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With over 130,000 insolvencies (corporate and personal) recorded annually in England and Wales insolvency is a significant area of legal practice. This study spotlights one major publication (Sealy and Milman: Annotated Guide to Insolvency Legislation) which has informed, and is informed by, other scholarly pieces. Evidence is offered of this publication's reach, indicating how it has developed into an authoritative legal source in its own right. Users of the research include lawyers advising/representing their clients, repeat players (such as HMRC) and judges dealing with issues of interpretation. These groups benefit by having professional time saved in researching points and by having something to base advice or a decision upon when there is no available precedent. The ultimate beneficiaries are the public who rely on legal advice and whose rights depend upon favourable judicial rulings.
Research by the Centre for Business and Insolvency Law is helping to increase investor confidence and economic stability through influence on laws in Africa and practice in the UK.
Integrating developing countries into the global economy and encouraging investment require sound legal infrastructure, with modern insolvency laws that increase investor confidence over likely outcomes of financial crisis. Burdette's research has directly influenced Seychelles legislation, legislation currently before parliament in Malawi and insolvency practice in South Africa.
Robust insolvency laws are also important for maintaining a stable domestic economy. Walters (with external co-authors) has influenced public debate regarding costs in insolvency.
Working both individually and in collaboration with other researchers, Dr Helen Carr has produced a highly significant and original body of work dealing with questions of housing tenure. This work has provided a direct inspiration for substantial reform of Welsh housing legislation, indelibly colouring current public and political debates in this area, and is recognised by Welsh policy-makers as having had `significant impact' in the reform process, a process in which Carr remains closely and directly involved. With the legislation now in draft form, the research has substantially shaped the agenda of the Welsh Assembly, providing inspiration, intellectual underpinning, a legal framework and the evidential basis for proposals which are now at an advanced stage of development. The research will impact directly on the lives of approximately half a million people who are tenants or landlords, as well as the extensive work in this area of all Welsh councils and housing associations.
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).
Researchers, led by Seneviratne, have long influenced debate and had impacts in practice within various dispute resolution frameworks. Seneviratne's work on the civil litigation system (with Peysner), has had broad and significant influence in reviews of civil justice systems internationally, as has Peysner's other research undertaken at this UoA. Seneviratne's work on insolvency complaints and disciplinary procedures (with Walters) has had real influence in informing both domestic Parliamentary and international debate regarding insolvency practitioner regulation.
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).
Professor Sue Arrowsmith's research significantly influenced UNCITRAL's revised 2011 Model Law on Public Procurement. This is a model regulatory framework of global relevance that aims to help national governments avoid waste, secure adequate public services, and fight corruption in procurement. The UNCITRAL Secretariat's presentation of reform options to the Model Law Working Group was based directly on both the novel analytical templates and the detailed recommendations developed by Arrowsmith, and many of the revised Model Law's provisions on both existing and new subjects of regulation follow directly the specific recommendations in Arrowsmith's research.
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.