Foundation for Law, Justice and Society: Recent Episodes
Oxford University
Podcasts from the Foundation for Law, Justice and Society, an independent institution affiliated with Wolfson College and the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford.
John Cairns and Scott Peterson discuss Adam Smith's lost work on jurisprudence, examining his influence on the Scottish legal profession and religious freedoms
Senior Research Fellow in Politics Professor Iain McLean unearths the secrets of Adam Smith's lost work on jurisprudence, and posits a connection between smith's jurisprudence and the framers of the US Declaration of Independence and Constitution Senior Research Fellow in Politics Professor Iain McLean unearths the secrets of Adam Smith's lost work on jurisprudence, and posits a connection between smith's jurisprudence and the framers of the US Declaration of Independence and Constitution.Adam Smith is renowned as a founding father of economics, yet he also worked for decades on a book that would have spanned the ground between his moral philosophy and his sociological and economic writing. This was lost to posterity when Smith ordered his manuscripts to be destroyed from his deathbed. However, two students at the University of Glasgow took extensive notes from his lecture series on jurisprudence. Professor McLean situates the development of Smith's thought on jurisprudence in the context of the Scottish Enlightenment, and, emerging as it does from a stadial view of history by which society develops in a series of stages (hunter-gatherer, pastoral, crop-growing, commercial) based on modes of production, posited that he was an important influence on Karl Marx a century later.He concludes by showing that one James Wilson had signed the registry of attendance at Smith's lectures in Glasgow, and that this signature bore a close resemblance to that of a certain James Wilson, later a Justice of the US Supreme Court, who had been a signatory to both the US Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution: "I posit, but can't prove, that James Wilson, one of the leaders of the Federalist Party, learnt his jurisprudence at the feet of Adam Smith."
Historian of Protest Katrina Navickas discusses her involvement in Mike Leigh's film Peterloo, and its political and contemporary resonances Historian of Protest Katrina Navickas discusses her involvement in the historical research for Mike Leigh's film Peterloo, and its political and contemporary resonances.The film depicts the nascent labour movement of the nineteenth century, as the hunger and poverty brought about by the Corn Laws (which barred imports of cheap grain from the continent) drove 60,000 peaceful protesters to Manchester’s St Peter’s Field to demand the reform of parliamentary representation.When the demonstration was brutally put down by the cavalry, leaving 18 people dead and hundreds injured, the government moved to suppress reporting by a nascent free press, and the event has since been largely forgotten.On the bicentenary year of the massacre, and with the current resurgence of popular demonstrations and civil disobedience over Brexit and the climate crisis, Peterloo offers an invaluable reminder of the power of political resistance.
LSE media expert and government adviser Damian Tambini and Roxana Radu from Oxford Law Faculty respond to the UK government’s White Paper on Online Harms and assess the implications of the new rights of the digital age such as the ‘right to be forgotten’. Damian Tambini, LSE Professor in Media and Communications and government adviser, responds to the UK government’s pioneering proposals for new laws and an independent regulator, Ofweb, to make social media companies responsible for harms caused by content published on their platforms.He reviews the Online Harms White Paper, endorsing the duty of care placed on internet companies toward their users, but warning against measures that will unduly chill free speech or damage media plurality. Oxford media law researcher Roxana Radu sheds light on the algorithms that process the vast quantities of personal data held by social media companies, arguing that they are highly biased, enhancing existing societal inequalities and introducing new ones.She reviews the specific rights that might come from new phenomena in the digital age, such as the recently introduced ‘right to be forgotten’ whereby a Spanish lawyer won a legal case against Google to have information related to a past bankruptcy removed from search results of his name, on the grounds that it was harming his right to do business.
Jufang Wang, former news editor in China, and Ralph Schroeder of the Oxford Internet Institute, assess the Communist Party’s efforts to control public opinion in China by regulation of social media platforms and the controversial ‘social credit system’. Jufang Wang, a former news editor in China and academic visitor at the BBC, offers insights into the Communist Party’s efforts to control public opinion in China through its regulation of social media platforms such as Weibo, WeChat, and Toutiao. As the gap widens between the official pronouncements of the Party and the views and opinions expressed through social media, the state is increasingly concerned about how this can erode and destabilize its legitimacy in the eyes of its citizens. In response, platforms are regulated as online news providers and licensed, so their ability to operate can be revoked if they do not comply with the state’s requirements, all of which is enforced through 24-hour policing of content by tens of thousands of content moderators.Ralph Schroeder from the Oxford Internet Institute presents his conception of online platforms as part of a complex infrastructure controlled by algorithmic logic. He argues that the fragmented, weak civil society in China cannot mobilize as a coherent threat to the state and that the state would not be best served by a blanket repression of social media through which civil society expresses its opinions, and through which trends in popular opinion can be identified. The controversial 'social credit system' the Chinese state employs for surveillance and social management of the population is perceived in the West as Orwellian – yet Prof Schroeder cites research to indicate that Chinese citizens see it as a means to protect themselves against the unscrupulous behaviour of private companies.
