad spectrum of social relationships. Since Labour came to power in 1997 the trend has accelerated, the use of contract spreading beyond the sphere of economics into public administration and social policy. The 'new public contracting' is the term given this distinctive mode of governance, characterized by the delegation of contractual powers and responsibilities to public agencies in regulatory frameworks preserving central government controls and powers of intervention. In many cases the contracts are not legally enforceable, their power as regulatory instruments deriving from the hierarchical authority relations in which they are embedded. Examples of the new public contracting include the regulation of relationships between government departments through Public Service Agreements and Framework Documents; the regulation of relationships between individual citizens and the state through Youth Offender Contracts, Parenting Contracts, and Jobseekers Agreements; the funding of public infrastructure projects through Public Private Partnerships; and the restructuring of key public service sectors such as health, social care and education through contracts in competitive quasi-markets, reflecting the Government's privatization agenda. The book critically analyzes and evaluates such contractual arrangements with reference to theories of relational contract and responsive regulation. It argues that while in business and other private relations contract routinely enables the parties to regulate and adjust their on-going relationships to mutual benefit, this is often not the case in the new public contracting. In many instances crucial elements of trust, voluntariness, and reciprocity are shown to be lacking. This and other weaknesses in regulatory design are likely to impede the attainment of the Government's policy objectives. The book demonstrates the problems of ineffectiveness and lack of legitimacy generally associated with this mode of regulation, and specifies institutional and other conditions that need to be satisfied for the more responsive governance of these public service functions.

The Law Commission (of England and Wales) and the Scottish Law Commission were both established in 1965 to promote the reform of the laws of their respective jurisdictions. Since then, they have each produced hundreds of reports across many areas of law. They are independent of government yet rely on governmental funding and governmental approval of their proposed projects. They also rely on both government and Parliament (and, occasionally, the courts or other bodies) to implement their proposals. This book examines the tension between independence and implementation and recommends how a balance can best be struck. It proposes how the Commissions should choose their projects given that their duties outweigh their resources, and how we should assess the success, or otherwise, of their output. Countries around the world have created law reform bodies in the Commissions' image. They may wish to reflect on the GB Commissions' responses to the changes and challenges they have faced to reappraise their own law reform machinery. Equally, the GB Commissions may seek inspiration from other commissions' experiences. The world the GB Commissions inhabit now is very different from when they were established. They have evolved to remain relevant in the face of devolution, the UK's changing relationship with the European Union, increasing pressure for accountability and decreasing funding. Further changes to secure the future of independent law reform are advanced in this book.