Category: Bristol Scholars

The weaponisation of women’s right to health in Iran and the compulsory hijab Part I: The Hijab and Chastity Bill

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by Gelara Fanaeian, the Law School, University of Bristol

In July 2023, the Iranian parliament started the process of new legislation and harsher laws for women who fail to follow compulsory hijab laws. The outcome was the Hijab and Chastity Bill: a draft law consisting of 70 articles. MPs relied on Article 85 of Iran’s constitution to review bills without public debate. According to UN experts, “The draft law could be described as a form of gender apartheid. The bill violates fundamental rights, including the right to take part in cultural life, the prohibition of gender discrimination, the right to access social, educational, and health services, and freedom of movement.” Less than one month after the UN warning, a majority of the Iranian parliament voted to pass the bill for a 3-year trial. This article will highlight the impact of the bill on one aspect of women’s rights: the right to health. Before going deeply into this discussion, one fundamental question needs to be answered: Why has the Iranian parliament decided to approve the bill? (more…)

In Memoriam: The Continuing Relevance of Bruno Latour to Socio-Legal Studies

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By Caoimhe Ring, University of Bristol Law School

Gabriela Lesniewska on Unsplash.

 

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”

― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis (Schocken Books 1948, trans. Willa Muir)

What can Socio-Legal Studies learn from the termite hill? From the microbes in Louis Pasteur’s petri dish? Or the dust on the files of the Conseil d’État? All of it, the late Bruno Latour tells us, are informants carrying clues about the processes which make up what we call society or culture. These things—from pipettes to armchairs, to mice and files—can be considered equally as participants in social action. At this suggestion, many Socio-Legal scholars recoil. The common riposte is that objects do not feel like the typical subjects of our research; the décor does not share the drama with the actors. Even if they are not reducible to such tendencies, Socio-Legal questions carry attendant humanist impulses; a commitment to human dignity and the complexity of the human condition. The constructivist paradigm places a primacy on methods which centre human agency, such as being in the field and on face-to-face methods precisely because we seek to explicate the social dimensions of law. Objects, however, are more than the ‘scenery and stage props for the spate of human action’ (Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life 1956, p.13). Amidst the climate crisis, it has never been timelier to review Latour’s contributions to challenge the Western, capitalist human exceptionalism implicit in the canon of Socio-Legal Studies. (more…)

Resh(AI)ping good administration: beyond systemic risks vs individual rights?

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By Professor Albert Sanchez-Graells, Co-Director of the Centre for Global Law and Innovation (University of Bristol Law School).

The Digital Constitutionalist (DigiCon) has recently hosted a symposium on ‘Safeguarding the Right to Good Administration in the Age of AI’, co-edited by Dr Simona Demková (Leiden), Dr Melanie Fink (Leiden) and Dr Giulia Gentile (Essex). Professor Sanchez-Graells contributed his thoughts on the need to extend good administration requirements to the phases of decision-making that are not yet directly relevant to the individual, as well as the need to broaden good administration guarantees to a collective dimension, to account for the new risks arising in the AI-driven administrative context. In this post, first published in the DigiCon symposium, Albert looks at ways to achieve this, whether through an expansive interpretation of Article 41 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union or through a European legislative reform. (more…)

Can we avoid ‘false friends’ in transnational commercial law conventions? – the case of adequate assurance of performance under the CISG

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by Dr Katarzyna Kryla-Cudna, The Law School, University of Bristol

The concept of faux amis (‘false friends’) has been used in the literature to describe terms used in an international convention which seem familiar to an interpreter but which, in fact, are defined differently in the convention to in the domestic legal system the interpreter is used to. Several instances of faux amis have been identified on the basis of the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). One major example can be found in the US case of Delchi Carrier SpA v Rotorex Corp., which required an interpretation of Article 74 CISG. This provision states that ‘damages may not exceed the loss which the party in breach foresaw or ought to have foreseen at the time of the conclusion of the contract.’ The US court understood this rule as a reference to the ‘familiar principle of foreseeability established in Hadley v Baxendale.’ Hadley v Baxendale is the leading English case on remoteness of damage and has also gained recognition in the US. Rather than referring to the preparatory works and other materials examining the specific meaning of the foreseeability rule under the CISG, the court thus reached for an analogy from its own jurisdiction. (more…)

Innocence Art and the Art of Innocence

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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))

