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Current Legal Problems 2026

Current Legal Problems (CLP) is the influential annual lecture series and publication from UCL Faculty of Laws, established nearly 80 years ago. Its unique coupling of public event and published work attracts diverse legal scholarship of the highest quality.

In 2026, as CLP celebrates UCL’s bicentenary and starts a new relationship with UCL Press, a commitment to breadth and depth continues. Articles in this yearbook range across administrative law, competition, copyright, equity, environmental law, family law and insolvency. They engage with theoretical challenges around issues including hope and justice, inheritance and gender, and further address contemporary geopolitical and technological developments as well as historical perspectives on enduring issues. This year, as every year, CLP will be a major point of reference for legal scholars.

The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, Volume 3

The first five volumes of the Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham contain over 1,300 letters written both to and from Bentham over a 50-year period, beginning in 1752 (aged three) with his earliest surviving letter to his grandmother, and ending in 1797 with correspondence concerning his attempts to set up a national scheme for the provision of poor relief. Against the background of the debates on the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789, to which he made significant contributions, Bentham worked first on producing a complete penal code, which involved him in detailed explorations of fundamental legal ideas, and then on his panopticon prison scheme. Despite developing a host of original and ground-breaking ideas, contained in a mass of manuscripts, he published little during these years, and remained, at the close of this period, a relatively obscure individual. Nevertheless, these volumes reveal how the foundations were laid for the remarkable rise of Benthamite utilitarianism in the early nineteenth century.

The letters in this volume document Bentham’s meeting and friendship with the Earl of Shelburne (later the Marquis of Lansdowne), which opened a whole new set of opportunities for him, as well as his extraordinary journey, by way of the Mediterranean, to visit his brother Samuel in Russia.

The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, Volume 5

Bentham’s life in the mid-1790s was dominated by the panopticon, both as a prison and as a network of workhouses for the indigent. The letters in this volume document in excruciating detail Bentham’s attempt to build a panopticon prison in London, and the opposition he faced from local aristocratic landowners. His brother Samuel was appointed as Inspector-General of Naval Works and in September 1796 married Mary Sophia Fordyce.

The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, Volume 4

In 1789 Bentham published An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, which remains his most famous work, but which had little impact at the time, followed in 1791 by The Panopticon: or, The Inspection-House, in which he proposed the building of a circular penitentiary house. Bentham’s correspondence unfolds against the backdrop of the increasingly violent French Revolution, and shows his initial sympathy for France turning into hostility. On a personal level, in 1791 his brother Samuel returned from Russia, and in 1792 he inherited his father’s house in Queen’s Square Place, Westminster together with a significant property portfolio.

The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, Volume 2

The first five volumes of the Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham contain over 1,300 letters written both to and from Bentham over a 50-year period, beginning in 1752 (aged three) with his earliest surviving letter to his grandmother, and ending in 1797 with correspondence concerning his attempts to set up a national scheme for the provision of poor relief. The early letters deal with Bentham’s education at Oxford University, where he was sent at the age of 12 and graduated at the age of 16, and his legal training before being admitted to the bar at the age of 21. He soon afterwards turned his back on the practice of the law and, allying himself with the more radical and sceptical figures of the continental Enlightenment, embarked on a career of law reform.

Against the background of the debates on the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789, to which he made significantcontributions, Bentham worked first on producing a complete penal code, and then on his panopticon prison scheme. Despite developing a host of original and ground-breaking ideas, contained in a mass of manuscripts, he published little during these years, and remained, at the close of this period, a relatively obscure individual. Nevertheless, these volumes reveal how the foundations were laid for the remarkable rise of Benthamite utilitarianism in the early nineteenth century.

Bentham’s educational ideas were the inspiration for the founding of UCL. The vast majority of Bentham’s papers, consisting of around 60,000 folios, are held in UCL Library.

Bentham’s correspondence reveals that in the late 1770s he was working intensively on the development of a code of penal law, but also expanding his acquaintance and, to a moderate degree, enhancing his reputation as a legal thinker. A significant family event took place in 1779, when his brother Samuel went to Russia in order to make his fortune.

The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, Volume 1

Bentham’s early life is marked by his extraordinary precociousness, but also family tragedy: by the age of 10 he had lost five infant siblings and his mother. The letters in this volume document his difficult relationship with his father and his increasing attachment to his surviving younger brother Samuel, his education, his interest in chemistry and botany, and his committing himself to a life of philosophy and legal reform.

Memorandoms by James Martin

Among the vast body of manuscripts composed and collected by the philosopher and reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), held by UCL Library’s Special Collections, is the earliest Australian convict narrative, Memorandoms by James Martin. This document also happens to be the only extant first-hand account of the most well-known, and most mythologized, escape from Australia by transported convicts.

On the night of 28 March 1791, James Martin, William and Mary Bryant and their two infant children, and six other male convicts, stole the colony’s fishing boat and sailed out of Sydney Harbour. Within ten weeks they had reached Kupang in West Timor, having, in an amazing feat of endurance, travelled over 3,000 miles (c. 5,000) kilometres) in an open boat. There they passed themselves off as the survivors of a shipwreck, a ruse which—initially, at least—fooled their Dutch hosts.

This new edition of the Memorandoms includes full colour reproductions of the original manuscripts, making available for the first time this hugely important document, alongside a transcript with commentary describing the events and key characters. The book also features a scholarly introduction which examines their escape and early convict absconding in New South Wales more generally, and, drawing on primary records, presents new research which sheds light on the fate of the escapees after they reached Kupang. The introduction also assesses the voluminous literature on this most famous escape, and critically examines the myths and fictions created around it and the escapees, myths which have gone unchallenged for far too long. Finally, the introduction briefly discusses Jeremy Bentham’s views on convict transportation and their enduring impact.

Happiness and Utility

Happiness and Utility brings together experts on utilitarianism to explore the concept of happiness within the utilitarian tradition, situating it in earlier eighteenth-century thinkers and working through some of its developments at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Drawing on a range of philosophical and historical approaches to the study of the central idea of utilitarianism, the chapters provide a rich set of insights into a founding component of ethics and modern political and economic thought, as well as political and economic practice. In doing so, the chapters examine the multiple dimensions of utilitarianism and the contested interpretations of this standard for judgement in morality and public policy.

The chapters are written in celebration of the career of Professor Frederick Rosen. They follow his work by concentrating on Bentham and the two Mills, and by the subtleties and sophistication of their understanding of one of the most alluring but elusive ideas of modern times. The volume will be of interest not only to admirers of Rosen but to academics and postgraduate students in disciplines such as Philosophy, Political Theory, History of Political Thought, Legal Theory and Legal History.