Bristol Scholars – Page 7 – University of Bristol Law School Blog

Manston Holding Facility: Does the UK’s treatment of asylum seekers violate the law?

Posted on November 14, 2022November 10, 2022 by foluke.adebisi

by Professor Devyani Prabhat, The Law School, University of Bristol

A woman held at the Manston holding facility in Kent is taking legal action against Home Secretary Suella Braverman. The asylum seeker claims that she was held unlawfully in “egregiously defective conditions” at the centre. Her case is supported by the organisation Detention Action, and another case is being put forward by the charity Bail for Immigration Detainees. Braverman has denied ignoring legal advice about conditions at the centre, which is meant for a maximum of 1,600 people but was holding more than 4,000 and has had outbreaks of norovirus, scabies and diphtheria. Braverman has been accused of not making alternative arrangements, such as hotel bookings, to accommodate the additional people. The Manston facility has become a flashpoint for criticism of the government’s current and past policies, and treatment of asylum seekers. But the situation at Manston is not just dismal, it is a violation of legal requirements in international law, domestic law and the government’s own policies. (more…)

Mapping Recent Trends in Environmental Law: Is it time to worry?

Posted on November 7, 2022November 3, 2022 by foluke.adebisi

by Professor Margherita Pieraccini, University of Bristol Law School

Following the Brexit referendum, most[1] environmental law scholars became preoccupied that domestic environmental standards may decrease, both substantively and procedurally. After all, the majority of domestic environmental law derives from EU law and the EU institutions have played a seminal role in enforcing environmental law.

Years later, the preoccupation has not faded away.

There have been numerous developments in the field. I do not intend to provide a comprehensive review here but to focus on one area of environmental law that is attracting much attention lately. No, it is not climate change. It is nature. (more…)

Project: False Allegations Watch (FAW)

Posted on October 31, 2022October 31, 2022 by foluke.adebisi

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

Posted on October 24, 2022November 22, 2022 by foluke.adebisi

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?

Posted on October 17, 2022October 12, 2022 by foluke.adebisi

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?)

Posted on October 10, 2022October 6, 2022 by foluke.adebisi

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!

Posted on October 3, 2022September 29, 2022 by foluke.adebisi

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…)

Theories of Clinical Legal Education

Posted on July 11, 2022July 11, 2022 by foluke.adebisi

by Omar Madhloom and Hugh McFaul

In a recent article, one of the authors of this blog posed the question whether Clinical Legal Education (CLE) requires theory. In an effort to address this question, we invited academics and law clinic directors from various jurisdictions such as Brazil, Canada, England, Ethiopia, Israel, and the United States to consider the theories that underpin their CLE programmes. This resulted in an edited collection entitled Thinking About Clinical Legal Education: Philosophical and Theoretical Perspectives. The intention of this volume is not to obscure or eclipse the practical and experiential by focusing on theory, but to invite the reader to consider whether the practice of CLE can be enhanced by paying more explicit attention to its theoretical underpinnings. (more…)

How are international courts dealing with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?

Posted on July 4, 2022June 27, 2022 by foluke.adebisi

by Lawrence Hill-Cawthorne, University of Bristol Law School

*UN Photo/CIJ-ICJ/Frank van Beek. Courtesy of the ICJ.*

Since the commencement of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the end of February, different international courts and tribunals have been engaged as means to invoke international responsibility for the various violations of international law that have occurred. As is often the case in international law, however, the proceedings initiated before these tribunals reflect a very particular legal framing of the broader invasion and conduct of hostilities (I wrote on this theme a few years ago in relation to the post-2014 litigation between Ukraine and Russia). This is a consequence of the absence in international law of a single, integrated judicial system with compulsory jurisdiction. Instead, there are many different courts that, for the most part, have limited subject-matter jurisdiction. (more…)