Tag: inequalities

Why we are teaching Law and Race at the University of Bristol

Posted on by lee.mcconnell

By Dr Foluke Adebisi, Teaching Fellow (University of Bristol Law School).

‘Education does not change the world. Education changes people. People change the world.’ — Paulo Freire, Brazilian Philosopher and Educator

In the 2018/2019 academic year, Yvette Russell and I will be (for the first time) teaching a unit called Law and Race. It is a very exciting prospect, not least because there are very few law schools in the UK who teach race in any direct or focused way, and much fewer have a unit dedicated to race. This has been an intellectually stimulating enterprise for both of us, and in this article, I would like to explain why we have embarked on it and what we hope to achieve.

The history of the world can be perceived as the history of continuing inequalities. Oftentimes, race functions as the motivation for and justification of oppressive social, cultural, economic and political structures. This is evidenced by colonisation, slavery, and persistent global racial inequalities that cut across gender and class. Law has often been used to create, justify or maintain these demarcations. Notwithstanding this, legal study often ignores the correlation between race and law, as well as the paradox inherent in the use of law to both oppress and liberate. In our unit we aim to examine legal history and the current state of the law in a critical exploration of how legal evolution has impacted upon and caused racial disparities, and how these factors are continuously consciously and unconsciously embedded and reproduced within the operation of law. (more…)

Working together to combat global health inequalities

Posted on by legalresearch

By Prof John Coggon, Professor of Law, and Dr Judy Laing, Reader in Law, co-Directors of the Centre for Health, Law and Society (University of Bristol Law School).

The World Health Organization (WHO) celebrated its 70th anniversary last month, on 7th April 2018, which is World Health Day. The WHO was established in 1948 and one of its founding principles provides that:

the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition.

The WHO has achieved a considerable amount in that time by focusing on many of the key challenges to reducing global health inequalities. Some of the most recent challenges faced by the WHO are the rise in drug resistance across the globe, as well as the threat of global pandemics, as witnessed with the Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa in 2014, and the burdens of noncommunicable disease. International organisations such as the WHO have a crucial role to play in tackling these threats to our health fairly and effectively, but it cannot achieve change alone. The WHO must do so in partnership with national governments and other key actors. Within these agendas, there are crucial roles for law and governance as levers to help create the conditions in which people can enjoy good physical and mental health.

One of the world’s leading global health law scholars, and one such key actor and WHO collaborator, Professor Larry Gostin, visited the Centre for Health, Law, and Society (CHLS) at the University of Bristol in April 2018 as a Benjamin Meaker Visiting Professor. He came to talk about his collaborations with the WHO, and to explore some of the key global health challenges with staff and students from across and beyond the university. A key focus throughout his visit was the ways that we can and should link scholarship with activism, policy, and practice: a question at the heart of the mission of CHLS. (more…)

What is the point of Business?

Posted on by legalresearch

By David Hunter, Consultant, Charity & Social Enterprise Department (Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP) and Knowledge Exchange Fellow (University of Bristol Law School)[1] and Ms Nina Boeger, Senior Lecturer in Law and Director of the Centre for Law and Enterprise (University of Bristol Law School).

img-20161127-wa0001Businesses are, in some respects, like cement. They are an integral part of the society we inhabit, and yet for the most part invisible to us as tangible entities. We give them little thought, but our lives would be very different were we to wake up to a world without either.

In April 2016, the UK government did invite us to think about the nature of business though as part of what it called a Mission-led Business Review. It set up an Advisory Panel and ran a public consultation and, seven months on, the Panel has reported back to the government with its recommendations[2]. The timing is interesting, with the review commencing when David Cameron was still Prime Minister, before the UK’s Referendum on EU membership and the US election, but the publication of the Panel’s findings coming when those events have demonstrated a clear sense of public discontent with the status quo.

What was the Review about, what is a ‘mission-led business’ and what are the likely responses to and impact of the Panel’s findings? (more…)