On 1 July 2016 the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) adopted a Model Law on Secured Transactions elaborated by its Working Group VI. The Model Law is a soft-law instrument designed to assist national law-makers of any legal system to modernise and harmonise domestic secured transactions laws, with the aim of fostering access to credit at a lower cost and stimulate international investments. The Model Law is the latest project of the UNCITRAL Working Group VI, which is composed of national delegations representing all States members of the Commission as well as observers from international and non-governmental organisations. The Model Law will be translated into all the official languages of the UN. After adopting the Model Law, the Working Group VI is expected to draft a 'Guide of Enactment' to further assist implementing States. More information on the Model Law may be found here.

Giuliano Castellano has been part of the UNCITRAL Working Group VI as a Legal Expert and Delegate for Italy since 2011.

Dr Maebh Harding gave a talk 'Marriage in 19th Century Ireland: The extent and effect of legal regulation' at the Who Do You Think You Are? Live Event at the NEC Birmingham on Friday 8 April 2016.

In the UK Research Excellence Framework results (announced 18 December 2014), Warwick Law School was assessed as coming 6th out of 67 Law Departments in terms of its Research Environment, 7th in terms of the Quality of its Research and 10th overall.

Full details can be found on the REF website.

Law School PhD Candidate Natalie Byrom has been awarded the University of Warwick’s 2014 Research Impact and Public Engagement Award for Early Career Research Impact.

Jackie Hodgson has been conferred the award of Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences in recognition of her distinctive and distinguished contributions to Social Science.

Jackie Hodgson (Warwick) and Asher Flynn (Monash) have been awarded A$13,398 + £7,165 from the Monash-Warwick Alliance Seed Fund for the project: Access to Justice: A Comparative Analysis of cuts to the civil and criminal Legal Aid systems in England, Wales and Victoria, August 2013 – June 2014.

The project brings together Warwick colleagues Jackie Hodgson (PI) James Harrison, Andrew Williams and Nathalie Byrom (Co-Is) with Monash colleagues Asher Flynn (PI) Jude McCulloch, Bronwyn Naylor and Arie Freiberg (Co-Is). The study is a comparative analysis of the impact of cuts to the civil and criminal legal-aid systems operating in England, Wales and Victoria. This will be achieved through consultations with academic, legal and government/non-government stakeholders and the development of an online presence for external engagement. A conference will be held in Warwick on 19 March 2014, with the participation of Monash colleagues. Within the framework of access to justice, the conference will bring together leading academics and practitioners to consider (i) the changing face of the legal profession; (ii) the lawyer-client relationship; and (iii) the broader social consequences of the cuts. A second event will be held in Monash in early July 2014, with the participation of Warwick colleagues. The project will build international and comparative expertise with stakeholders, with a view to future funded research.

In October 2013 Jackie was elected to the governing Council of JUSTICE, the all-party law reform and human rights organisation.

JUSTICE (www.justice.org.uk ) works largely through policy-orientated research; interventions in court proceedings; education and training; briefings, lobbying and policy advice. It is the British section of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ).

JUSTICE also has a Student Human Rights Network (www.justice.org.uk/shrn_home.php ), an online forum that aims to encourage interest in, and improve awareness of, human rights.

Jackie won in the Established Academics Category.

The award was made in recognition of the following:

Jackie’s criminal justice research has resulted in improvements to professional standards encouraging proactive defence lawyering and quality assessment requirements for the legal profession in England and Wales. She has influenced recent developments in EU criminal justice and through the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has improved legal representation of those seeking to have their cases reviewed for appeal.

