University of Bristol Law School Blog
A window into the legal research carried out at the Law School
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…)
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…)
Margherita Pieraccini, Professor of Law, University of Bristol Law School.
In a paper recently published in the Journal of Environmental Law, I argue that defining the public interest and deciding in the public interest is especially problematic in fields where decisions concern collective action problems, involve multiple actors, crosstemporal and spatial scales, and occur under conditions of knowledge uncertainty. This is because there are multiple, collective, private, diffuse publics that gather around the problem in question. One such field is environmental law, on which the paper focuses. (more…)
By Kit Fotheringham, Bristol Doctoral College (University of Bristol)
In common with many developed nations, the public sector in the UK takes up a sizable proportion of economic activity. Therefore, the way the public sector is run is of interest to the public, both as citizens, who expect good administration of public services, and as taxpayers, who contribute to public finances. Of course, not all citizens are taxpayers (especially children and those on low incomes), nor can all taxpayers be regarded as citizens (notably, companies). Some scholars even question whether the balance sheet of a sovereign government with its own currency is comparable to the household pocketbook, positing that government spending contributes to overall money supply. Nevertheless, politicians play to the narrative that public money is the collective property of taxpayers, and seeking to persuade voters that their policies will offer the best protection against further encroachment on the economic interests of individuals. (more…)
By Dr Lee McConnell, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Bristol Law School
Notions of the ‘public good’ or ‘public interest’ are found in many areas of legal doctrine and discourse. At the international level, references to such ideals are perhaps most common in the context of human rights, but they are also present in many other subfields of international law. The UN Charter commits itself to the promotion of ‘social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom’, and to the ‘economic and social advancement of all peoples’. In the domain of State responsibility, erga omnes norms are said to be owed to ‘the international community as a whole’ (Barcelona Traction at [33]). The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea designates areas of the seabed and ocean floor as ‘the common heritage of mankind’ (Art 126 and preamble). The Outer Space Treaty provides that space exploration ‘shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries’ (Art 1). The GATT/WTO agreements recognise that trade relations should be ‘conducted with a view to raising standards of living, ensuring full employment and a large and steadily growing volume of real income’ worldwide (Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization, preamble). As this brief survey demonstrates, international law is a field that ‘tells a story of its own progressive development, and of its prominent role in the betterment of others’ (Sinclair, 2017: 2) It is a field which portrays itself as playing a substantial role in responding to global concerns, and as possessing ‘an immanent progressive value for the world, for civilization, for humanity’ (Skouretis, 2011: 6). (more…)
by John Coggon, Professor of Law, University of Bristol Law School
The public interest has no single, fixed definition. Even as a technical term of art its sense varies both for being context dependent and for being a question that may be settled by different sorts of institutional actor. It may, for instance, demand consideration of national security, national economic interest, protection of health, maintenance of a justice system, protection of fundamental rights. And determinations may be made by courts, politicians, legislators, executive agencies, and so on. Each can and will bring different forms and ranges of consideration to the process of determining what the public interest demands, and whether those demands are compelling. (more…)
by John Coggon, Edward Kirton-Darling, Margherita Pieraccini, Albert Sanchez-Graells, University of Bristol Law School
Widely in legal education, research, and practice, and across different areas of legal jurisdiction, law is a discipline that is characterised by its sharp division into sub-disciplines. With this division comes super-specialisation. That specialisation has the effect of inviting in-depth focus on discrete areas of law and regulation, without claims to expertise or application across the whole. At the same time, though, there are some basic legal concepts and phenomena that span the different ways that we might carve up the legal system. One, of course, is the concept of law itself. And there is a diversity of others, such as rights, duties, enforceability, and burdens of proof. A significant concept on that list is the public interest: a consequential aspect of law and regulation in practice and legal analysis. (more…)
By Miss Rachel Pougnet, PhD Candidate (University of Bristol Law School).
On 16 November 2016, three days after the terror attacks in Paris, the then-French President François Holland gathered both houses of Parliament (the National Assembly and the Senate) in Versailles. He started his speech with a grave tone, by noting that “France was at war”, and that the country needed to be “ruthless” in “such times of exceptional gravity”. He called for “national unity” and proposed a revision of the Constitution.
His proposal was to enshrine in the Constitution the procedure of the state of emergency (article 1) and the cancellation of citizenship for dual nationality holders (article 2). As Holland then put it
We must be able to strip the nationality of an individual who has been condemned for acts contrary to the fundamental interests of the Nation or acts of terrorism, even if the individual was born French, and I mean it “even if the individual was born French” so long as the person has another nationality (Holland’s speech, 5).
The proposal was eventually dropped on March 2016, following the failure of both houses to agree on a similar text on article 2, cancellation of citizenship, as required by article 89 of the Constitution. This article spread intense debate across French society and enjoyed widespread press coverage from French newspapers of all kinds. More than ten public opinion polls were issued on the subject and it prompted the resignation of Christiane Taubira, the Secretary of State for Justice. All this for a relatively short debate: 136 days in total.
It is unclear whether this failure can be attributed to the specific political context at the time (a right-wing Senate and left-wing National Assembly, the low popularity of President Holland and the uncertainty of the regional elections (which were to take place in June 2016), to the rigidity of the French Constitution (article 89 requires a majority of 3/5 of both houses gathered together in Congress), or to the importance of citizenship-nationality in the French national narrative. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between these lines. But in the broader context of an increase in recourse by states to the deprivation of nationality as a counter-terror measure (see for example the Netherlands or the UK), a closer analysis of the debate around the contested measure is warranted. (more…)