Regulation Discussion Group- Hilary/Trinity 2012

For further information, click here.

Dr. David Erdos joins OECD volunteer group of privacy experts

For further information, click here.

Socio-Legal Seminar Series- Michaelmas 2011

For further information, click here.

OTJR Seminar Series- Michaelmas 2011

For further information, click here.

Centre member awarded BA research grant

For further information, click here.

Civil Justice Programme welcomes new member

For further information, click here.

Workshop: 'The foundations of law: legalism in the ancient world, Europe and Asia'

For further information, click here.

Lecture: 'What Good Did Roman Law Do the Romans?'

For further information, click here.

Seminar: Judicial Reform in post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe: Falling in Step with the West?

For further information, click here.

Public Debate: The Role of Courts in a Democracy

In this public debate, recorded live on 11th February and chaired by Joshua Rozenberg, a panel of leading judges, academics, and policymakers debated the proper role of courts in a democracy, and assessed whether the model of judicial supremacy is a desirable or inevitable one for the UK.

For further information, click here.

PCMLP Workshop:  Comparative Perspectives on Media Regulation and Society

This two day workshop took place in New Delhi in November 2010 and explored international and comparative perspectives on media regulation as it affects current debates and the future role of information in society.

For further information,click here.

Christopher Hodges appointed Erasmus Professor

Dr. Christopher Hodges, Head of the CMS Research Programme on Civil Justice, has been appointed Erasmus Professor of the Fundamentals of Private Law at Erasmus University.

Professor Hodges joins the Erasmus School of Law interdisciplinary research team "Behavioural Approaches to Contract and Tort: Relevance for Policymaking" to pursue new strands of empirical and theoretical research into new models for European civil justice systems and dispute resolution. This work will complement the work that he leads at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies in researching new European systems for dispute resolution, whether through courts, ombudsmen, codes, schemes or other ADR systems.  Professor Hodges has wide knowledge of comparative legal systems and is in the vanguard of researching and developing new techniques for dispute resolution.

Please click here to be taken to the Erasmus School of Law website.

Lawyers: Socio-Legal Perspectives

Saturday 13th November 2010

Jesus College

This highly successful Centre Workshop brought together scholars and practitioners from varied backgrounds to engage in lively debate on topics presented by Senior Centre fellows.

Doreen McBarnet discussed the role of lawyers within the financial crisis, asking whether they are legal engineers, launderers or saboteurs; Fernanda Pirie discussed her anthropological study of the barristers' profession and their reactions to a changing professional and regulatory environment. Chris Hodges presented his work examining the provision of civil justice within European jurisdictions, including the reform of costs regimes and Marina Kurkchiyan discussed a project she is undertaking examining comparatively the role of lawyers within the civil justice system in eastern and western Europe.

The Centre would like to thank our speakers, discussants, commentators and session chairs for making the workshop so successful.

If you would like to learn more about Centre events, please go to http://www.csls.ox.ac.uk/news_and_events.php.

Data Protection@CSLS Minisite Launched

 

To coincide with the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners, the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies has launched a new minisite showcasing work being conducted within the Centre which relate to data protection, privacy and the regulation and capture of information.  The site provides full details of the work of CSLS Research Fellows, Students, Associates and Visitors in this field of study.   The Centre hosts the Data Protection and the Open Society (DPOS) project funded by the Leverhulme Trust under its early career research award scheme.  This three-year project, which is led by  Dr. David Erdos, explores, and seeks to resolve, tensions between data protection law and practice and the values of freedom of expression and information.  A number of CSLS’ DPhil students are also researching in this area.  Steve McCarty-Snead’s project “Who will watch the watchers?” examines the interrelationship between rights and regulation in the area of surveillance.   Asma Vranaki’s project on Social Networking examines the role of the law in protecting copyright and privacy interests in Online Social Networking Sites.  It is hoped that the launching of DP@CSLS will enable the Centre to become a hub for research in this area both within the University of Oxford and beyond.  The new site may be accessed at http://www.csls.ox.ac.uk/dataprotection and a text-only version is also available at http://www.csls.ox.ac.uk/dp.

