Opinion

In the words of Marvin Gaye “It takes two” to love, to tango and, as we saw in the recent Isner and Mahut tennis match, to doggedly battle against each other for 11 hours. That performance on court was described as “epic”.

I had fish and chips with Sir Rupert a fortnight ago. He is as resolute as ever. His views are unchanged.

Cambridge looked characteristically beautiful during the Legal Services Research Centre’s 8th annual conference. Given the global nature of the recession, attendance held up pretty well—bolstered by a somewhat disproportionately large delegation from Australian legal centres.

First, the now familiar statistics: it lasted 12 years, sat for some 434 days, at a total cost of £191m and finally published this month, 38 years after 13 people were shot dead by the British Army on 30 January 1972. So was Lord Saville’s inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday really worth it?

Let us begin with the good news. This is the first of three articles on the coalition government’s policy relating to the law and the constitution. We start with civil liberties. There has been a lot of talk about whether the budget will be a “game changer”: the coalition’s programme for action on civil liberties certainly is. David Blunkett and John Reid, the most macho of Labour home secretaries, should be turning in their political graves. The coalition’s policy on civil liberties says as much about their failure as it does about the coalition’s own success.

Ken Clarke, the newly appointed lord chancellor, faced a dilemma within days of taking up his new job.

The most recent legal flare-up between British Airways and Unite (representing BA cabin crew) has dominated the headlines and for once it was not just labour lawyers debating whether there was a right to strike in the UK.

Lord Lester is a shrewd and experienced campaigner with an eye for where progress can be made. Publication of his draft Defamation Bill was characteristically timely. Heat is building up on this issue.

Has a reduced appetite for risk among investors following the recession, combined with proposals for restrictions on the activities of litigation funders supported by Lord Justice Jackson, sounded the death knell for third party funding of large scale commercial litigation in the UK?

While defamation law could be simplified and made more accessible for both claimants and defendants, I am suspicious why, as an area of law that gave rise to only 219 cases in the High Court last year, it has been subjected to quite so many reviews and amendments over the last two years.