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This chapter examines the role of punishment in correction as discussed by early Christian authors and the Roman elite as a way of understanding how punishment became associated with both hell and purgatory. It examines metaphors of paternal power and slavery. It suggests that the idea that the elect, too, must suffer violence in the afterlife arose from discussions about original sin at a time when the Roman elite were increasingly anxious about the erosion of legal immunities that had traditionally protected them from judicial torture. It highlights the ongoing importance of the metaphor of slavery to the way corporeal punishment was described in the afterlife, particularly in the Vision of Paul, and it considers notions of retributive justice and the fear of hell.

This chapter discusses applying legal privilege to document production in international commercial arbitration. Legal privilege may justify keeping confidential information, evidence, or documents out of the record, even before a court or tribunal. But it can also be used, unjustifiably and abusively, as a shield to hide evidence which is adverse to and perhaps even determinative of the other party’s case. The question for the tribunal when legal privilege is claimed and challenged is whether the privilege claim is justified and how to verify it. The tribunal must reach its determination of the parties’ rights and obligations on the basis of the relevant contract terms, applicable law, and relevant evidence. Resolving claimed legal privilege is similar, although it will not determine the substantive dispute per se. Accordingly, the tribunal must always seek to verify whether the legal privilege claimed is justified in the particular circumstance in which it is raised.

The chapter considers to what extent tax investigations are like, and how they are unlike, police investigations. It examines the powers available to HMRC in the investigation of evasion offences. The bifurcated regime operated clearly in the enforcement activities of Customs and Excise and the Inland Revenue from the earliest times. At the time (early 1980s) of the Keith Committee, before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) and before the significance of the civil/criminal distinction (in terms of the European Convention on Human Rights) was recognized in English law, police powers were ill-defined and did not allow for a clear comparison to be made between the sorts of rules that might circumscribe the investigations if the objectives were solely (a) to investigate crime or (b) to establish the tax position of the taxpayer. Over time, the investigatory powers have become increasingly closely assimilated to the PACE powers.

This chapter determines and analyzes the social and legal privileges that can attach to couples and their families based upon sexuality and race. There are wide range of privileges that can come with being a monoracial couple, but this chapter focuses on one of those privileges that certain couples may experience over others with respect to housing, housing choice, and the application of housing discrimination law.

This chapter examines legal privileges and immunities in criminal law in England during the Tudor period. The working of the criminal law in the early Tudor period was dominated by the two great ecclesiastical privileges of clergy and sanctuary. They were introduced as a way to protect sanctified places and ordained clergy from sacrilegious interference by secular authority. By the mid-16th century, sanctuary was abolished, while statutory modifications of clergy were turning it into a vehicle for the adjustment of punishment to fit the crime.

It should come as no surprise that legislation providing for the disclosure of information as a ‘right’ contains extensive exempting provisions. Some of the exemptions are absolute, protecting a class of information entirely, others rely on the application of a prejudice test or upon other harmful consequences of disclosure. Chapter 5 considers in turn the nine absolute exemptions and the eighteen qualified exemptions, including the formulation of government policy and legal professional privilege. The chapter lists the principles in relation to the operation of the public interest test which can be derived from the decisions of the tribunals and the courts. It identifies where it is appropriate to redact part of the information sought. The chapter refers throughout to the guidance given by the Information Commissioner and the Ministry of Justice in applying the exemptions.

This chapter examines the procedure and practice of advocacy before the European Court of Justice and General Court of the European Union. In tracing the historical development of advocacy before the Court from the early days of the European Coal and Steel Community to the present day, the chapter identifies issues particular to the admission requirements of the Court (such as the definition of a ‘lawyer’) arising from that history and manifested in its jurisprudence concerning the appearance of non-traditional legal professionals. In explaining the reasons for the relatively low incidence of problems concerning the conduct of agents and counsel in practice, the chapter also identifies a number of cases in which issues arose concerning the integrity of evidence and the honesty of pleadings. It analyses the issues of professional ethics that have arisen in the practice of the Court, including legal professional privilege or confidentiality. The chapter also sets out the limited control of the EU courts over their rules of procedure and the impact of this situation upon the potential professionalization of advocacy in the unique EU context.

To English men and women of past centuries, the probate jurisdiction held by the church must have seemed the single most important of its legal privileges. The law of testaments and intestate administration reached into the lives (and pockets) of a large percentage of the English population. It touched family relationships and inter vivos transactions only tangentially related to dying. It meant a great deal to the English civilians; it was the most lucrative thing above anything else they did. It was also a necessary part of the nation's legal system. Probate was the last area of jurisdictional competence to disappear from the act books in the 1640s, and after the revival of the spiritual courts in the 1660s, probate was quickly reinstated. Jurisdiction over testaments remained in the hands of the church into the second half of the 19th century, a longevity that has had consequences with which there is still some degree of struggle.