'Delegating Rights Protection'- new book by Dr. David Erdos, CSLS Research Fellow

Oxford University Press has recently published a new monograph by CSLS Research Fellow Dr. David Erdos examining bills of rights outcomes within the Westminster world (Canada, United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia) alongside the experiences of some thirty six countries across the democratic world.  This comparative analysis demonstrates that the historic absence of a bill of rights in Westminster countries is best explained by, firstly, the absence of a clear political transition and, secondly, their strong British constitutional heritage. Detailed chapters then explore recent and much more diversified developments. In all the countries, postmaterialist socio-economic change has resulted in a growing emphasis on legal formalization, codified civil liberties, and social equality. Pressure for a bill of rights has therefore increased. Nevertheless, by enhancing judicial power, bills of rights conflict with the prima facie positional interests of the political elite. Given this, change in this area has also required a political trigger which provides an immediate rationale for change. Alongside social forces, the nature of this trigger determines the strength and substance of the bill of rights enacted. The statutory Canadian Bill of Rights Act (1960), New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (1990), and the Human Rights Act (UK) (1998) were prompted politically by a relatively weak and backward-looking 'aversive' reaction against perceived abuses of power under the previous administration. Meanwhile, the fully constitutional Canadian Charter (1982) had its political origins in a stronger, more self-interested and prospective need to find a new unifying institution to counter the destabilizing, centripetal power of the Québécois nationalist movement. Finally, the absence of any relevant political trigger explains the failure of national bill of rights initiatives in Australia. The conclusion of the book argues that this Postmaterialist Trigger Thesis (PTT) explanation of change can also explain the origins of bills of rights in other internally stable, advanced democracies, notably the Israeli Basic Laws on human rights (1992). 

Further information on the book is available at the Oxford University Press website.  The Centre will also be organizing a colloquium to launch this book in the Hilary Term of 2011.  Anybody interested in finding out more about this event should email katie.orme@csls.ox.ac.uk.

 

'The Gacaca Courts, Post-Genocide Justice and Reconciliation in Rwanda: Justice without Lawyers'- new book by Dr. Phil Clark, OTJR

Please click here for further information.

OTJR Seminar Series - Michaelmas Term 2010

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St. John's College Legalism Seminar Series - Michaelmas 2010

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CSLS Seminar Series - Michaelmas Term 2010

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CSLS Research Fellow awarded Vincent Wright Memorial Prize

Dr. Cristina Parau has been awarded the Vincent Wright Memorial Prize for her article ‘Impaling Dracula: How EU Accession Empowered Civil Society in Romania’ published in West European Politics in 2009. The prize recognizes significant contributions to the study of comparative European politics.

 

CSLS Research Fellows win funding for law and society study of defamation in China

Dr. Yik Chan Chin (Principal Investigator) and Dr. Michelle Cowley (Co-Investigator) have been awarded a EUR 60,000 research grant by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for a two-year project  “Researching Law in Society in China: The Interplay between the Law and Media in Defamation Litigation (1992-2009)”

Project Synopsis

Law in society research investigates how the legal system, especially legal systems in transition societies, affect society at large and the social behavior of everyday life, and how various social elements combine and interact in the formation of law (Galligan, 2007).Central to the view of law-and-society is that the law operates as a legal sphere interacting with other social spheres in society, i.e., influences on the law can come from beyond the hermetic circle of the law and its internal legal standards, from the public sphere where social norms are both reflected and constructed through the media. The society in legal transition that we have chosen to study in this research is China. We aim to investigate how legal notions constructed and reflected in the public sphere through newspaper media, e.g., protection of constitutional rights, may interact with and affect the assimilation and reference to the same notions in the reasoned adjudications of court judgments in the legal sphere.

Our main hypotheses are:

The legal standards represented in the content of pre-trial newspaper media coverage affect judicial interpretation and written judgments’ references to the same standards in judicial adjudications. Our sub-hypotheses are:

1) The prevalence of reference to internal standards in judicial adjudications changes over time.

2) The evolution of patterns towards preferences of reference to external standards or Constitutional standards in the judicial adjudications changes over time.

3) Overall the pattern of reference standards has changed in terms of newspaper coverage over time, particularly in favour of reference to external and constitutional standards.

4) The type of newspaper influences the coverage and dialogue related to the legal standards. For example, the internal legal standards are more often covered in party newspapers, regardless over time, and populist views are more readily covered in popular media.

