Thank you to all of our readers who have been following this blog. We have now moved to the Lancaster University Law School’s website at http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/law/blogs/staff/
We are in the process of transferring the blog posts from these pages to the blog archive on our new website. All new blog posts will appear on the new site.
Thank you,
Lancaster University Law School
Dr Sara Fovargue, Lancaster University
Dr Alexandra Mullock, University of Manchester
The relationship between medical practice and criminal law is much closer than many realise. Doctors are permitted to do things that others are not, provided that what they do is regarded as ‘proper medical treatment’. The legal justification for bodily invasions in the medical context has developed according to the ‘medical exception’ to the criminal law discussed by the House of Lords in the cases of R v Brown [1993] and Airedale NHS Trust v Bland [1994], and by the Law Commission in 1994. As those involved in sado-masochistic activities discovered in Brown, consent, in the absence of medical (or legitimate sporting) justification, is not enough to make harming others lawful. And in Bland, while it was legitimate for the doctors to withdraw life-sustaining treatment, if a concerned relative did the same it would become a criminal matter.
Prof James A. Sweeney
James A. Sweeney (@James_Sweeney_) is Professor of International Law in the Law School at Lancaster University. He has published widely in the areas of human rights and refugee law, and is the author of The European Court of Human Rights in the Post-Cold War Era: Universality in Transition, the first monograph to examine transitional justice in the jurisprudence of the ECHR. His work on the human rights of failed asylum seekers, [2008] Public Law 277-301, has the distinction of being cited with approval both by the House of Lords and the Court of Appeal, in the cases of R (on the application of M) v Slough BC [2008] UKHL 52, [28], and SL v Westminster City Council [2011] EWCA Civ 954, [16].
You can find out more about James’ research at http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/law/profiles/james-sweeney
Dr Amanda Cahill-Ripley
Amanda Cahill-Ripley (@AmandaCahillRip) is a Lecturer in Law and author of The Human Right to Water and its Application in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Routledge, 2013 (paperback). Her main research interests are international human rights, in particular economic and social rights; human rights, conflict and transitional justice; rights and development.
You can find out more about Amanda’s research at http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/law/profiles/amanda-cahill-ripley
Prof Paul Iganski
Writing in The Conversation today, Professor Paul Iganski discusses the Charleston Shootings and the daily reality of hate crime.
Paul Iganski (@H8Hurts) is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice in the Lancaster University Law School, UK. Paul is on the Management Board of the Lancaster University ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Sciences (CASS) and leads a CASS research project on The management of hateful invective by the courts. His latest book, Hate Crime. A Global Perspective, written together with Jack Levin from Northeastern University’s Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict, in Boston, was published in May 2015.
You can find out more Paul’s work at http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/law/profiles/paul-iganski;
Andrew Goddard
As sex industry research expands, so too do sex work preconceptions. A popular stereotype and ‘myth’ is that men are always the sex purchasers, and women the service providers. However, a recent study by Lancaster University demonstrates women buy sexual services too, in a range of settings and scenarios.
This study, led by Dr Sarah Kingston of Lancaster University promises to be the most in-depth analysis of female clients in the sex industry ever undertaken in the UK, and the early results are revealing.
Lancaster University Law School’s Dr Sarah Kingston and Manchester Metropolitan University’s Dr Natalie Hammond research into @womenwhobuysex
You can find out more about Sarah’s research at http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/law/profiles/sarah-kingston
Professor David Campbell
Under the Climate Change Act 2008, the UK has made a binding commitment to an immensely ambitious and costly programme of ‘decarbonisation’ so that (let us allow for the purposes of argument) its anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 will be 80% less than they were in 1990. Putting aside the myriad other issues which an assessment of the wisdom of this commitment must take into account, its basic rationality depends on the likelihood of other countries making comparable commitments. Decarbonisation is intended to mitigate global warming. But global warming is, precisely, a global issue. Continue reading
Dr Catherine Easton
In March 2015 a group of seven School of Law students and one staff member visited Lancaster University’s partner campus in Accra, Ghana as part of the Lancaster-Ghana Ambassadors scheme. They were accompanied by staff and students from Linguistics and Politics, Philosophy and Religion (PPR) and followed an intensive programme of educational and networking activities.
Dr Aoife Daly
Staff at the European Children’s Rights Unit (University of Liverpool) and elsewhere are involved in Children’s Rights Judgments – a project to progress the use of a children’s rights approach in judgment writing. Re A (Application for DNA Testing) [2015] EWCA Civ 133 concerns an appeal against a judgment of the Liverpool County Court and it provides a notable case study to consider from a children’s rights perspective. It is probably the least child-friendly judgment you are likely to see in this jurisdiction in recent times. The reaction by a judge to the application of a child for a court order makes for extraordinary reading, and serves as a reminder of the distance left to travel in terms of universal acceptance of children’s rights as legal actors and indeed as human beings.
LancsLaw 