Legal researchers Katarina Sipulova and Nick Friedman describe corruption in politics and the judiciary in the post-transitional states of Eastern Europe and South Africa Katarína Šipulová recounts the capture of one arm of the state – the judiciary – in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, where post-Soviet democratization was largely influenced by the EU accession conditionality, and consequently paid little regard to the specific factors at play in the region, leading to vague rules and poor oversight of the judiciary, which was consequently captured from within.Nick Friedman examines the situation in South Africa, where a $7 billion corruption scandal involving a trio of brothers from the Gupta family seized control of the state under President Zuma, leading to his resignation last year. Dr Friedman notes that despite the failures at state level, the scandal showed the importance of maintaining robust actors within the system, such as the minister who exposed the scandal, the fiercely independent media that broke the story, and a court system that is conducting an investigation into the wrongdoing.
Constitutional expert Prof Neil Walker tackles the thorny issue of issues of Brexit and the problems caused by populist politics Professor Neil Walker, Regius Professor of Public Law and the Law of Nature and Nations at the University of Edinburgh, argues both that populist forces encouraged Brexit and that Brexit has in turn hardened populist attitudes, identifying this cyclically reinforcing process as a key feature of British populism: "Populism, by contributing to the political and cultural impasse, may exacerbate the very discontent to which it is one response."Looking to the future prospects for the UK as a whole, Prof Walker identifies a long-term political cultural rift and drift – a 'two tribes' effect – and voices scepticism that we will find either a constitutional solution to the problem of Brexit, or some form of constitutional reform and renewal in its wake. He diagnoses that a written constitution for the UK may have forestalled many of the problems of the referendum process, asking: "Why did we have a referendum with a simple majority, rather than a supermajority?", and argues that: "If we had a written constitution we could point to conflict between one Agreement, i.e. Brexit, and another, i.e. the Anglo-Irish agreement."
Former UK Ambassador to Tokyo Sir Tim Hitchens and East Asian cinema expert Tony Rayns introduce a FLJS Films screening of Hirokazu Kore-eda's 2017 film The Third Murder Former UK Ambassador to Tokyo Sir Tim Hitchens and East Asian cinema expert Tony Rayns introduce a FLJS Films screening of Hirokazu Kore-eda's 2017 film The Third Murder.Sir Tim Hitchens shares his personal experience and insights on popular attitudes towards the death penalty in Japan and makes a stirring call to arms to challenge countries in which the death penalty persists.Tony Rayns discusses the film's background and genesis, appraising its place in the body of Kore-eda's work, for which he will be regarded as one of the greats of Japanese cinema. The talk illuminates the key themes and moral ambiguities of the film, including the complexities of familial relationships, the relativity of truth, and the tensions between societal pressures and the nature of the human spirit. Sir Tim Hitchens is the President of Wolfson College, Oxford, and a former Director-General of the Economic and Consular at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Sir Tim has over thirty years of experience as a diplomat, and was most recently British Ambassador to Tokyo.Tony Rayns is a film critic, commentator, festival programmer, screenwriter, and one of the world’s leading experts on Asian cinema. He has written extensively for Sight & Sound, books about Seijun Suzuki, Wong Kar-wai and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and has been awarded the Foreign Ministry of Japan’s Commendation for services to Japanese cinema.
Professor Denis Galligan, Emeritus Professor of Socio-Legal Studies, delivers the 2018 Max Watson Annual Lecture at Wolfson College, on the constitutional consequences of the rise in populist movements around the world. Professor Denis Galligan, Emeritus Professor of Socio-Legal Studies, delivers the 2018 Max Watson Annual Lecture on the constitutional consequences of the rise in populist movements around the world.Following the rise of hardline populists such as Erdogan in Turkey, Trump in the US, Orbán in Hungary, Duterte in the Philippines, and Bolsonaro in Brazil, the lecture consider what the popularity of political strongmen tells us about the place of the People in the constitution.