Chapter 5 explores how, following the restoration of relative peace and stability after the Norman conquest, several newly founded and important Italo-Greek monasteries developed their own independent legal jurisdictions on their own property. The chapter argues that the Normans’ opposition to papal and episcopal interference created a laissez-faire atmosphere in which Italo-Greek monks could continue to follow Byzantine canon law. Many such monasteries enjoyed the patronage of the Norman nobility throughout the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. These monasteries were responsible for producing the majority of surviving nomocanons from medieval southern Italy. It divides them into two broad categories: the royal archimandritates (monastic federations) of Rossano and Messina; and lesser archimandritates and autodespotic (independent) monasteries such as SS Elias and Anastasios of Carbone and St Nicholas of Casole. It observes that the production of a monastic nomocanon was closely linked to a monastery’s acquisition of legal privileges from the kings of Sicily, indicating that they were produced to meet a practical legal need and not simply out of academic curiosity. Lastly, the chapter asks how Italo-Greek monks under Norman rule perceived their relationship to papal jurisdiction, using the examples of Bartholomew of Grottaferrata’s comments on papal legislation and Neilos Doxapatres’ work on the Order of the Patriarchal Thrones to show that they still felt themselves to be a part of the legal sphere of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

This chapter briefly treats the earlier history of Catholicism in China. Despite proscription of Christianity by the Chinese government from 1724 to 1844, that history left a considerable legacy of Chinese Catholic communities, which provided a platform upon which the nineteenth-century missionaries could build. The chapter explores the peculiar circumstances of Catholic evangelism in the early nineteenth century and the way that these circumstances enabled the French state to presume to the role of Catholic protector. Then it describes in detail the Sino-French treaties of the mid-nineteenth century as they pertained to Christian evangelism and, in bestowing great legal privilege on missionaries, how these unequal treaties set the stage for local social turmoil.

The Insolvency Act 1986 recognizes that an office holder, as a stranger to the affairs of the debtor, may encounter problems in trying to unravel the debtor’s past dealings, something which can be exploited by those who have entered into voidable transactions. In personal insolvency the debtor, his spouse, and his associates may well wish to conceal information about the debtor’s dealings in order to protect the transactions that the office holder is seeking to attack. Similarly, in corporate insolvency, the officers of the company and others who are involved in the company’s affairs may wish to suppress information. This situation is not helped by the fact that some of the avoidance provisions, in particular those dealing with preferences and transactions defrauding creditors, contain elements which may be difficult for the office holder to prove.

An office-holder cannot discharge his functions without a full understanding of the affairs, business, and property of the company. However, a significant prior professional relationship is regarded as posing a clear threat to the objectivity of an insolvency practitioner such as to make it inappropriate to accept appointment as an office-holder in insolvency proceedings relating to the company. The requirement for an office-holder to be independent of the company therefore means that he may have little or even none of the requisite knowledge prior to his appointment.

There have been significant changes to Mexican law recently that have provided prosecutors updated and enhanced tools to combat corruption. In May 2015, the Mexican Congress and the states approved a constitutional amendment that created the National Anti-Corruption System, which was put into full force and effect in 2017. This supplemented and broadened the already existing anti-corruption laws in Mexico’s public procurement process. Now individuals and legal entities can be criminally liable for bribery of public officials in Mexico. In November 2014, Mexico City passed modifications to the criminal code making bribery an offense that can be committed by both individuals and legal entities and created an innovative approach to calculating penalties against companies. However, even though laws have changed, much remains to be done. The OECD noted that Mexico has fully implemented very few of the recommendations that it has made to eradicate corruption. Mexico still had no prosecutions or convictions for foreign bribery. Corruption is still common in Mexico, with the widespread use of “gestores” or intermediaries to navigate the bureaucracies responsible for issuing licenses and permits, shell companies owned by family members of government officials seeking a bribe, fictitious service providers, and improper gifting and excessive hospitality to employees of state-owned entities. With the new Lopez Obrador Administration’s anti-corruption plan, further changes are anticipated in public procurement by the creation of a central mechanism to manage and monitor public contracts to achieve greater transparency. The new administration has also committed to creating an autonomous Special Prosecutor’s Office to independently investigate and prosecute corruption cases and to implement additional restrictions on entertainment and gifts provided to public officials.

Article 48 CFR contains important (criminal) procedural guarantees. It reflects the rights contained in Article 6(2) and (3) ECHR. By virtue of Article 52 (3) CFR its meaning and scope are thus the same. This means that the more detailed rights laid down in Article 6(3) ECHR must be read into the rights to defence guaranteed by Article 48(2) CFR.