I haven't written yet about the murder law reforms here in Britain. The Guardian describe it as follows: People who kill their partners after years of abuse would be able to use a new defence that they had acted in response to extreme "words and conduct", under government plans to change the law on murder.
This part is to change the law to avoid situations like those in R v. Thornton and R v. Ahluwalia (I would like to link you to the original material, but it's hidden inside the corporate-owned databases and law reports, rather than on the open, public Internet). The reform would also make infidelity no longer count as a valid provocation defence.
The murder laws do need reform, but I am very much unsure about these changes. I think instead that the government should reform the murder laws so that judges can have more flexibility in sentencing: either through introducing degrees of murder, as is done in the United States, or by simply getting rid of the mandatory sentence and having flexible sentencing guidelines.
