This volume arises out of a seminar on the future of legal education, organized by the Society of Public Teachers of Law and held at All Souls College, Oxford, in May 1994. The debate surrounding legal education, to which this volume makes a contribution, rages today in the UK as a review gets under way under the auspices of the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Legal Education and Conduct. It is the purpose of this volume to enrich and influence the debate by following the expression of a variety of viewpoints all of which have in common a desire to see legal education which is at once demanding, properly located within the learned tradition of humane scholarship and at the same time fitted to the needs of the modern legal profession.

The 'Frontiers of Liability' is the title of a series of high-level seminars held in All Souls College, Oxford during 1993 and 1994. Drawing together top academics, practitioners and judges, these seminars have sought to identify current trends in English law and have provided a forum for experts to give their assessment of how the law will develop in the future. The papers produced for the first 4 seminars and the comments made by the distinguished rapporteurs are reproduced in this volume. Anyone interested in the future of the law of restitution, the common law, judicial review, and the law relating to children will find these essays essential reading. Contributors: Charles Harpum, Sir Leonard Hoffman, Peter Birks, William Swadling, Sir Peter Millett, John Birds, W. R. Cornish, Sir Patrick Neill, Martin Loughlin, D. J. Galligan, Peter Cane, Andrew Bainham, Sheriff David Kelbie, J. M. Thomson, Stephen Cretney

This collection of essays commissioned by the SPTL (Society of Public Teachers of Law) brings together the views of leading experts in legal education in a debate about the aims and achievements of legal education on the 20th century, and the challenges which legal education faces on the verge of the 21st century. The themes of this collection are important ones for the future of legal education and the legal professions and they are not by any means confined to the interests of English lawyers. The challenges faced by English law are found in many other countries around the world including Australia, the USA, and parts of the European Union. These essays will therefore be of interest to a world-wide audience of legal educators. The questions raised by some of the contributors are also of wider significance in the debate about the role of universities. Law, like medicine, is frequently regarded as a subject worthy of university education merely because graduates are needed to provide the profession with its new recruits. But English law schools have always maintained a distinctively scholarly mission reflecting a wider liberal commitment to education. As the 20th century draws to a close universities face unprecedented pressures and in the teaching of law the battle lines are now drawn between those who favour, on the one hand, a rigorous intellectual approach to the teaching of law and those, on the other hand, who would see law schools reduced to being feeder institutions for the legal profession. It is the importance of the essays in this volume that they eschew either a simple analysis of the problems facing legal education or the solutions, many of them equally simplistic, which abound in the current climate of discussion. By tackling the issues in a historical, comparative and empirical fashion these essays contribute greatly to a better understanding of the ideals which deserve to be praised in any system of legal education.

This is the first volume of essays arising from an exceptional series of seminars on criminal justice and human rights held earlier this year. The contributors, among them distinguished members of the judiciary and esteemed academics, have produced a set of vigorous and topical essays which will be essential reading for anyone concerned about criminal law, the future direction of the British criminal justice system, and the currently evolving changes in the position of the law on the critical areas of freedom of speech and expression as it moves to meet the challenges of swiftly shifting social, political and technological priorities and boundaries.