Category: Bristol Scholars

The international legal implications of supporting Israel, in light of the ICJ’s provisional measures and advisory opinion

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by Dr. Kathryn Allinson, Lecturer in Law, University of Bristol

Destruction in the Gaza Strip, Palestine. Image by Hosny Salah, a Palestinian photographer living in the Gaza Strip. Follow him on Pixabay

The UK government is currently in the High Court defending its ongoing supply of fighter jet components to Israel. The legal dispute centres on the government’s choice to exclude F-35 parts while halting 30 arms licenses to Israel in September 2024. The F-35 plays a crucial role in Israel’s operations in Gaza, enabling the deployment of highly destructive missile strikes. An incident on July 30 resulted in the deaths of 90 Palestinians and injuries to over 300. The lawsuit contends that the UK government’s policy violates the Strategic Export Licensing Criteria, which prohibit the sale of arms to nations where they could be used in violation of international law. (more…)

Introduction to Extractive Industry and Foreign Security Network Blog Series

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Dr Lee McConnell is a Senior Lecturer in International Law at the University of Bristol Law School and the primary investigator on the Arts and Humanity Research Council Research Networking Scheme AH/W0072X/1 project, Extractive Industry and Foreign Security Network. Dr Jane Rooney is a Co-investigator and Associate Professor in International Law at Durham Law School. Our Project Partner is the NGO Rights and Accountability in Development.

The Extractive Industry and Foreign Security Network is an international, multi-stakeholder, interdisciplinary research network that investigates adverse human rights impacts arising from the interactions between UK-based extractive industries and the security forces in foreign States.

This blog series distils discussions that took place during the three workshops and two public engagement events from 2023-2024 funded by the AHRC. This series is published alongside a commissioned contribution in a forthcoming Debates and Dialogue Section of the Social and Legal Studies Journal. (more…)

BABEL project researchers work with University of Bristol students to raise awareness of mental capacity law

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by Gus Harrison, Judy Laing, Sheelagh McGuinness, and Patty Miranda

Setting the stage: six years of the BABEL project

The Wellcome-funded BABEL project at the University of Bristol has, for the last six years or so, been exploring best interests decision making for adults and children in England and Wales. The collaborative project started towards the end of 2018 and involved several different work strands with researchers based in the Centre for Health, Law, and Society (CHLS) and the Centre for Ethics in Medicine.  The law work strand, based in the CHLS at the Law School, focused on best interests decision-making in law. The law research team – Judy Laing, Sheelagh McGuinness, and Aoife Finnerty—carried out empirical research with legal practitioners to find out their views about this branch of legal decision-making. The research findings are now being written up and will be published later this year, including in an edited book, to be published by Bristol University Press in 2026. (more…)

Why Helen Pitcher’s resignation as Chair of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) is a red herring to distract attention away from the ‘real possibility test’

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By Dr Michael Naughton, Reader in Sociology and Law (University of Bristol Law School and  School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS)).

Introduction

It is understandable that when we are wronged or we or a loved one experiences a grave injustice that we want someone to take responsibility for it and something to be done in response to try to put it right. Such responsibility would entail an apology that shows genuine remorse or regret that the wrong occurred, insight that the cause of the wrong is appropriately understood, assurances that such a wrong will not happen again and, if possible, redress for the harm that has been caused. (more…)

Caging the Bird: Vicarious Liability in the High Court of Australia

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by Professor Paula Giliker, University of Bristol Law School

The recent decision of the High Court of Australia (HCA) in Bird v DP [2024] HCA 41 creates a radical split between the treatment of vicarious liability in Australia and other common law states such as England and Wales and Canada. It is therefore a case worthy of consideration across the common law world. Its impact will be examined in this blog. (more…)

Assisted Dying Bill: Why the challenge for MPs is not a lack of information

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by Colin Gavaghan, Professor of Law, University of Bristol Law School

Anil Douglas said his father, Ian, was suffering from multiple sclerosis and secretly took his own life in February 2019, with his illness at an advanced stage. (AFP pic)

The debate around the latest assisted dying bill – Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (TIA Bill) – has taken some unexpected turns. The usual arguments around choice and safety, the sanctity of life and dignity in death, have been supplemented by a range of procedural concerns. Some veteran MPs have even expressed the surprising argument that their new colleagues are too inexperienced to fully understand a matter of such importance. On the face of it, this is a remarkable claim; as Hannah White and Jill Rutter wrote in an article for the Institute for Government,  ‘being willing to use one’s personal judgement to decide matters of national importance – without the comforting guidance of the party whips – is a core competence for the role.’ (more…)

A Fresh Reflection on COP 16 and the Convention on Biological Diversity

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by Professor Margherita Pieraccini, Professor of Law at the University of Bristol Law School

As 2024 is drawing to a close, Conferences of the Parties (COPs) of three major Multilateral Environmental Agreements are happening in close succession: COP 16 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was held between end of October and the beginning of November, COP 29 of the UN Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is happening in mid-November, and COP 16 of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification will take place in early December. Although exploring the synergies between these three COPs is of great importance and their close temporal proximity this year facilitates such discussion, I will focus solely on the CBD COP 16 as I had the opportunity to attend it in person as a University of Bristol academic observer. (more…)

Enforcement and the Greater Good: The View from Financial Services Law & Regulation

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By James Davey, Professor of Insurance & Commercial Law, University of Bristol Law School

Assume that we can agree what the greater good entails. And that we can design an optimal set of rules or principles that meets this objective. Who should enforce these rules, and how? This is an issue that caught the attention of leading scholars in the second half of the twentieth century. Papers by Becker, Stigler and Posner are emblematic of an initial burst of activity in the 1960s. This has since developed into a distinct branch of regulatory theory. Over time, this broadened beyond the architecture of public law and has become an embedded element within private law. This co-option of private law, and in particular the law of contract, as a form of governance has been decried by some but is now well established as a regulatory technique (Collins, 1999). (more…)

Copyright and the Public Interest

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Yin Harn Lee, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Bristol Law School

‘So … we have what the people are interested in, and human interest stories, which is what humans are interested in, and the public interest, which no one is interested in?’
‘Except the public, sir,’ said William, trying to keep up.
‘Which isn’t the same as people and humans.’
‘I think it’s more complicated than that, sir.’

— Terry Pratchett, The Truth (more…)

The Procurement Act 2023’s Kaleidoscopic View of the Public Interest

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Albert Sanchez-Graells, Professor of Economic Law, University of Bristol Law School

This blog post is based on the paper that was jointly awarded the Best Paper Prize Award 2024 by the Society of Legal Scholars. The paper will be published in Legal Studies in due course.(*)

Public procurement is concerned with the award of contracts for the supply, for pecuniary interest, of goods, services or works to the public sector. At its heart, public procurement governs the expenditure of public funds and, ultimately, should ensure that such expenditure is in the public interest. One could be forgiven for simplifying the goal of procurement to ensuring that public money is well spent, which could be further elaborated (following Schooner 2002) to encompass promoting integrity and value for money in the award of public contracts, and acting transparently to facilitate accountability. Even at this level of simplification, however, there is scope for contestation of e.g. what value for money entails (with a long-running debate on price/quality trade-offs), or whether it can or must (solely) be promoted through market-based competition (see e.g. Sanchez-Graells 2015, addressing the objections raised by Arrowsmith 2012 and Kunzlik 2013). (more…)