Andy Malkinson by Sean Bw Parker

The purpose of this article is to formally launch the Innocence Art project under the auspices of Empowering the Innocent (ETI). In so doing, it charts the origins of the concept ‘innocence art’ and how it relates to ‘the art of innocence’, a dedicated approach to producing counter discourse through forms of innocence art to challenge the dominant discourses and existing criminal justice system arrangements in relation to false allegations, wrongful convictions and wrongful imprisonment. It concludes with a call to those affected by false allegations, wrongful convictions or wrongful imprisonment, whether direct or secondary victims, to participate in the art of innocence by submitting forms of innocence art, whether images of paintings, drawings or photographs, poems, stories or other literary works, to feature on Empowering the Innocent (ETI) websites as deemed appropriate. (more…)

Vicarious Liability and Course of Employment in the UK Supreme Court and High Court of Australia

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by Professor Paula Giliker, University of Bristol Law School

This blog will discuss two recent and important 2023 cases: the UK Supreme Court decision in Trustees of the Barry Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses v BXB [2023] UKSC 15 and that of the High Court of Australia in CCIG Investments Pty Ltd v Schokman [2023] HCA 21.  Both discuss vicarious liability and, in particular, the Stage 2 course of employment test. To establish vicarious liability in tort, two stages must be satisfied. Stage 1 is concerned with the relationship between the defendant and the person committing the tort (usually that of employer/employee). Stage 2 is concerned with the link between the commission of the tort and that relationship.

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Unlawful deportations and House of Lords amendments: What now for people seeking asylum in the UK?

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by Kathryn Allinson, Lecturer in Law, University of Bristol

It has been a busy few weeks in the life of the Illegal Migration Bill with a record 20 amendments made to it by the House of Lords and the Court of Appeal declaring that removals to Rwanda are unlawful. However, what does this mean for those people seeking asylum in the UK?

Court of Appeal rules that removals to Rwanda are unlawful

The government’s proposed plan to send people seeking asylum to Rwanda was ruled unlawful by the Court of Appeal on Thursday, 29 June 2023. The case was brought by Asylum Aid as well as 10 people from countries including Syria, Iraq and Albania, who arrived in the UK in small boats. Whilst the High Court had supported the government’s policy, the Court of Appeal judges, Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett, Sir Geoffrey Vos and Lord Justice Underhill, ruled that Rwanda was not a sufficiently safe country and there was too great a risk that genuine refugees could be returned to countries where they risked persecution. (more…)

How can we evaluate Brexit?

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by Professor Phil Syrpis,  University of Bristol Law School

This article examines attempts to evaluate Brexit. Brexit is a ‘complex event’ which involves far-reaching political, economic, legal and social change. When, as in relation to Brexit, the stakes are high and opinions are entrenched, methodologies are bound to attract critical attention. In the light of the prevalence of ever-louder claims that ‘Brexit has failed’, this piece discusses the inherent difficulties in making such an apparently definitive assessment of ‘a complex event’. In the specific case of Brexit, the near absence of settled objectives compounds the difficulties, with the result that the criteria on which evaluations are based will inevitably be contested. (more…)

The Post-pandemic World: Digitalization and cultural sector

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by Tingting Bai* 

[This blog is part of a series on the pandemic. The introduction to the series can be found here.]

Digitalization in the cultural sector can support the dissemination of culture and was very beneficial in maintaining the economic, social and cultural activities during the covid-19 pandemic. Digitalization also has transformed the cultural sector in relation to public access and the operating model in the post-pandemic world. More irresistible and intensive than before, digitalization will be a crucial and unavoidable challenge in the reboot of the cultural sector. As such, it is important to rethink infrastructures, accessibility, cultural attractivity, legal rules, management of cultural content and data, and their effects on health. The objective of this blog post is to rethink digitalization within the context of the cultural sector and the cultural practices of the public. It will analyze the situation of the cultural sector in the post-pandemic period and its opportunities, challenges and problems. In particular, the blog aims at exploring some of the systemic risks involved in the digital evolution with an focus on France. (more…)

What are the main shortcomings of the ‘pro-innovation approach to AI regulation’ white paper published by the UK Government in March 2023?

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By Andrew Charlesworth, Kit Fotheringham, Colin Gavaghan, Albert Sanchez-Graells and Clare Torrible (Centre for Global Law and Innovation, University of Bristol Law School). 

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been permeating all aspects of our lives for a while. AI underpins several of the digital services we use and, perhaps less known to most of us, an increasing number of public services. However, only recently and on the back of questionable claims about existential AI threats, has AI regulation started to grab mainstream headlines, permeate public discourse, and quickly rise to the top of the political agenda. Before this recent flurry of AI regulation discourse, in late March 2023, the UK Government published a much-awaited white paper setting out its ‘pro-innovation approach to AI regulation’ (the AI White Paper). Much has happened in the short period since the AI White Paper was published, including the launch of a £100m Foundation Model Taskforce, the appointment of its Chair, and the announcement that, in a bid to lead the global discussion on AI guardrails, the UK will convene a global AI safety summit.  (more…)