University of Bristol Law School Blog
A window into the legal research carried out at the Law School
by Isabel Inguanzo Associate Professor Department of Political Science & Administration, University of Salamanca, Spain.
In this blog post Professor Inguanzo evaluates the efficacy of free, prior and informed consent for protecting indigenous people against appropriation of ancestral land for business enterprise. (more…)
Bill Dixon Professor of Criminology, University of Nottingham.
In this blog, Professor Dixon examines the events surrounding the Marikana Massacre and provides insight into the role of violence in facilitating corporate profit and political power. (more…)
This blog features a conversation between Solomon Moses Sogbandi and Jane Rooney. Solomon discusses the impact of Amnesty International Sierra Leone’s report on MEYA mining human rights abuses; the reform of the Mines and Minerals Act 2009; the Koidu Limited Mining Company in the Kono District; and what is, if any, the UK’s role in combating human rights abuses in mining in Sierra Leone. (more…)
by Tito Magoti an Advocate of the High Court of Tanzania,
In this blog post, Tito Magoti exposes the weaknesses in the criminal justice system in Tanzania for redressing victims of police brutality in the extractive industry. (more…)
by Luis Roman Arciniega Gil
[This blog is part of a series on the pandemic. The introduction to the series can be found here.]
Two types of data enjoy freedom of movement within cyberspace networks: public data and personal data. On the one hand, at the international level, public data have been subjected to a policy of openness and spontaneous dissemination, mainly since the adoption of the G8 Open Data Charter in 2013 and the International Open Data Charter in 2015. On the other hand, personal data are generally governed by fundamental rights, namely the protection of privacy and personal data (Article 7 and 8 EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, EU-Charter). Public data are not unrelated to the guarantee of fundamental rights, especially if they are private (Lanna, 2018). Accordingly, the collection, processing and re-use of data by public or private actors is regulated by law. (more…)
by Alyane Almeida de Araujo, Université de Lille (France) and Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (Brazil)
[This blog is part of a series on the pandemic. The introduction to the series can be found here.]
What happened to work/life balance from a gender perspective during the covid pandemic in Brazil and France? This blog post attempts to answer this question by analysing the legal and the factual contexts considering the impact of stay-at-home orders on the possibility to work from home (WFH) and the gendered division of labour related to care. Taking an intersectional perspective to verify the “necessary factors” and “sufficient factors” about the law and the society, we can reflect on the ambiguities that exist with working from home, which reinforces gender stereotypes as an obstacle to achieving equality. (more…)
by Anna Madarasi, judge and a former spokesperson of the Metropolitan Court of Budapest*
[This blog is part of a series on the pandemic. The introduction to the series can be found here.]
Online hearings are on the rise across the world. In a significant number of European countries, the use of online tools in court hearings for civil and criminal law procedures were introduced even before the pandemic, although in different ways and extent. However, the use of online hearings has always been controversial. With the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the courts almost everywhere in the world started closing doors to physical presence and looked for alternative solutions to move the cases forward. It quickly became obvious that an extension of online hearings was necessary, as judicial breaks and postponements seriously affected the right to a fair trial within a reasonable time. (more…)
by Jani Hannonen, Doctoral Researcher, University of Turku (Finland)
[This blog is part of a series on the pandemic. The introduction to the series can be found here.]
The worldwide Covid-19 pandemic has reformed work culture, with many people suddenly having to work remotely. Not even the criminal justice system has escaped the pandemic unchanged because it has forced countries to arrange court hearings in a remote format or postpone them. In this blog post, I explore whether the increased use of technology in criminal procedure as a result of Covid-19 could be harnessed to combat human trafficking more effectively. I shall elaborate on the issue from the Finnish perspective that I’m personally most familiar with. (more…)
This post is part of a short series of blog posts exploring the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine against the background rules of international law. The posts are based on presentations given at an event on the subject on 7 March that was organised by the University of Bristol Law School’s Centre for International Law.
In this first blog post of the series, Professor Noëlle Quénivet from the University of the West of England introduces us to the question of the compatibility of Russia’s invasion with international humanitarian law (the law of armed conflict).
by Noëlle Quénivet, Professor in International Law, University of West of England
In the last few weeks, the press has reported numerous instances of attacks by Russian forces on cities, hospitals, airports, nuclear power plants, places of worships, etc. The list is very long. But are all these attacks automatically unlawful, as often claimed in press reports? After explaining the legal framework to determine the lawfulness of these attacks, this post, using the example of the attack on hospitals, and more specifically the maternity hospital in Mariupol, illustrates how the targeting rules apply and argues that, even in the case of an attack against medical facilities, the answer is not always a straight: ‘it is unlawful’. (more…)
By Dr Katie Bales, Lecturer in Law (University of Bristol Law School) and Dr Lucy Mayblin, Assistant Professor in Sociology (Department of Sociology, Warwick University).*
In June 2017, ten immigration detainees launched a judicial review action against the Home Office challenging the payment of ‘slave’ like wages for labour undertaken within immigration detention.
This practice, termed ‘paid work’ by the Government, is remunerated at a rate of £1.00 or £1.25 per hour and includes work as cleaners, cooks, hairdressers, gym orderlies and gardeners – roles that are essential to the running of the immigration removal centres. In 2014 this practice resulted in 44,832 hours’ worth of work.
In this blog, we argue that this work is exploitative and ‘unfree’. In recognition that many detainees wish to work however, we do not call for an end to this practice; rather we highlight the structural conditions that render detainees more likely to accept exploitative conditions of work (including but not restricted to low pay), and argue that, at the very least, detainees should be provided with the national minimum wage. (more…)