Bureaucratic Law-making: The Power of Dislocation in the Legal History of Tax

In July 2022 Professor Chantal Stebbings gave a paper entitled ‘Bureaucratic Law-making: The Power of Dislocation in the Legal History of Tax’ to the University of Cambridge Centre for English Legal History. In this illustrated talk she explored the phenomenon of ‘dislocation’ in the history of English law, namely where legal practice no longer reflected the formal law, be it statute or case law. She concentrated on the importance of dislocation in tax law, where historically it dominated to an unparalleled degree. She used two examples: first, the discrepancy between the statutory duty of local lay commissioners to make assessments to income tax, which was entirely taken over by the government officer with no legal authority to do so. Secondly, the domination of the executive in interpreting the statutory provisions and in creating extra statutory concessions in the context of stagnant stamp duty legislation and directly undermining the separation of powers.