Warwick Law School News

Professor Shaheen Ali gave a lecture entitled Women's Rights and Plural Legalities as part of the 2016 Contextual Lecture Series: Taking Liberties.

In this talk Shaheen Sardar Ali contextualises the rights and place of British Muslim women negotiating their multiple identities. Some of the questions and issues addressed included the following: Is there an hierarchy of rights and legal norms that inform how British Muslim women order their lives and dealings with the plural legalities affecting their lives? To what extent do these plural legal systems contradict or reinforce each other and how does this interplay impact on the lives of British Muslim women?

The lecture was chaired by Dr Kenneth Wolfe, Convenor of the lecture series at Dulwich College, London.

" 'The death of one man is a tragedy,' Josef Stalin is said to have mused. 'The deaths of a million is a statistic.' A.T. Williams's prize winning debut, A Very British Killing, was a passionately written investigation into the death of a single man – Baha Mousa, an innocent Iraqi hotel receptionist killed by British soldiers in Basra in 2003. This, his second book, is a study in myriad deaths – the Nazi perpetration of genocide – and a prolonged meditation on Stalin's idea that the human mind cannot comprehend mass murder... His theme is the imperfect efforts made by the Allied military authorities... to bring the criminals responsible for these horrors to justice." (Daily Telegraph)

"This is a fine book that does a great job of debunking one of the most enduring myths in history." (History of War)

"Splendid book... Much more than a historical narrative and assessment… This is a superb book which offers no easy answers but invites the reader to join its author on a grim odyssey." (History Today)

"Earnest, unsettling book... Williams is a thoughtful, lucid writer, with a lawyer’s appetite for detail... A Passing Fury is heartfelt, moving and often powerfully written." (Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times)

"Haunting, sensitive and thoughtful study." (Nigel Jones, Daily Telegraph)

"Williams has put together an original polemic against our assumptions about these trials, including those at Nuremberg. (David Herman, New Statesman)

"... gripping and original ..." (The Catholic Herald)

"... skilfully reveals a chaotic world in which war crimes investigation teams... were left to do their best in extremely trying circumstances." (Scotland on Sunday)

Jackie Hodgson and Laurène Soubise have a new forthcoming publication in 45 Crime and Justice (ed. Michael Tonry), Sentencing Policies and Practices in Western Countries:Comparative and Cross-National Perspectives, on 'Understanding the Sentencing Process in France'.

French sentencing is characterized by broad judicial discretion and an ethos of individualized justice that is adapted to the rehabilitation of the offender. The current approach aims to prevent recidivism through rehabilitation and so protect the interests of society as well as reintegrating the offender as reformed citizen. In opposition to this approach is that of the political right, characterized by the recent Sarkozy regime, which favors deterrence through harsher penalties, minimum prison sentences and increased incarceration, including after the sentence has been served in the case of offenders considered dangerous. This article looks at the practice as well as the theory of French sentencing and locates the sentencing process (for it is a process, not a single event) within the broader context of French inquisitorially rooted criminal procedure. It argues that the central part played by the prosecutor in criminal cases (including in case disposition through alternative sanctions), her role in recommending a sentence to the court and the court’s invariable decision to follow this suggestion, together with the unitary mature of the French judicial profession, means that despite the broad discretion afforded the sentencing judge, there is a remarkable degree of consistency in the penalties imposed. It examines the range of penalties available and considers the most recent addition put forward by the Consensus Commission and legislated in 2014, the contrainte pénale, suggesting that this is unlikely to have a great impact without the investment of resources in the probation service and a change in the judicial culture which still favors simple sentencing options, including imprisonment, to the array of alternative options now in place.

As part of an on-going collaboration, Henrique and Anastasia have recently published a paper titled ‘Punishment, Justice and Emotions’ for the Oxford Handbooks Online in Criminology and Criminal Justice. The article can be accessed on-line on www.oxfordhandbooks.com or, alternatively, a PDF of the last approved version can be found at Wrap (http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/77657/). This paper outlines the relationship between emotions and criminal justice and argues that, although punishment has been justified as a rational response to the problem of crime, there are emotional dimensions to its practice and function that relate to broader aspects of social experience.

At the April Soroptomists dinner meeting, SI Kenilworth welcomed several guests who joined them for a membership event. The highlight of the evening was a talk by Professor Shaheen Ali, from the Law department of Warwick University, who gave us a fascinating talk on Women’s Rights. To find out more click here

On Saturday 23rd April, the Law School's Widening Participation team hosted the prize giving event of the inaugural 'Writing Wrongs' essay competition. Since November, we have been working with 25 pupils from non-traditional backgrounds from eight schools in Coventry and Warwickshire through a series of Saturday workshops in order to improve their research skills and write a 2,500 word essay on the theme of social justice.

To celebrate the launch of our new LLM in International Commercial Law (starting in 2017), international fees have now been held at the 2016/17 level for ALL our LLM programmes in 2017/18.

Learn more about our LLM programmes.

Paul Raffield was invited by the British Council to give two “Knowledge is GREAT” lectures in Singapore and Malaysia, as part of “Shakespeare Lives 2016”, a global programme organised by the British Council to celebrate the life and work of William Shakespeare on the 400th anniversary of his death. To view the presentation/podcast click here.

Professor Dalvinder Singh has been awarded a prestigious Fernand Braudel Senior Fellowship, European University Institute, Florence, from May-July 2016. During his fellowship he will be participating in workshops on his current area of research associated with the European Banking Union and cross border banking supervision and resolution, and the challenges faced by countries in the European and Central Asia region. This work forms part of a World Bank project he is working on in collaboration with Katia D’Hustler and Pamela Lintner.

• Topice to be covered are:-

' Existing scholarship focuseson ‘security’, ‘sovereignty’ and ‘rights’ rather than on ‘food’ with the consequence that some international economic lawyers think calls for changes to existing rules based on these three accounts are misconceived'.

'Focusing on ‘food’ in addition to ‘security,’ ‘sovereignty’ and ‘rights’ opens space for a more nuanced discussion over how international economic rules can be changed'

'A new idea of ‘food sustainability’ addresses the heart of the problems identified in the other accounts in a way that is more conducive to regulatory change'.

If you would like to find out more please click here.

Fiona Smith is being quizzed by MPs in a select-committee style hearing at the House of Commons on the Implications of BREXIT on Food. It’s being held by the Food Foundation and the Food Policy Research Council. To read the press release click here and to find out more click here.

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.