By Roger Cotterrell, School of Law, QMUL How does official regulation encourage responsible personal behaviour in the face of the pandemic threat to life and health? The Coronavirus Act 2020, which received Royal Assent on March 25th, provided, among much else, ultimately coercive powers for public officials, including police, to remove a person for screening [...]
By Juliet Brook, Portsmouth Law School, University of Portsmouth As we adjust to a life of Google Hangouts, Zoom meetings and Houseparties, it seems that very few physical encounters cannot be replicated remotely in some way or another. Making a will, however, is an exception. In England and Wales, in order to make a [...]
By Sylvie Armstrong, European University Institute Two strangers meet, fall in love, marry. This is a well-known narrative; something many aspire to and indeed experience. What should the legal position be, however, when it transpires that someone’s spouse, unbeknownst to them, is not a genetic stranger at all? The question of whether gamete donors [...]
By Jo Smith, features writer for the Immigration Advice Service; an organisation of immigration lawyers in the UK, Ireland and the US. Whenever the future is depicted in sci-fi films or the media, technology tends to feature prominently as an aide to daily life. From robots that perform routine and mundane tasks to advanced [...]
by James Hand, Portsmouth Law School, University of Portsmouth Ahead of last year’s 100th Anniversary of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 and this year’s 100th anniversary of Ivy Williams becoming the first woman legal academic and the 50th anniversary of Claire Palley becoming the first women to be appointed to a professorship [...]
by Flora Renz, Kent Law School, University of Kent Writing in the middle of a global pandemic it seems increasingly difficult to focus on other concerns beyond the immediate threat to our collective health and survival. But is there something our response to Covid-19 can reveal about the ways in which our lives, before, during [...]
By Roger Cotterrell, QMUL. Photograph by Brian O'Connor Law in liberal democratic societies glorifies freedom of speech but some legal limitations are readily accepted. For example, law prohibits incitement to religious or racial hatred or hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation, provides civil remedies against defamation, and defines offences that penalise speech liable [...]
By James Greenwood-Reeves, School of Law, University of Leeds The rebellion has begun. Or so it seems. Extinction Rebellion (“XR”) has become an unmistakable brand in the field of environmental activism, in the UK and internationally. Beyond mere notoriety, they have raised public awareness and heightened public discourse about the climate catastrophe facing [...]
by Tamara Hervey, School of Law, University of Sheffield. An extended version is at ablendedlifeblog How do you study a culture far from your own? I don’t mean geographically far. The cultures I’m trying to understand are close to home: in the north of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. What I’m talking of is social [...]
Flora Renz, Lecturer in Law, University of Kent How can we move beyond current contentious debates around the role of gender? Is it possible to (re)imagine gender within the legal sphere in a way that does not conceive it as either solely oppressive or purely self-determined? To address these questions I will draw on some [...]