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This research has made a sustained and continuing impact on the development and application of the substantive criminal law, including mens rea and general defences, and especially in the areas of complicity and homicide, in terms of
i) development of the law by the appellate courts;
ii) application of the law by practitioners; and
iii) government policy as to the reform of the law of murder and complicity.
In 2010 the Ministry of Justice formally accepted recommendations by the Law Commission to introduce a new non-statutory rule of disclosure for trustee exemption clauses in England and Wales. Newcastle research had a direct impact upon the development of the law on trustee exemption clauses. In 2002 Dunn successfully tendered to undertake research on trustee exemption clauses in England and Wales on behalf of the Law Commission. Dunn's research was published by the Law Commission as a separate and distinct chapter of its consultation paper on trustee exemption clauses. The research (alongside consultation responses) influenced the Law Commission's recommendation that a non-statutory rule of disclosure be introduced into the law of England and Wales. This recommendation was accepted by the Government in 2010 and has been implemented by the trust industry.
Professor Fraser Davidson's research underpinned impact on public policy and law-making in Scotland by enriching and informing the development by the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament of a new legal framework for commercial dispute resolution under the Arbitration (Scotland) Act 2010 ("the 2010 Act"). This Act has the objective of entirely reforming the Scots law of arbitration and establishing Scotland as a major forum for international commercial arbitration, with resultant economic benefits.
Research conducted by Durham University on the reconciliation of free speech with rights of privacy and reputation has significantly affected contemporary law and policy around the law of privacy, media injunctions and libel reform. Specifically, it has:
(1) resulted in a substantial contribution to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) Libel Working Group and hence to the Defamation Bill 2012 which followed (now the Defamation Act 2013);
(2) strongly influenced the report of Parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights on the human rights aspects of that Bill;
(3) influenced a major parliamentary inquiry on privacy;
(4) helped change Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) guidelines on prosecuting the media for privacy-related offences including phone-hacking;
(5) been used in argument by an NGO intervening in two important cases before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
A research programme led by Boyle in Edinburgh (with Birnie (LSE) and Redgwell (UCL)) pioneered the discipline of international environmental law. That work, in turn, informed the infrastructure for international environmental law in practice. Through Boyle's work as legal counsel in several high-profile international cases (2010-11), his proposed subject-paradigm has been translated from theory to legal framework. Crucially, it has been endorsed and applied by both the International Law Commission and relevant international courts, including the International Court of Justice.
Much has been written about mental condition defences such as insanity and diminished responsibility together with the cognate doctrine of unfitness to plead. However, most of this work has been doctrinal rather than empirical. This case study has developed a sustained and continuing understanding of how certain mental condition defences operate in practice, primarily through empirical analysis. R.D. Mackay's empirical studies of both the insanity defence and unfitness to plead and his studies of diminished responsibility, provocation and infanticide have been used by and have influenced law reform bodies, legislators, policy development and legal analysis.
Professor Faundez's research has set out how legal reform projects should be designed and implemented in order to be successful in the context of existing local conditions and to ensure access to justice for indigenous peoples and other vulnerable groups. His work as policy advisor both to development agencies (the World Bank, the UK's Department for International Development (DFID), and the Inter-American Development Bank) and to Non- Governmental Organisations (NGOs) (Amnesty International, the World Justice Project) has helped these organisations broaden their approach to the design, implementation and evaluation of legal reform projects. The range of his publications - from academic articles to specially commissioned reports - has ensured a fruitful dialogue with practitioners in the field of law and governance.
The case study examines the far-reaching impact of David Mead's research over the past ten years, all undertaken while at UEA, into the law that regulates and guarantees peaceful protest and into the policing of demonstrations. His research has informed public policy in the UK and in Europe (Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)), been relied on by practitioners before the courts up to and including the Supreme Court (in both the UK and New Zealand), been cited by the European Court of Human Rights, led to providing expert evidence before the High Court and assisted NGOs (such as Greenpeace).
Malleson and Barmes' research at QMUL on how to promote equality and diversity has influenced policy and legislation through its impact on a number of official bodies, including the Advisory Panel on Judicial Diversity in 2009/10, the House of Lords Constitution Committee Inquiry on Judicial Appointments in 2011/12, the Joint Committee on Human Rights report on the Equality Bill in 2009, the Advisory Panel for the selection of judges to the Court of Justice of the European Union (`CJEU') in 2010 and also of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court (`CICC') in 2011. As founder members of the Equal Justices Initiative (`EJI') and of the AHRC research network, `Promoting Equality and Diversity through Economic Crisis' (`PEDEC'), their research has also informed public and policy understanding of equality and diversity issues more widely.
Research underpinning this case study — translated into policy and legislation through service by Reid and Gretton at the Scottish Law Commission — has contributed to the transformation of an outdated system of land law in Scotland and its replacement with a coherent and principled framework for land-ownership. In the census period this has been achieved above all by the Land Registration etc (Scotland) 2012. The impact claimed is the legislative change and its result: the introduction of a new law of land registration in Scotland.