Shifting Ground
How statute and case law have moved on nine questions that shape every construction contract. Each authority is placed by date and by the direction it pushed the law, with a case sheet setting out its facts, ratio and obiter.
Who has moved construction law, Parliament or the courts, and in which direction?
Each authority's score is its push on the theme's scale, from -2 to +2. Adding the pushes by source shows who has driven each doctrine and which way. The thick centre line is zero. Bars to the right push toward the upper end of that theme's scale; bars to the left push toward the lower end. Select a theme to open it. This is a curated collection of leading authorities, not a census of construction law, so the totals describe the collection. The era chart and the figures below count each authority once; where an authority appears in more than one theme, its push is averaged across them. Scottish-law entries are shown for comparison in their themes (dashed, marked Sc) and left out of these totals.
Push by source, per theme
When the law moved: distinct authorities by era
How to cite
Effectus Construction Services, Shifting Ground: how English construction law has moved, 1838 to 2026 (effectuscs.com/insights/shifting-ground, last updated 26 September 2026). This is research commentary, not legal advice.
Method
Score = direction x significance, from -2 to +2 on each theme's scale. Direction: which end of the scale the authority pushed the law toward, compared with the law just before it (0 if it restated the law or its effect was mixed). Significance 2: an Act that creates, removes or substantially extends a right or regime, or a final appellate decision that set a new test, overruled earlier law or settled a contested question. Significance 1: a real but bounded shift. Significance 0: restatement or mixed effect. First-instance decisions, reports, standard forms, obiter points and Scottish decisions in English themes are capped at 1. Each case sheet gives the reason for its score. The scores remain ECS editorial judgement.
Sources
Judgments from 2001 onwards were checked on The National Archives' Find Case Law service on 26 September 2026, and their summaries were written from the judgment text with paragraph references. Statutes were checked on legislation.gov.uk.
Earlier cases, and some Scottish and House of Lords decisions, are not on Find Case Law. For these the citation is identified and the summary is checked against later judgments that quote them, ECS's own copies of the reports, or named secondary sources. Each case sheet states the sources checked for that entry; a few older entries are marked "verification incomplete" because they rest on the reported decision alone.
Reading the views
Pendulum shows each authority's push, by date. Swimlanes separate Parliament, each level of court and policy, with curves showing how later authorities treated earlier ones. Narrative reads as a sequence. All themes compares when each doctrine moved.