A no-benefit benefit test: Comment

Abstract

Charity law judgments and legislative schemes are replete with references to ‘benefit' – or, more commonly, ‘public benefit' – yet the function and content of that concept remain elusive. Ambiguous legislative drafting and the decision by some charity regulators to require evidence of tangible benefit have compounded uncertainties latent in the common law of charity and raised the stakes for bodies seeking charitable status. Synge's thesis that benefit is a requisite element of charity law's definitional inquiry is based in part upon her doctrinal analysis of leading English trusts cases. The fact that the judgments in Gilmour v Coats can be read in different ways suggests perhaps that a strictly descriptive, doctrinal analysis of the judgments is of limited value. The authorities relied on by the Law Lords went back only as far as the 1871 decision of Sir John Wickens VC in Cocks v Manners.