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Articles by Martyn Frost
A new front in the war against legislative overload
Red Tape: Managing Excess in Law, Regulation and the Courts Robin Ellison £34.99, Cambridge University Press ★★★★✩ The premise of this book is that there is too much law and a lot of that is not good. Essentially, it is an extensive study of excessive red tape. Bad law leads to more bureaucracy and irritation among the public, who largely ignore it, leading in turn to more laws to remedy the problems caused by the first lot.
Life after a breakdown
This Too Will Pass Richard Martin £11.99, Trigger Publishing ★★★★✩ ’Learning a little more about mental health and illness has been a key part of my recovery,’ former City solicitor Richard Martin concludes in his highly personal account This Too Will Pass. He uses that ‘learning’ to orient the reader through his story.
Rules for robots
Jacob Turner is a persuasive chap. When I opened Robot Rules, I was instinctively hostile to the idea that the fast-developing field of artificial intelligence (as Turner explains, a flawed term, but one we are stuck with) needed a new body of regulation. Nearly 400 pages on, my opinions have changed. Not because of any apocalyptic predictions about unregulated robots enslaving humankind or turning the planet into a paperclip factory: it is not that kind of book.
Minority report | Opinion | Law Society Gazette
I love it when lawyers are critical of law-makers, whether parliament or judges. We are so polite. One contributor to this book puts it nicely: ‘It is respectfully submitted the minority view may be preferable.’ This is legalese for ‘they got it wrong’. The book’s thesis is that the dissenting view is sometimes better law which is followed later by the courts. That is not much comfort to the litigant who came second, of course.
Sting in the tale
Manny and Brigitta Davidson had humble and somewhat challenging upbringings, one a Jewish migrant who escaped the horrors of the second world war for safer havens on our shores. Their story is worthy of a rags-to-riches Hollywood movie like The Pursuit of Happyness. Sadly, To Trust or Not To Trust lacks the ‘happyness’.
BOOK REVIEW: A Price To Pay - The Inside Story of the Natwest Three
This is an honest, frank and no-holds-barred account of the ‘Natwest Three Case’, told by one of the British bankers embroiled in the Enron scandal. This involved the collapse of the seventh-largest company in the US following an epidemic of fraud within the business. Bermingham’s book details how failing to declare an interest in a business transaction in the UK turned into allegations of wire fraud in the US.
BOOK REVIEW: Extradition Law: a practitioner’s guide (2nd edition)
In his foreword, senior district judge Howard Riddle recalls his observation at the launch of the first edition of Extradition Law that it was already out of date, as law is constantly evolving. However, since the guide’s publication in 2013, even the most experienced district judges have been seen clutching it while on the bench. This is likely to remain the case with this new edition, which is the most comprehensive and up-to-date guide to a tortuous area of law.
Where there’s a will and family intrigue
I have only once been asked whether there would be a reading of the will. They were common in films or plays where the family sat in the solicitor’s office, all dressed in black – and the elderly, wise, but somehow gruff lawyer, read out the deceased’s last will. The tension mounts. One by one legacies are announced to family servants but there is nothing for the grieving spouse or the prodigal son, but some money for the attractive assistant and the rest to a cats’ home.
Silent witnesses
When a criminal decides to bisect a torso it is ‘usually a big mistake’ as the exposed internal organs ‘will leak copiously and create a really noxious stench’. This is forensic anthropologist professor Sue Black’s chilling consideration of the five main types of criminal dismemberment, of which defensive dismemberment – the ‘elimination of evidence and concealment of the offence’ – accounts for about 85% of cases.
Capacity: Importance of the golden rule
Home » Trusts & Estates Law and Tax Journal » April 2018 #195 » Capacity: Importance of the golden rule Capacity: Importance of the golden ruleBurges Salmon LLP Kevin Kennedy and Andrew Walls report on the test in Banks v Goodfellow You must be logged in and have an active subscription to view full content. Login Subscribe Now Cases Referenced Cases in bold have further reading - click to view related articles.
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