Direct Effect in UK Law

Where a defendant and his assets are located outside the jurisdiction of the court seised of the substantive proceedings, it is in my opinion most appropriate that protective measures should be granted by those courts best able to make their orders effective.

Personal circumstances of an occupier, personal hardship, the difficulties of businesses which are of value to the character of a community are not to be ignored in the administration of planning control. It would be inhuman pedantry to exclude from the control of our environment the human factor. It can, however, and sometimes should, be given direct effect as an exceptional or special circumstance.

Mandatory and discretionary sentences are now each divided into the two elements. Given that the post- Handscomb practice, embodied in section 34 of the Act of 1991, now gives a direct effect to the trial judge's opinion, it is irrational (so the argument runs) for the Home Secretary not to have brought into alignment the two methods of fixing the penal element.

Fairness will very often require that a person who may be adversely affected by the decision will have an opportunity to make representations on his own behalf either before the decision is taken with a view to producing a favourable result: or after it is taken, with a view to procuring its modification; or both.

First, the proposition that a product is efficacious for the treatment of a given condition must be plausible. The disclosure of those grounds marks the difference between a speculation and a contribution to the art. Fourth, although the disclosure need not definitively prove the assertion that the product works for the designated purpose, there must be something that would cause the skilled person to think that there was a reasonable prospect that the assertion would prove to be true.

But even then, the metaphor of incorporation may be misleading. Of course there is a strong presumption in favour of interpreting English law (whether common law or statute) in a way which does not place the United Kingdom in breach of an international obligation.

This decision of the European Court of Justice as to the effect of Article 86 is one which section 3(1) of the European Communities Act 1972 requires your Lordships to follow. The rights which the Article confers upon citizens in the United Kingdom accordingly fall within section 2(1) of the Act. They are without further enactment to be given legal effect in the United Kingdom and enforced accordingly.