William Norcup-Brown, Ph.D. Candidate in Law, School of Law and Social Justice, University of Liverpool Over the past two months many British universities have seen protest camps erected on their campuses in response to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Some universities approached this challenge by making early concessions to protestors, for example by agreeing to divest from arms [...]
Alysia Blackham, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne, Australia and Kylie Burns, Griffith Law School, Griffith University, Australia There is a growing need – and desire – for empirical legal research, and for lawyers who are empirically literate, that is, able to use, evaluate and deploy empirical evidence in their work. Politicians, regulators and policy-makers [...]
Annaliese Wren, PhD Candidate and Graduate Teacher, University of Bristol When we think about art in relation to copyright in the UK, there may be a temptation to restrict what we perceive as artistic to a literal interpretation of the categories contained in s.4 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 (‘CDPA’). These include mediums such [...]
Jessica Jacobson and Alexandra Murray (image credit Tyla Scott Owen, tylascott1998@gmail.com) In England and Wales, coroners are independent judicial officers with responsibility for investigating deaths suspected to have been violent or unnatural, where the cause of death is unknown, or where the person died while in prison or another form of state detention. The purpose of the investigation [...]
Rukiya Stein, PhD Student, University of Newcastle School of Law and Justice, Australia Vulnerable defendants are over-represented in the criminal justice system with approximately 60% having speech, language and communication needs or a type of learning disability.[1] Defendants with Autism Spectrum Disorder, also known as Autism, experience significant difficulties in the criminal justice process due [...]
As a follow-up to the WINIR workshop, ‘Regulation and the Common Good’, this blog post takes the form of a ‘Q & A’ between Richard Craven, the workshop organiser, and the workshop’s two keynote speakers: Tony Prosser and Julia Black. Tony Prosser is Professor Emeritus at the University of Bristol School of Law, having been [...]
The present SLSA Blog Series engages with one of the most pressing human rights issues in present-day Europe, that is, the rise of right-wing extremism, and with it, the success of right-wing parties on the extreme side of the political spectrum, including parliamentary representation. The Series places a dedicated focus on constitutional venues such as [...]
Augustin Berthout, PhD candidate, Montpellier University On the 11th of May 2024, the far-right organisation “Comité du 9 mai” marched through the streets of Paris after the administrative judge had suspended the ban on the demonstration imposed by the Préfet a few days earlier. The demonstration commemorated the 30th anniversary of the death of an [...]
Jessika Eichler, affiliated with Law & Anthropology Department, Max Planck Institute It seems that a one-sided idea of democratic thinking has been gaining ground in the public discourse, and with it, a steady alienation from what constitutional courts at least would qualify as non-derogable principles such as, famously, human dignity and the protection against discrimination [...]
Max Steuer, Associate Professor at the O.P. Jindal Global University (India) and Assistant Professor at the Comenius University in Bratislava (Slovakia). Courts deciding with a consistent, comprehensive reasoning, alongside sensitivity to broader contexts, and a germ of creativity are important for the success of party bans. Militancy and democracy seem to be intertwined more [...]