The significance and long-time impact of the project is based both on its subject of study, the strength of its methodology and the investigators. In social-legal studies, empirical sociological methods with a quantitative component are rare. The qualitative-quantitative methods of analysis to be employed in this study were developed at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at Oxford. In this study, we will use a qualitative-quantitative content analysis method supplemented with an interpretive procedure in examining the courts’ judgments and newspaper coverage.  The research  combines research skills of PI, Dr Chin and CI, Dr. Cowley. Dr. Chin has expertise in Chinese media, media policy and law, and qualitative research methods, while Dr. Cowley has expertise in quantitative methods and the psychology of legal reasoning in social contexts.

(Project number: RG006-U-09)

PCMLP An/Ox Summer Institute 2010 12th annual Media Policy Summer School

The Center for Global Communication Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania and the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy

Monday 5 July, 2010 (All day) - Friday 16 July, 2010 (All day), Manor Road Building

Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until March 31st, 2010.  The annual Institute brings together young scholars and regulators from around the world to discuss important recent trends in technology, international politics and development and its influence on media policy. 

For more information, and the application form see:

http://global.asc.upenn.edu/cgi-bin/projects.cgi?id=44

Administrator for PCMLP: Louise Scott (louise.scott@csls.ox.ac.uk)

 

Report from the 19th May 2010 International Conference on Litigation Funding now available to view

 

 

Please view the document by clicking here.      Details of the event can be found in the Past Events section.    

    

Leverhulme Privacy and Open Society Project Launched within Centre

May 2010 sees the launch of a new three-year Data Protection and the Open Society (DPOS) project within the Centre funded under the Leverhulme Trust’s Early Career Research Award Scheme.  Led by CSLS and Balliol College Research Fellow Dr. David Erdos,  this project will explore the origins and functioning of Privacy/Data Protection (DP) law and practices from an Open Society perspective. 

It will focus on an examination, and hopefully partial resolution, of the tensions between DP and other important societal values including, in particular, freedom of information and expression.  The three-year time frame of the project will allow for a really deep analysis, lead to a better framework for accounting for the various values at stake and feed into the revision of the European Data Protection Directive which is currently underway.  David comments below on the emerging issues which make this project particularly timely for the UK and other advanced industrialized democracies: 

“Even a cursory glance the newspaper indicates that society’s attitudes as regards human data are characterized by deep and important paradoxes and tensions.  On the one hand we have seen a very significant increase in the demand for transparency and openness of which the use of Freedom of Information legislation in relation to MP’s expenses was merely the most high profile and explosive iteration.  The internet has also resulted in a tidal wave of information publishing, much of it carried out by ordinary citizens.  On other hand, however, new systems of regulation, restriction and control of the gathering of human data have been established.  The data protection regime is the most visible and comprehensive example of this but, linked to it, a similar pattern can also be seen in emerging European Convention on Human Rights jurisprudence on privacy as well as a plethora of new rules governing research.  Far from freeing up information, data protection law and practice has resulted in new restrictions on photography, the dissemination of archival material to the public, critical research in the public interest and even the distribution of first names of other pupils to the parents of schoolchildren.  Building from my existing work on human rights and constitutionalism, this new DPOS project will examine these various paradoxes exploring their implications for the future of liberal open society values and also for the rule of law.   With a background in social science and political theory my approach will be multi-disciplinary blending both philosophical and empirical aspects.  This multi-disciplinary perspective makes my institutional home in the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies here at Oxford University a highly appropriate fit."

A launch seminar for the project provisionally entitled “Data Protection:  Fit for Purpose?” is planned to be held within Oxford in the near future.  Anybody interested in attending this seminar or otherwise being finding out more about DPOS should get in contact with David at david.erdos@csls.ox.ac.uk and/or consult the dedicated DPOS page http://www.csls.ox.ac.uk/dataprotection.   This page will be regularly updated with current information about the themes and issues being pursued within this project.

New publication on Charter 88 and Constitutional Reform

Following on from the conference organized by the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies last year, a special issue of Parliamentary Affairs edited by CSLS Research Fellow Dr. David Erdos has been published examining the constitutional reform movement twenty years on from the founding of Charter 88. 

Information on the issue is available on the Parliamentary Affairs website.  In conjunction with Parliamentary Affairs, David has also produced a podcast discussing the various themes of the issue. On Wednesday 9 December, 6-7.30pm the CSLS, in conjunction with Unlock Democracy and Oxford Journals, is organizing a free event at Portcullis House, Westminster to launch this new publication.  A lively discussion and debate on the past, present, and future of UK constitutional reform is planned.