Specific non-academic engagement activities have included:

· Providing expert opinion to a Canadian court in a terrorism extradition case

· Feeding directly into EU policy through an impact study for the proposed EU legal aid directive on how to embed adversarial and competent legal assistance within the administration of legal aid

· A policy briefing with 30 lawyers and EU officials in Brussels (with the legal charity JUSTICE) to raise awareness of the importance of legal aid funding to mechanisms to ensure quality of legal advice to suspects in police custody in the EU

· The publication of ‘Inside Police Custody’ addressing procedural safeguards being legislated by the EU to be presented at a conference in Maastrict in May 2013 which will inform directly current EU measures on procedural safeguards

· Providing direct advice to inform the impact assessment for a measure on the right to be presumed innocent in order to develop policy options for a European measure and assess its impact financially and in terms of the enhancement of individual rights

Williams's A Very British Killing was named winner of the £3,000 book award ahead of Colvin, the former Bishop of Edinburgh Richard Holloway, Pankaj Mishra, Raja Shehadeh, Carmen Bugan and Clive Stafford Smith. Organisers called it a "chilling, gripping book" which "unearths damning evidence of what happened" to Mousa, the receptionist who on 15 September 2003 was arrested in Basra and taken to a military base, where guards and army visitors kicked, punched and humiliated him before he was beaten to death.

Judges Nikita Lalwani, Arifa Akbar and Bakewell said that Williams, a law professor at the University of Warwick and director of the Centre for Human Rights in Practice, "had the courage to take on a case that has already received so much press coverage and to turn it into something far bigger and more shocking than we understood it to be".

"He dissects and analyses with a clear-eyed determination to unpick the lies from the truths of this case, yet, for all its forensic detail, the book grips us emotionally, and has as keen a sense of storytelling as a horror story or courtroom drama. Ultimately, the greatest achievement of this incendiary, eloquent and angry book is that it humanises Mousa beyond the iconic and infamous figure he has become in his death. It was written in the spirit of Orwell's journalism," they said.

The Orwell book prize is intended to discover the work which comes closest to George Orwell's ambition "to make political writing into an art". Writing in the Guardian earlier this month, Williams wondered what Orwell himself "would have thought" about the Mousa case. "He wrote once that: 'It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects.' His main target then was the evil of totalitarianism," wrote Williams. "But I would like to think his underlying aim was to challenge indifference to the suffering of others. That for me was the real devil which emerged amid the detail of my book."

Williams joins former winners of the prize including Francis Wheen, Fergal Keane and Tom Bingham.

For more details Click here

About the Orwell Prize

Shaheen Ali in 100 most influential Pakistani women

The Times article

As academics engaged for many years in criminal justice research, we have grave concerns about the potentially devastating and irreversible consequences for access to justice if the government’s plans to cut criminal legal aid and introduce a system of tendering based on price alone are introduced.

The lawyer-client relationship is at the heart of effective legal representation, but the current proposals remove client choice, replace local services with mega-suppliers and treat advice as an impersonal commodity. Trust is especially important for the large number of vulnerable accused: lawyers who know their clients can pre-empt difficult issues, provide (sometimes unpalatable) advice which is more likely to be accepted, and help the courts run more effectively and efficiently.

Underpinned by independent research and evaluation, considerable resources have been devoted to measures that have enhanced the quality of legal advice and representation. All of this is now under threat and a small number of “suppliers” will receive a guaranteed share of the work however well or badly they represent their clients. With bids at least 17.5 per cent lower than existing average costs, the quality of legal representation will decline. Suppliers will have a strong financial imperative to do as little work as possible, and to persuade clients to plead guilty irrespective of the merits of their case.

The Minister has allowed only eight weeks of consultation on the proposals, with no intention to pilot the new contracts nor evaluate their effectiveness. The long-term effects will be devastating and the damage extremely hard to put right. Defendants, the police and the courts – and ultimately the taxpayer - will pay the price.

Professor Jacqueline Hodgson, Emeritus Professor Lee Bridges (University of Warwick)
Professor Ed Cape (University of the West of England)
Professor Ian Dennis, Professor Richard Moorhead (University College London)
Professor Nicola Lacey (University of Oxford)
Professor Tim Newburn, Emeritus Professor Michael Zander (London School of Economics)
Professor Andrew Sanders (University of Birmingham)

For long version CLICK HERE

Octavio Ferraz continues his work for the World Bank as an expert on right to health litigation in Brazil. After writing his report on this topic he will now to give a presentation on Webinar.