Christopher Hodges, Professor of Justice Systems, will deliver the 2017 Max Watson Annual Lecture to present his proposals to support an ethical basis for business practice and regulation. Professor Hodges will present his research into the concept of Ethical Business Regulation (EBR), which aims to foster a business culture of mutual engagement, respect, learning, and constant improvement, based on social trust.He will ask:How do we stem the flow of corporate scandals (recently Rolls Royce, VW), save money on regulators (Better Regulation), and improve effective ‘compliance’, whilst observing the new 'growth duty'?Does the answer lie in deterrence, or behavioural psychology/economics, or structures (such as the Primary Authority scheme or ‘regulated self-assurance’), or ‘no blame' cultures (such as aviation safety), or embedding ethical values? The lecture will be a wide-ranging tour d’horizon of current theories and enforcement practice, and apply socio-legal empirical analysis to the evidence, with answers that some will find challenging.It will build on Professor Hodges' ideas previously published by the UK Government in their Review of Ethics for Regulators conducted by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, and in his FLJS Policy Brief, Ethical Business Regulation.
Stuart H Newberger, author and international lawyer gives a talk for the FLJS seminar series. A book colloquium featuring Stuart H Newberger, an international lawyer who represented victims of the terrorist plot hatched by Colonel Gaddafi that brought down French Airlines Flight 772. His latest book The Forgotten Flight: Terrorism, Diplomacy and the Pursuit of Justice tells the story of how he fought for justice for seven of the 170 people killed in one of the deadliest acts of terrorism in history.This real-life legal thriller combines the international intrigue of le Carré with the courtroom drama of John Grisham, and asks how we can bring leaders of sovereign nations to account for their crimes.For the first time, Stuart Newberger reveals how French investigators cracked the case and takes us inside the courtroom to witness the litigation against the Libyan state that followed. In the age of globalization, The Forgotten Flight provides a fascinating insight into the pursuit of justice across international borders.The author will introduce his book, followed by comments by three commentators:
In this keynote lecture, leading political writer Timothy Garton Ash will present his ten guiding principles for a connected world, and offer a manifesto for global free speech in the digital age. Drawing on a lifetime of writing about dictatorships and dissidents, Oxford Professor of European Studies Timothy Garton Ash will argue that we are currently experiencing an unprecedented era in human history for freedom of expression.If we have internet access, any one of us can publish almost anything we like, potentially reaching an audience of millions. Never was there a time when the evils of unlimited speech flowed so easily across frontiers: violent intimidation, gross violations of privacy, tidal waves of abuse. A pastor burns a Koran in Florida and UN officials die in Afghanistan.In this connected world that he calls cosmopolis, the way to combine freedom and diversity is to have more but also better free speech. Across all cultural divides, we must strive to agree on how we disagree.Professor Garton Ash will draw on a unique, thirteen-language global conversation and online research project, freespeechdebate.com, alongside his latest book, Free Speech, to present his ten principles for a connected world.He will illustrate his talk with vivid examples from his personal experience of China's Orwellian censorship apparatus, to the controversy around Charlie Hebdo, to a very English court case involving food writer Nigella Lawson, and propose a framework for civilized conflict in a world in which we are all becoming neighbours.
Mark Knights, Professor of History, University of Warwick, gives a talk for the FLJS Seminar Series on 2nd May 2017. Is there, as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice Liz Truss has suggested, a 'settled will of the people'? If so, how is this best expressed: through a referendum, through Parliament, or through petitions?We have recently seen enormous e-petitions about Brexit and Donald Trump's visit to the UK; but what is the history of petitioning in British political culture and how does the voice of the petitioner square with other forms of representation? What indeed, was the legal status of a petition, and how was this disputed?In this lecture, Professor Mark Knights of the University of Warwick will assess how the will of the British people has been expressed through the device of petitioning throughout the ages, and draw lessons for the Britain of today.
The Putney Debates 2017 addresses the UK's constitutional future in the wake of the vote to leave the European Union. Session IV: Preserving the Liberal Constitution, chaired by Baroness Onora O’Neill, considers the constitutional implications of Brexit and the need for a written Constitution for the UK.
The Putney Debates 2017 addresses the UK's constitutional future in the wake of the vote to leave the European Union. Session III: Parliament, the Executive, the Courts and the Rule of Law, chaired by Joshua Rozenberg, assesses the Article 50 case, the Royal Prerogative, and the role of the law.
The Putney Debates 2017 addresses the UK's constitutional future in the wake of the vote to leave the European Union. Session II: Changing and Strengthening the Role of the People, chaired by Professor Paul Craig, examines direct democracy, referendums, and the role of social media in strengthening the voice of the people.
The Putney Debates 2017 addresses the UK's constitutional future in the wake of the vote to leave the European Union. Session I: Parliament and the People, chaired by Professor Denis Galligan, addresses the relationship between parliamentary sovereignty and popular democracy.
