Month: October 2022

Project: False Allegations Watch (FAW)

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 by Michael Naughton, the Law School, University of Bristol

Introduction: The competing camps on alleged sexual offences

Our existing contemporary moment can be characterised in terms of an increasingly divided society along strict adversarial lines. Whether it be the recent public conversations about Brexit, COVID vaccinations, climate change or mere routine day-to-day political debates, there seems little or no place for balance, nuance, nor objectivity. Indeed, in whatever debate one cares to consider, the choice presented to us seems to be to simply pick a side where: ‘you are either with us or against us’; ‘in or out’; ‘one of us or one of them’; ‘a friend or an enemy’. (more…)

A 21st Century Approach to Vicarious Liability Across the Common Law World

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by Professor Paula Giliker, University of Bristol Law School

The common law doctrine of vicarious liability in tort is both controversial and on the move.  In the last 20 years, this doctrine – which holds one party (usually an employer) strictly liable for the torts of an employee that take place in the course of their employment – has given rise to significant decisions in the apex courts of common law jurisdictions across the world.  There has been an unprecedented level of cross-citation between common law jurisdictions, not only of decisions of the UK Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Canada (Bazley v Curry [1999]; Lister v Hesley Hall Ltd [2001]; Various Claimants v Catholic Child Welfare Society (CCWS) [2012]) but also of decisions from the Supreme Court of Ireland (Hickey v McGowan [2017]), the Singapore Court of Appeal (Skandinavska Enskilda Banken AB (Publ) v Asia Pacific Breweries (Singapore) Pte Ltd [2011]; Ng Huat Seng v Mohammad [2017]), the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong (Ming An Insurance Co (HK) Ltd v Ritz-Carlton Ltd [2002] and the New Zealand Court of Appeal (S v Attorney-General [2003]).  It is an area therefore ripe for research but one in which this newly published book takes a distinct approach, arguing that to understand vicarious liability, we need to understand both the context in which these decisions are delivered and their underlying policy reasoning. (more…)

Can The UK Be Held Accountable for Breaches of the Human Rights of Asylum-Seekers Transferred to Rwanda?

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by Kathryn Allinson, University of Bristol Law School

On 14 April 2022, the UK and the Rwandan governments signed an MoU outlining plans for transferring asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda. The MoU has been subject to much criticism from academics, NGOs and the UNHCR. Criticism has focussed, first, on the attempts by the UK to divest itself of responsibility for asylum seekers. Second, it has highlighted the potential for further abuses of refugee and human rights law to occur against transferred individuals in Rwanda. The MoU is the latest in a range of mechanisms whereby States in the Global North attempt to externalise their borders and shift responsibility for refugees onto Global South states. (more…)

Deciding on the Unknown: Can we handle the truth? (And do we even want to?)

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by Joanna McCunn and Andrew Bell, University of Bristol Law School

 

In June this year, there was a revolution in the English court system. Under the Small Claims Paper Determination Pilot, some claimants seeking £1,000 or less lost the right to an oral hearing of their case. In pilot areas, only small claims involving a ‘significant factual dispute’ or ‘complex’ issues will be allowed their day in open court. If you are bringing a claim in the pilot area for something like a parking ticket, or flight delay compensation, or have another kind of low-value dispute with another person or company, you will not be able to have your argument presented in person. Regardless of your wishes, you will have to write your argument down and the judge will decide without anyone there.

(more…)

How Do We Create Good Online Classrooms? Through Strong Expectations!

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By Kit Fotheringham, University of Bristol Law School

“Treat someone as they are and they will remain as they are. Treat someone as they can and should be and they will become as they can and should be.”

― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

The question of how to achieve good outcomes from online classrooms is a problem that has recently faced teachers and lecturers in all disciplines and at all educational levels. In this blog post, I reflect on the experience of leading online classes in a number of different contexts during the course of the global pandemic. I argue that good online classrooms do not emerge from nowhere, instead good online classrooms are created through strong expectations. (more…)