By Rachael Blakey, PhD Candidate, Cardiff University Following the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO), and Children and Families Act 2014 (CFA), mediation has taken a visible centre stage in England and Wales’ family justice system. Much of the discussion succeeding the reforms hasfocused on the move towards private resolution and [...]

by Ellen Gordon-Bouvier, Senior Lecturer, School of Law, Criminal Justice and Computing, Canterbury Christ Church University This blogpost is based on a paper presented in the Family Law and Policy stream at the SLSA 2018 conference.  In it, I argued that new insights and understandings could be gleaned from examining the law’s harsh treatment of cohabiting [...]

by Dr Kirsty Moreton, Lecturer in Law and Ethics, Keele University On 12th March of this year in the State of Victoria, Australia theMedical Treatment Planning and Decisions Act 2016 came into force. A unique aspect of this legislation is that it permits children to make legally binding ‘Advance Care Directives’ (ACD). Sufficiently competent children [...]

by Louise Austin, PhD Candidate in Law (1+3 ESRC), Centre for Health, Law, and Society and Centre for Ethics in Medicine, University of Bristol At the SLSA's Annual Conference, I presented a working draft of a paper co-written with Dr Sheelagh McGuinness. The paper, provisionally titled ‘Medical Treatment, Miscarriages and Consent’, explores a legislative gap [...]

Rachel Heah (University of Liverpool) It was truly a privilege to be able to present in the Children’s Rights stream of the SLSA 2018. Questions and comments received from the audience have helped me reflect on the methods used, and will come in very handy when I write up my methodology chapter! In this blog [...]

By Emma Jones, and  John Stannard, Queen’s University, Belfast Very few people would dispute that law and affect (encompassing emotions and feelings) are intertwined to some extent.  There may be disagreements as to when and how affect can and should impact on the law, for example, in the drafting of legislation, in court room encounters [...]

Celine Tan[1] Associate Professor, School of Law, University of Warwick We are in the midst of the largest industrial action in the history of UK higher education, with massive walkouts from academic and professional services staff across 61 universities across the country since the end of February. If there is no resolution, another 14 days [...]

As strike action by members of the UCU prepares to enter a 4th week, the SLSA Exec would like to express its grave concern regarding the ways in which the proposed changes to the USS pension scheme will adversely affect many of our members, particularly those in pre-1992 Universities. We call on UUK to rethink its current position. Further information [...]

Dermot Feenan, Associate Research Fellow, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London, offers some observations and tips on producing a conference abstract. Many conferences, such as the SLSA’s Annual Conference, require presenters to submit an abstract. Yet, there’s little information available on how to write one. Some conference organisers, such as the LSA, provide guidance on [...]

Dermot Feenan, Associate Research Fellow, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London, and co-convenor of the Stream on Law, Politics and Ideology, discusses the rationale for a session on class and law at the SLSA Annual Conference 2018. Class has long been a category of social classification with relevance to law and legal scholarship. Many significant [...]