Richard Parker, Paul W. Williams Professor of Criminal Justice at Harvard Law School, presents his thoughts on how populism has figured in the study and practice of modern American constitutional law and the effect it has had. Opening and closing his remarks with the rallying cry: 'Power to the People!', Professor Parker recalls his involvement in the 'New Left' in the 1960s, his role as a community organizer, and how his activism led to spells in jail.
Professor Liam B Murphy, Herbert Peterfreund Professor of Law and Philosophy at New York University School of Law gives the 2013 Annual Lecture in Law and Society. In the wake of the House of Commons Debate on tax fairness and increasing public outrage at tax avoidance by Google and other multinationals, Professor Murphy will assess how misunderstandings of the ethical bases of the central legal institutions of a market economy badly distorts political debate on tax and other issues of social justice. Unlike some other parts of the law, the law of property and contract cannot plausibly be understood as attempts to enforce moral rights and duties that legal subjects have naturally, independently of law. They must be understood as Hume understood them: The legal rules of property and contract are artificial, or conventional, in that their justification lies in their effects on overall social welfare and justice. Once the law of property and contract are established, however, it is hard not to think of them as directly reflecting real rights and duties. The law of the market encourages a kind of everyday libertarianism in social attitudes. This illusion leads us to believe, for example, that pre-tax income and wealth represent moral entitlements that should be used as a baseline in discussions of tax justice. The common criteria of tax fairness - vertical and horizontal equity - demand that those with more pre-tax income pay proportionately more tax, and that those with the same pre-tax income pay the same. But justice is not a matter of applying some equitable-seeming functions to a morally arbitrary initial distribution. The social illusion generated by the law of the market also distorts political discussion of contract. Everyday libertarianism lies behind the idea of freedom of contract. More surprising, it misleads some economic analysts of law, who would be the first to insist on the conventional nature of the law of contract.
Martin Wolf of the FT, one of the world's leading economists, argues that the status quo for the eurozone is untenable, and that the crisis could trigger Britain's exit from the EU, or even the break-up of the UK itself. Britain has become a semi-detached member of the European Union, both psychologically and politically. But the eurozone crisis is likely to alter that situation further, whatever its outcome. The status quo for the eurozone is untenable: it will either become more integrated or disintegrate. Either way, the European Union will be transformed and so will Britain's place, whether inside or, quite possibly, outside it.
A panel of leading academics, judges, and policymakers debate the growing trend towards the judicialization of politics, in which judges are increasingly implicated in settling policy disputes, especially in the context of constitutional rights. Discussants for the Debate: Former Home Secretary Charles Clarke, Lord Justice Jacob, Professor Richard Bellamy, the Hon. Mr Philip Sales, Professor Tony Wright, and Professor Daniel Kelemen.
Aharon Barak answers a question from Guardian Legal Affairs correspondent Afua Hirsch on the difference between protecting human rights and concerns of governments in power in war. Part 6 of the 2009 Foundation for Law Justice and Society Annual Lecture.
Aharon Barak talks about the implications for human rights law of Israel barring family reunification between Palestinian and Israeli citizens. Part 5 of the 2009 Foundation for Law Justice and Society Annual Lecture.
Aharon Barak discusses how the political and judicial branches of government balance their sometimes conflicting interests with the rights of the citizens. Part 4 of the 2009 Foundation for Law Justice and Society Annual Lecture.
Aharon Barak talks about the need for proportionality within human rights law as a means for protecting it against other considerations. Part 3 of the 2009 Foundation for Law Justice and Society Annual Lecture.
Aharon Barak discusses the idea of Freedom of Speech and asks whether it is right to limit this freedom to protect against hate speech. Part 2 of the 2009 Foundation for Law Justice and Society Annual Lecture.
Aharon Barak talks about human rights and the limitations imposed on them that are necessary for society to preserve itself. Part 1 of the 2009 Foundation for Law Justice and Society Annual Lecture.
The former President of the Israeli Supreme Court Aharon Barak addresses the appropriate balance between security and the safeguarding of human rights.
In a keynote lecture the Chief Justice of South Africa addressed the relationship between the entrenchment and enforceability of socio-economic rights in South Africa. Chief Justice Langa argued that the Constitution is best understood as a manifesto for positive transformation towards an equal society.
In a keynote lecture the Chief Justice of South Africa addressed the relationship between the entrenchment and enforceability of socio-economic rights in South Africa. Chief Justice Langa argued that the Constitution is best understood as a manifesto for positive transformation towards an equal society.