The increase in global activities of multinational corporations (‘MNCs’), especially the involvement of extractive MNCs in emerging markets, has been a source of human rights concern in recent years. This is because of the impact of corporate activities on the human rights of the local communities where they operate. The rising corporate impunity for human rights violations has been attributed to the lack of access to judicial remedies for human rights victims and the inadequacy of existing regulations available to rein in global MNCs. This has led to suggestions, especially by human rights scholars, to explore the human rights obligations of corporations under international human rights law as a means for promoting corporate accountability for human rights, with a focus on emerging markets. This paper challenges this view and argues that reliance on international human rights law as a regime for promoting corporate accountability in emerging markets is misplaced, because enforcement of international human rights law depends on municipal institutions, and the institutions available in emerging markets are weak, corrupt, and inefficient. The rampant violation of human rights has begun to generate conflicts which threaten local, national, and global security, such as the situation in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. This paper argues that the growing distrust between MNCs and local communities, which is mostly responsible for the insecurity in the region, could be addressed through a legal regime that focuses on promoting moral behaviour from inside the corporations. Therefore, this paper proposes a review of the corporate legal architecture to incorporate the interests of those affected by corporate activities, especially the local communities, into the corporate governance structure as a strategy for promoting responsible and human rights friendly decision-making and for them to hold MNCs to human rights standards rather than relying on international human rights law itself.

The Human Tissue Authority has very recently posted seven new Codes of Practice to update its guidance on human tissue legislation. Code G - Donation of Allogeneic Bone Marrow and Peripheral Blood Stem Cells for Transplantation - aims to improve the regulation of offences, referrals, and the interview process for children donating bone marrow. Code G comes under criticism in this article for not properly taking into account the welfare of very young saviour siblings. It introduces minor changes to consent procedures but disappointingly, parents of saviour siblings can still enjoy significant discretion to consent to a potentially harmful trespass upon their child without a welfare test or court approval. This article suggests that a stronger emphasis should be placed upon the objective provisions of the welfare test under section 1(3) of the Children Act 1989 and its adjoining common law before a decision to harvest a very young child for bone marrow is made. This would better protect the “saviour sibling” from unnecessary physical and psychiatric harm.

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Act 2012 has been highly controversial since its new schemes and amendments have come to light. The governmental justifications for the legal aid reductions explain the need for reforms in the UK. An overview of the post-funding changes and criteria of entitlements to legal aid highlights the issues of the right of access to court, gender inequality and the challenges facing the legal profession, from a justice perspective. Currently, the courts have found that the cuts were not always lawful. Certain landmark cases illustrated the incompatibility of the cuts with the European Convention on Human Rights and the Equality Act 2010 in respect of the principles of equality of arms and discrimination. These violations place the most vulnerable people at a disadvantage and at a risk of further poverty; yet a vast majority has been left in the invisible light spectrum, widening social divergence and conflicting with the government’s objectives of targeting legal aid to those in desperate need.

Some Anglophone legal theorists look to analytic philosophy for core presuppositions. For example, the epistemological theories of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Willard Quine shape the theories of Dennis Patterson and Brian Leiter, respectively. These epistemologies are anti-foundational since they reject the kind of certain grounding that is exemplified in Cartesian philosophy. And, they are coherentist in that they seek to legitimate truth-claims by reference to entire linguistic systems. While these theories are insightful, the current context of information and communication technologies (ICT) has created new informational concepts and issues. As a result, the analytic epistemologies are increasingly challenged by alternative perspectives. One such alternative is Structural Realism (SR), which is influential among the natural sciences, and especially physics. “Informational Structural Realism,” (ISR) is a variant of SR that was introduced by Luciano Floridi. Unlike the coherentist theories, ISR promotes examination of the connections among types of information and informational structures. It is an important shift for legal theory today, since the challenges that the ICT presents have to do with pattern recognition across vast domains of diverse data. An informational jurisprudence is now required to understand the issues emerging from the ICT.

Following Vinter v United Kingdom [2014], whole life orders without a sufficiently clear review mechanism at the outset of sentencing were incompatible with Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights. The Hutchinson v United Kingdom [2017] judgment raised academic trepidation that this requirement had been removed. This article focuses on how Hutchinson relates to the specific requirements for whole life orders, in Vinter, and whether legal consistency is present between the two judgments. It will do so by highlighting how the substantive issue of whether a review mechanism exists is distinct from the procedural issue of whether this review mechanism is clear and certain. In the latter, a margin of appreciation is necessary to find the appropriate balance between the procedural autonomy of Member States, and the secondary role of the european Court of Human Rights as a supervisor to the domestic authorities and courts. This article will also address the factual question of whether the Grand Chamber in Hutchinson had omitted the issue of whether the applicant was aware at the outset of his sentencing of a review mechanism, even if this still falls short of causing a counter-revolution of legal principles.

In a recent appeal against Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust, the Court of Appeal was wrong to find that Dr Rushd had breached the standard of care in taking a patient’s history in *FB v Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust* [2017] EWCA Civ 334. An analysis of the court’s judgment shows that it failed to assess the standard of care required when taking a patient’s history against the measure of reasonableness. Applying this measure demonstrates that Dr Rushd did provide a reasonable standard of care. Although the court was correct to uphold *Wilsher v Essex AHA* [1987] 1 QB 730, on the basis that junior doctors should not be held to a lower standard of care, this does not justify the Court of Appeal setting the standard of care higher than that expected of a reasonably competent practitioner. Upholding this approach places an onerous burden on GPs.

S.I. Strong, Katia Fach Gómez, and Laura Carballo Piñeiro. Comparative Law for Spanish–English Speaking Lawyers: Legal Cultures, Legal Terms and Legal Practices. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016. ISBN: 978-1-84980-786-9. 720pp.

The History of Law in Europe is an ambitious work, and therefore the small size of the volume might surprise a reader. After all, it covers civil law from the Roman Empire, to the Early, Middle, and Late Middle Ages, to he early Modern Age, with a final chapter on the Common Law. But these authors have done an excellent job of meeting the challenge of covering such a wide span of time and topics in an introductory title. Targeted to law students and this interested in ‘essential aspects of European history’, the authors leave out footnotes (but include a healthy bibliography), focus on the sources of law, a bit of jurisprudence, and provide concise and summarizing descriptions of character, topics, and institutions. The skill with which the authors accomplish this tricky act is a testament to their grasp of the topics. The authors, Bart Wauters and Marco de Benito, are professors of law at IE University in Spain. Wauters is also the author of De Controverse Rond De Jurisdictie Van De Nuntius : Het Placet Op De Geloofsbrieven Van Spinelli, Valenti-gonzaga, Tempi En Crivelli, 1725-1749 (Universitaire Pers Leuven, 2001); de Benito published Convenio Arbitral (Civitas Editions, S.L.) in 2010. Both have published in a number of journals as well. The goal of this book is to provide ‘a short introduction, not an encyclopedic overview of the legal traditions of every single European country’ (2). To do so, they focus on civil law and common law families, giving little or no analysis of other legal customs unless they had an impact on the former. The authors also intend the book ‘to help lawyers and legal professionals, of today and tomorrow, to develop the ability to critically assess their own professional endeavors’ (3). That is, to place their own work in the context of its development, the effects of current and past social and political trends, and how it interacts with culture and intellectual endeavors. The authors focus their account on four sources of law: legal science, legislation, courts, and customary law. The approach is comparative, which serves well the subject at hand. The developments of law in the larger civil and common law worlds, and within each country, is placed in its cultural and political contexts.