Alongside David, confirmed members of the panel are Ferdinand Mount, former Vice-Chair of the Power Inquiry and author of The British Constitution Now (who will chair), Peter Facey, Director of Unlock Democracy, Peter Oborne, political columnist and author of The Triumph of the Political Class and Dr. Tony Wright MP, Chairman of the Public Administration Select Committee.  The panel will address three overarching questions which are of as much interest now as twenty years ago when Charter 88 was first launched:

• What have been the central strengths and achievements of the constitutional reform movement?
• Where might it have taken a wrong turning, either strategically or in terms of philosophy?
• Where do we go from here in order to achieve democratic and constitutional renewal?

For up-to-date information and to book your place you may follow this link.

 

CSLS Research Fellow addresses Italian conference on European Union pollution control system

Dr. Bettina Lange, University Lecturer in Law and Regulation at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies addressed on 9 July 2009 a conference in Apulia, Italy on the subject of EU pollution control.  The talk focused specifically on examining the important issue of the role of law in the process of European integration. The conference, which brought together administrative lawyers, regulators, academics and students, was sponsored by the regional envirionmental agency (ARPA) in Apulia together with the Regional Chamber of Administrative Lawyers.  The talk comes following the publication last year of Bettina's book Implementing EU Pollution Control:  Law and Integration by Cambridge University Press.  Further information on this talk is available on the attached flyer.

 

CSLS Trinity Term 2009 Seminar Series

The theme for this series is Presentations by Centre Members. Further details are now available. Please click here for more information.

CSLS Hilary Term 2009 Seminar Series

The theme for this series is Human Investigation and Privacy in a Regulatory Age.  Further details are now available. Please click here for more information.

 

New programme launched - Social Foundations of Public Law

The Cente for Socio-Legal Studies, in collaboration with the Foundation for Law, Justice and Society, has recently launched a programme of research, discussion, and publication on the social foundations of public law. More details will be added the research section of the website in due course.

In the meantime , should you require further information or should you wish to be involved please contact Denis Galligan at denis.galligan@csls.ox.ac.uk.

'Implementing EU Pollution Control' - new book by Dr Bettina Lange

By analysing the implementation of the EU Directive on Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control, Dr Lange explores the role of law in European integration processes. She questions the traditional conceptions of law as 'law in books', as instrumental and autonomous in relation to its social context. The publisher is Cambridge University Press.

'Order and Disorder' - New Publication by Dr Fernanda Pirie:

Dr Pirie, together with Prof. Keebet von Benda-Beckmann of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, editors of "Order and Disorder. Anthropological Perspectives" (Berghahn Books - link here).

Order and disorder are classic anthropological issues which continue to be of great public concern. The book contains contributions (case studies) from Siberia, India, Indonesia, Tibet, West Africa, or Morocco.

New Staff and Projects at Centre

The Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at Oxford University has entered a new exciting phase having recently expanded through the addition of two permanent University posts and four research fellowships.

The lectureship in Socio-Legal Studies has been taken up by Dr Fernanda Pirie, a legal anthropologist who is conducting work on conflict resolution and informal legal process in Tibet. Dr Pirie is also carrying out a major research project about the role of the English Bar in the production of justice.

The lectureship in Law and Regulation has been taken up by Dr Bettina Lange, a socio-legal researcher with a particular interest in environmental regulation. Dr Lange is currently working on a project on the invocation of emotion discourses in the legal regulation of genetically modified organisms. She is also involved in research which examines the contribution of policy learning to the convergence of education policies in the EU.

Dr David Erdos joins the Centre as a Kaztenback Research Fellow. A political scientist, Dr. Erdos examines the origins and impacts of Bill of Rights instruments especially in the Westminster world (the UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia). In addition, he is also developing a new project which looks more broadly at the nature of constitutional reform not only in the area of legal rights but also in ethno-national relations and the electoral and parliamentary arena.

Finally, Dr Phil Clark, a political scientist, has joined as the new research fellow in courts and public policy. He has set up the Oxford Transitional Justice Research Group which is currently involved in two projects. The first involves an analysis of the potential of truth-telling and reparations - through documentation of victims' stories - to contribute to accountability and reconciliation in the current peace process in Uganda. The Oxford Transitional Justice Research Group is also involved in an analysis of transitional justice options for the Burmese government in exile.

These new appointments further add to the Centre's reputation as a truly transdisciplinary research group with researchers from psychology, law, politics, sociology, media studies and anthropology working on socio-legal projects.