The Government of Wales Act 2006: Welsh devolution still a process and not an event?

Following the Assembly Elections in May 2007 Wales moved into a new area in its devolutionary settlement with a change of government and new legislation - the Government of Wales Act 2006. The Act is designed to revise fundamentally the Government of Wales Act 1998. Critics at the time predicted that executive devolution would be unlikely to be stable and would lead to "catch up" devolution with more privileged nations such as Scotland. Hence the second phase of Welsh devolution in which a Westminster model of Government is introduced as well as enhanced legislative powers for the National Assembly for Wales, including powers for the Assembly to be given legislative competence by Order in Council to make law in certain of the devolved fields, as an interim stage towards achieving full legislative devolution following a referendum. This paper argues that the Government of Wales Act 2006 has not conclusively settled the constitutional issues of asymmetrical devolution, such as the distribution of power between London and Cardiff; the role of the Secretary of State; the clarity and transparency of Welsh governance; and the question of how long these interim arrangements will last before Wales gains legislative devolution.</p

The Human Rights Act 1998: a bridge between citizenship and justice?

This article discusses the implications of the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA). It suggests that the HRA is designed to promote a classic liberal conception of political citizenship, which protects the individual from the exercise of arbitrary state power, and not to extend the role of the state as a welfare provider. It goes on to argue that the government has limited the effectiveness of the HRA by claiming that they are building a culture of rights and responsibilities whilst treating human rights as an issue for the courts rather than an issue for government and public authorities generally. The article concludes by discussing extending the HRA to include economic, social and cultural rights.</p

Sandwich placements in law: academic tourism or a form of clinical legal education?

Whether or not education at the higher level can be integrated with practical experience has preoccupied educationalists in Europe and North America for a considerable time. There are some disciplines in which the existence of laboratory practice or simulated work experience can be used to assist the process of learning-by-doing quite efficiently. In other areas, learning from experience may be best carried out in the employment environment itself. Historically, in the UK this was the pattern for the traditional professions of law, accountancy, medicine and architecture. More recently in the UK, sandwich courses, predominantly a 'new' university contribution to higher education, have been developed to give students a balance between academic theory and practical professional experience. This article attempts a re-evaluation of the sandwich placement model of legal education in law in the light of the skills debate, and the clinical legal education movement.</p

IMPLICATIONS OF TAXING QUOTA VALUE IN AN INDIVIDUAL TRANSFERABLE QUOTA FISHERY: REPLY

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

IMPLICATIONS OF TAXING QUOTA VALUE IN AN INDIVIDUAL TRANSFERABLE QUOTA FISHERY

Taxing pure rents is usually considered the least distortionary method for raising revenues. In the literature on fishery economics, the term "rent" is regularly employed, suggesting that pure rents exist in that sector. Indeed, with the recent development of individual transferable quotas, the resulting market value of quota has been treated as reflecting pure resource rents. In this paper, the view that the market value of quota represents a pure rent that can be readily extracted in a nondistortionary manner by the taxing authority is challenged because that argument ignores both economic incentives and political realities.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Transferring employment between the public and private sectors in the United Kingdom: acquired rights and revising TUPE

This paper analyses the reasons for the United Kingdom's long-delayed response to the European Union’s Acquired Rights Directive. It assesses the British government’s overdue updating of the domestic legislation in 2006 in line with the latest version of the Directive, attributing its dilatory response to a combination of technical legal difficulties and conflicting political objectives. The paper concentrates on the ‘privatisation’ of public services, explaining the most recent protection now available to workers whose jobs are out-sourced to the private or voluntary sector. Member States contemplating reform of their own regulatory regimes may find the British experience instructive.</p

A solvable model for excitonic complexes in one dimension

It is known experimentally that stable few-body clusters containing negatively-charged electrons (e) and positively-charged holes (h) can exist in low-dimensional semiconductor nanostructures. In addition to the familiar exciton (e+h), three-body 'charged excitons' (2e+h and 2h+e) have also been observed. Much less is known about the properties of such charged excitons since three-body problems are generally very difficult to solve, even numerically. Here we introduce a simple model, which can be considered as an extended Calogero model, to calculate analytically the energy spectra for both a charged exciton and a neutral exciton in a one-dimensional nanostructure, such as a finite-length quantum wire. Apart from its physical motivation, the model is of mathematical interest in that it can be related to the Heun (or Heine) equation and, as shown explicitly, highly accurate, closed form solutions can be obtained.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, To appear in J. Math. Phy