The Verdict: Law & Society: Recent Episodes

Dickson Poon School of Law

Brought to you by The Dickson Poon School of Law, The Verdict gets to the legal heart the issues our society is facing today.

Through conversations with some of the leading experts and influencers shaping and implementing our laws, we interrogate ideas and issues in the areas of human rights, trafficking, digital technology, and beyond.

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This week The Verdict comes to you from The Alan Turing Institute.

Anna speaks to Parosha Chandran, leading UK human rights lawyer and Professor of Practise at The Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London; and Dr Anjali Mazumder, Theme Lead on AI and Justice & Human Rights at The Turing Institute.

The Turing Institute is the UK’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence, and this live podcast event was part of its inaugural international series on AI and Data Science entitled Do Great Minds Think Alike?

Listen as the group discusses:

  • AI’s role in combatting modern slavery and human trafficking + the scale of the issue of human trafficking today

  • the use of AI as a preventative tool that can determine the patterns and behaviours that lead to trafficking, in addition to detecting existing exploitation

  • the global challenge in tackling transcontinental trafficking networks, as law enforcement agencies are mostly bound by national or regional jurisdictions

Social links:

  • The Alan Turing Institute on Twitter @turinginst https://twitter.com/turinginst

Additional resources:

Read the case V.C.L and A.N v The United Kingdom: https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng#{%22itemid%22:[%22001-207927%22]}

Read about the case: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/kings-professor-wins-landmark-judgement

Hear Parosha Chandran discuss the case further in this interview with King's Transnational Legal Institute: https://youtu.be/6ZaMctki_IU

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Are we facing a cybercrime pandemic?

This week, Dr Anna Loutfi brings law enforcers into the conversation.

She speaks to Steve Francis, Director US National IPR Coordination Center, US Department of Homeland Security; Alex Urbelis, Partner at the Blackstone Law Group, and member of Human Rights First’s Technology Advisory Board; and Frederick Mostert, Professor of Practice at the Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London.

Listen as they discuss:  

  • The rise of cybercrime in the time of COVID-19

  • Failings of traditional law enforcement methods for our current cyber world

  • The need for a multi-disciplinary, collaborative, and proactive approach between private-public sectors in tackling cyber crime

  • The changing attitude to how we value privacy, and the right to privacy online

Social links:

  • US National IPR Coordination Center @IPRCenter

  • Alex Urbelis - @aurbelis

Related resources:

  • Frederick Mostert and Alex Urbelis on social media and algorithmic secrecy for the Financial Times

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This week, Anna speaks to the experts behind the Aequitas Project, a legal digital-human-rights project with a mission to regulate the online world.

This is part two of a conversation on the project with The Verdict - go back and listen to the last episode to hear Professor Mostert introduce the project.

Listen as the group discuss:

  • The 'Aequitas Project' - a set of online regulations and procedures

  • Growing trend toward responsibility on internet platforms

  • Issues that come with 'overblocking' and 'underblocking' in digital regulation

  • The global perspective - the challenges that faced when attempting to create a single way of regulating online materials, due to cultural differences

The team includes:

  • Frederick Mostert, Professor of Practice in Intellectual Property Law at King’s College London

  • Professor Martin Senftleben, Professor of Intellectual Property Law and Director, University of Amsterdam - Professor Marketa Trimble, who is the Samuel S. Lionel Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the University of Nevada

  • Professor Eleonora Rosati, Full Professor of Intellectual Property Law and Director of the Institute for Intellectual Property and Market Law at Stockholm University

  • Discover the Aequitas Project

  • UK Government Online Safety Bill

  • Reaction to the Draft Online Safety Bill: a reading list

  • Online Safety Bill Update, May 2021

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The world needs a new human rights charter fit for our digital age, and we need it now.

This week, Anna speaks to Frederick Mostert, Professor of Practise in Intellectual Property Law at King's College London, who is trying to create just that with his project, the Aequitas Project.

As well as his role at King's, Professor Mostert is a Research Fellow at the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre and Research Fellow at the Research Centre for Intellectual Property Law of Tsinghuwa University School of Law in Beijing.

Listen as Professor Mostert discusses:

  • the discourse surrounding freedom of speech in a digital context

  • the necessity for regulation to combat issues like human trafficking

  • freedom of speech and content moderation on social media

  • the friction between creatives and online algorithms

Related resources:

  • Discover the Aequitas Project

  • UK Government Online Safety Bill

  • Reaction to the Draft Online Safety Bill

  • Online Safety Bill Update, May 2021

  • Read Frederick Mostert's opinion pieces on digital law in the Financial Times

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Adam Wagner discusses the effect Covid-19 has had on our civil liberties and human rights, with host Dr Anna Loutfi.

In an opinion article for Prospect magazine, Adam Wagner described the government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic as 'a constitutional catastrophe', and expressed his concern that 'we may never recover our standing as free citizens'.

Adam has acted in the Supreme Court and at the European Court of Human Rights. He has acted in six public inquiries and is currently Specialist Advisor to the Joint Committee on Human Rights Covid-19 Inquiry. He is a legal commentator on social media, television and radio – and a podcaster, host of the Better Human Podcast.

Listen as Adam discusses:

  • the influence of the Human Rights Act 1988

  • Covid-19 as a human rights issue

  • the impact of the pandemic on our right to protest

  • the number of times he has challenged hotel quarantine in court, and won

Discover more from Adam:

  • Twitter @AdamWagner1

  • Better Human podcast

  • Each Other charity

Related resources:

  • Adam's article 'Taking liberties: Covid-19 and the anatomy of a constitutional catastrophe' in Prospect Magazine

  • Report: The Government’s response to Covid-19: human rights implications from the Joint Committee on Human Rights inquiry into the government’s response to Covid-19

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