CJC Director Jackie Hodgson will give a talk on 'Protecting Suspects in Europe: Towards Universal Norms' at the Edinburgh Centre for Legal Theory on 22 March. Details of the talk can be found here: http://www.centreforlegaltheory.ed.ac.uk/events/events/edinburgh_centre_for_legal_theory/tbc_-_prof._jackie_hodgson_university_of_warwick

This paper discusses domestic and European legal frameworks governing custodial legal advice and the challenges in ensuring that legal assistance for suspects held in police custody across different jurisdictions is effective in practice. Beginning with an appreciation of the significance of police detention and interrogation for the investigation, prosecution and disposition of criminal cases, the paper goes on to analyse the features of criminal justice present across a variety of procedural models, which either promote or prevent legal assistance as a due process right. The paper draws on recent comparative empirical research that includes France, England and Wales, Scotland and the Netherlands, as well as Jackie's earlier work on defence lawyers in England and Wales and in France.

Jackie Hodgson, CJC Director, and CJC members Divya Sukumar and Sharda Ramdewor will take part in the Ninth Conference on the Future of Adversarial and Inquisitorial Systems. The theme of this year's conference is: 'Rights and Remedies in Criminal Procedure: Examining the Nature of the Relationship'. The Conference cycle on the Future of Adversarial and Inquisitorial Systems is a collaboration between the University of Warwick (UK), the University of North Carolina (USA), the University of Bologna-Ravenna (Italy) and the University of Basel (Switzerland).

Sharda and Divya will both present their research during the pre-conference for young scholars. Sharda will talk about 'Using Body Worn Video as evidence to combat disproportionate stop and searches/frisks' and Divya will present a paper entitled ' Strategic Disclosure of Evidence in Police Interviews: Implications for Suspects and their Lawyers'.

Jackie will act as a moderator for the pre-conference for young scholars and take part in the main conference. She will sit on a panel on 'Comparative Approaches to Rights and Remedies in a Time of Austerity'. In this panel, the different approaches of adversarial and inquisitorial procedural traditions to the guaranteeing of rights, and how the rise of managerialism and reduced budgets has impacted these guarantees in theory and in practice will be considered.

A. Rights are protected in different ways. In a party-based adversarial procedural model, (positive) fair trial rights are an integral part of equality of arms for the defense. Inquisitorially rooted models have relied historically on the more neutral ideology of judicial officers responsible for investigation and prosecution, and this has created tensions with the recent strengthening of positive rights through EU directives (such as those implementing the so-called roadmap) and ECtHR decisions such as Salduz v Turkey. Some jurisdictions, such as France, regard the imposition of the right to counsel at the first stages of the investigation as rooted in the Anglo-Saxon tradition and so inappropriate for French criminal justice.

B. The constant push for cheaper and speedier processes of criminal justice undercuts the protection of rights in both procedural models – from the resourcing of legal aid; to the time available to prepare the defense; to the ability of public prosecutors to oversee case preparation and the disposal of cases through alternatives to trial.

Ana Aliverti has edited a special issue for the New Criminal Law Review on 'Criminal Justice Adjudication in an Age of Migration'.

The articles are united by a shared set of questions about the salience of citizenship in contemporary criminal justice policies and practices. As such, they offer important empirical and theoretical evidence of the shifting global terrain. In particular, the articles in this collection address three distinct, yet interconnected, matters: migration control and state sovereignty, fairness and equality, and politics and policy.

Ana is presenting the articles in more details in a blog post for Border Criminologies.

Prof Jackie Hodgson and Asher Flynn from Monash have a new edited collection on 'Access to Justice and Legal Aid: Comparative Perspectives on Unmet Legal Need' published by Hart.

This book considers how access to justice is affected by restrictions to legal aid budgets and increasingly prescriptive service guidelines.

As common law jurisdictions, England and Wales, and Australia, share similar ideals, policies and practices, but they differ in aspects of their legal and political culture, in the nature of the communities they serve and in their approaches to providing access to justice. These jurisdictions thus provide us with different perspectives on what constitutes justice and how we might seek to overcome the burgeoning crisis in unmet legal need.

The book fills an important gap in existing scholarship as the first to bring together new empirical and theoretical knowledge examining different responses to legal aid crises both in the domestic and comparative contexts, across criminal, civil and family law. It achieves this by examining the broader social, political, legal, health and welfare impacts of legal aid cuts and prescriptive service guidelines. Across both jurisdictions, this work suggests that it is the most vulnerable groups who lose out in the way that law is now done in the 21st century.

The book is essential reading for all those interested in access to justice and legal aid.

Prof Jackie Hodgson & Laurène Soubise have published an article on 'Prosecution in France' in Oxford Handbooks Online.

Their essay examines the increasingly ambivalent role and status of the French prosecutor, the procureur. As a judicial officer (magistrat), she is required to act in and to uphold the public interest, but her hierarchical accountability to the executive and her role in the formation and implementation of local criminal justice policy threaten her independence, notably in the eyes of her fellow magistrats. The dominance of the executive, both politically and through the imposition of managerialist imperatives, is felt in the ever-expanding role of the procureur, especially in the local sphere. While the limited forms of legal and structural accountability in place leave the prosecutor with broad discretion, this is diminished through the drive to standardization resulting from the delegation of work to fulfill the demands of dealing with greater numbers of cases more quickly, with fewer resources.