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Another Christmas month is upon us, following it seems quickly on others that have been. Such is the relativity of Time, it is not yesteryear, but could be yester‐month or even yester‐week. The seasons pass like youth, all too soon. Our minds return to other Christmas months of yore — “Memories are like Christmas roses!”, the old saying goes. The children, singing much‐loved hymns and carols, happy family settings, a birth, christening, so much to look forward to in the new year. There are not always such happy memories, but memories just the same — Christmas in war‐time, Earth's joys growing dimmer each year, change and decay, life drawing to a close for many a soul; old folk tend to see Christmas as a time of passing, of leaving the world behind.

First January 1973 will not only mark the beginning of a New Year but a year which history will mark as a truly momentous one, for this is the year that Britain, after centuries of absence, re‐enters the framework of Europe as one of the Member‐States of the enlarged European Community. This in itself must make for change on both sides; Britain is so different in outlook from the others, something they too realize and see as an acquisition of strength. There have been other and more limited forms of Continental union, mainly of sovereignty and royal descent. Large regions of France were for centuries under the English Crown and long after they were finally lost, the fleur de lis stayed on the royal coat of arms, until the Treaty of Amiens 1802, when Britain retired behind her sea curtain. The other Continental union was, of course, with Hanover; from here the Germanized descendants of the Stuarts on the female line returned to the throne of their ancestors. This union lasted until 1832 when rules of descent prevented a woman from reigning in Hanover. It is interesting to speculate how different history might have been if only the British Crown and the profits of Tudor and Stuart rule had been maintained in one part of central Europe. However, Britain disentangled herself and built up overwhelming sea power against a largely hostile Europe, of which it was never conceived she could ever be a part, but the wheel of chance turns half‐circle and now, this New Year, she enters into and is bound to a European Community by the Treaty of Rome with ties far stronger, the product of new politico‐economic structures evolved from necessity; in a union which cannot fail to change the whole course of history, especially for this country.

Legal process by its very nature cannot be swift; step by step, it must be steady and sure and this takes time. There is no room for hasty decisions for these would tend to defeat its purpose. Time, however, is of the essence and this is set for various aspects of legal action by limitation of actions legislation, which sets periods after which the case is no longer actionable. The periods are adequate and in civil law, generous to avoid injustice being done. The one serious complaint against the process of law, however, is the unwarrantable delays which are possible despite limitation. From the far‐off days of Equity, when Dickens' Jarndyce v Jarndyce, caricatured and exaggerated as it was, described the scene down to the present when delays, often spoken of in Court as outrageous are encountered, to say nothing of the crowded lists in the High Courts and Crown Courts; the result of the state of society and not the fault of the judiciary. Early in 1980, it was reported that 14,500 cases were awaiting trial in the Southeastern Circuit Crown Court alone. Outside the Courts legal work hangs on, to the annoyance of those concerned; from house purchase to probate. Here, the solicitor is very much his own master, unhampered by statutory time limits and the only recourse a client has is to change this solicitor, with no certainty that there will be any improvement, or appeal to the Law Society.

The mammoth proportions of Public Expenditure, its accountability, its control, must be one of the biggest problems any government has had to meet. Despite all its counselling to the public spenders, its massive efforts to scale down the spending, there is extremely little to show for it. The Departments and State Services have become so large, they have outgrown government control; they are in fact forms of government in themselves. When a body established with a definite role becomes so big and powerful, as many of the authorities in the country have become, they tend to resent any form of control over them. History has many such examples in one form or another. Where an ocean divides them, the subordinate power may seek a separate nationhood for itself, as the American colonies did a couple of centuries or more ago. They chose the right moment to rebel when the home government sought to pass on extra levy on the importation of tea, which the Colonists turned into a slogan “no taxation without representation”. The truth, however, was they had outgrown the mother country and saw themselves as a new nation in a new land immensely rich in natural resources, riches all theirs for the taking. Much of the old country understood their aspirations and in the final settlement, the British were more than generous to them.

The UK Government’s’ “modernisation” programme has impacted and will continue to impact on the Law courts and judiciary procedures. Explores these impacts in seven areas: judicial independence; quality of service; cost‐effectiveness; democracy; efficiency; speed; and government as the driver.

The main purpose of this research is to analyse the socio‐technical consequences deriving from the digitisation of crown prosecutors' work.

This research is based on an in‐depth, qualitative case study of the use of technologies by crown prosecutors. It relies on observations, focus groups and semi‐structured interviews conducted in London and Humberside over a 15‐month time‐span. The overarching methodological approach interweaves the empirical data with the theory of information growth which postulates that information is a difference that makes a difference.

The main finding is that the digitisation of prosecutors' work has produced an increasingly‐larger, interlocked domain of digital information by triggering the need for new data standards which, in turn, have created the need for new information‐handling capabilities, thus prompting a ubiquitous infrastructure of self‐propelling differences.

The information growth dynamics investigated have broader implications in relation to information privacy, security and data ownership that go beyond the scope of this research.

It is suggested that rather than steering the information‐growth process, public sector managers should attempt to control the premises of such a process by setting out a structured information quality management procedure both for domain‐specific and generic data standards.

It is argued that plans are makeshift accomplishments that are bound to succumb to the overarching process of information growing out of information. Once viewed from this vantage point, cross‐organisational governance structures are no longer the outcome of pre‐defined plans but rather the side effect of a self‐reinforcing process of information growth.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the adoption of a time‐based activity‐based costing (ABC) information system in resource planning (ABP) in the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) of England and Wales, a public service organisation in the United Kingdom, for the period of 2000‐2005. The aims of the study are to provide a technical review of the ABP application and to explore roles of the ABP system in achieving a “fairer” internal resource allocation and an improved understanding of business processes.

The CPS's experience of adopting an ABP system is explained through the use of a case study involving interviews, observations, work shadowing and archival data over a period of six years, 2000‐2005. The longitudinal nature of the study has enabled the researchers to align the outcome of ABP adoption with concurrent organisational changes.

The study reveals that the growing understanding of the intrinsic links between business processes and the ABP information and its rationale, which remains unchanged throughout various phases of organisational changes, has promoted a sense of stability amongst CPS staff members.

This study provides an in‐depth understanding of the practical use of ABP and its evolving roles in the face of the changing organisational environment.

This research discusses the prerequisite of the ABP system, a time‐based ABC system, and the evolving roles of ABP from a cost‐effective planning tool to a stability mechanism in face of constant organisational changes. This experience is invaluable to companies and practitioners seeking to implement a cost‐effective planning tool.

The use of law reports as a source for data on citation patterns in the courts of law has been pioneered in the United States and to some extent in Canada. Very little work has been undertaken within the English legal system until now. The difficulties faced are noted: the complexity of the court structures and the law reporting system, but above all the limitations of using law reports rather than the original case transcripts which are difficult to obtain. A citation file was built from the citations included in all the issues of fifty‐eight different law report titles issued during 1985. Since there is a degree of duplication in coverage of cases between the law report publications, 5,260 versions of 2,451 unique cases were discovered, yielding a file of 25,868 citations (excluding those to statutory materials). The file was reduced to 11,159 citations (excluding those to statutory materials) by selecting only the longest versions, according to the number of words, of each of the 2,451 cases. Analyses are presented on the general characteristics of the citation file (the proportion of citations to each of twenty‐four different material types), the frequency of citation to statutory materials, case law and other materials (each cross‐tabulated by citing court, subject matter of the citing case and, except for statutory materials, whether the citation occurred in argument by counsel only or in the judgement). For case law only further analyses were performed to identify the jurisdiction of cited cases, self citation practice by different courts, the ageing of authority, the law report titles from which cited cases were taken, the use of unreported cases, and the occurrence of cases without citations to earlier case law.

Although precise numbers are unknown, it is generally acknowledged that between 5‐10% of the offending population are people with learning disabilities. While there are few provisions that explicitly target defendants with learning disabilities there is a general recognition in law that defendants must be able to understand and participate effectively in the criminal proceedings of which they are a part. The implications of the principle of effective participation are that criminal prosecution may be deemed inappropriate for certain defendants with learning disabilities, in which case they may be diverted away from criminal justice and into health care. There is scope for a variety of measures to be put into place to support defendants with learning disabilities to maximise their chances of participating effectively. However, in terms of statutory provision, there is a lack of parity between vulnerable witnesses and vulnerable defendants. Further, the absence of effective screening procedures to identify defendants' learning disabilities means that their support needs often go unrecognised and unmet.