Ruvi Ziegler spoke at a policy debate entitled ‘Responding to the Crisis in Afghanistan’. Ruvi argued that the Afghanistan crisis highlights the moral depravity and legal irrationality of the proposed nationality and borders bill.
Listen to Ruvi Ziegler speaking in this debate here.
Ruvi Ziegler spoke at a policy debate entitled ‘towards a lasting peace in Israel/Palestine’ at Lib Dem conference highlighting the international humanitarian law ramifications of the illegality of settlements in the West Bank in respect of continued UK trade with them, and the importance of differentiating between the occupied territories and pre-1967 Israel.
Listen to Ruvi Ziegler speaking here.
Dr Charlotte Smith has been awarded a BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grant of £9982.74 for her project: “The Colonial Bishoprics Fund and the Birth of the Worldwide Anglican Communion: Legal Transplants, Networks and Constitutional Change in the British Empire”. This project offers a fascinating case study of the impact of common law approaches to empire upon the transmission of law and constitutional ideas within the British Empire. It also, at a pivotal point in the development of the Worldwide Anglican Communion today, seeks to inform a better understanding of the legal frameworks, ideologies, and relationships underpinning global Anglicanism, and of the forms and consequences of legal relationships between metropolitan and daughter churches across the common law world. It achieves these two objectives through the completion of the first ever legal history of the Colonial Bishoprics Fund. This charitable trust, founded by individual subscribers in London in 1841, was the primary means of funding and co-ordinating Church of England efforts to export the Anglican Establishment, with all its legal and constitutional privileges, across the expanding British Empire. Through its activities the seeds of what became global Anglicanism were sown.
Dr Saaed Bagheri’s book, International Law and the War with Islamic State, has been published by Hart Publishing. This book looks at the aim of Islamic State to create an effective government, with an economically independent regime, which focused on key oilfields in Syria and Iraq. Having addressed Islamic State’s quest for energy resources in Iraq and Syria, the book explores the lawfulness of the war with Islamic State from a variety of legal aspects. It has been attempted to make inroads into the most controversial aspects of contradictions in the application of jus ad bellum and jus in bello, particularly when discussing the use of extraterritorial armed force against ANSAs, and the obligation to protect civilian objects, including the natural environment.
The question is whether the targeting of energy resources should be regarded as a violation of the laws of armed conflict, even though the war with Islamic State being classified as a non-international armed conflict. Ambitious in scope, the study argues that legal theory and state practice are still problematic as to how and under what conditions states can justify resorting to military force in foreign territory, and to what extent they can target natural resources as being part of state property. Furthermore, it goes on to examine the differences between international and non-international armed conflicts, to establish whether there is any difference in the targeting of energy resources as part of the war-sustaining capabilities of either party.
Through an examination of the Islamic State case, the book offers a comprehensive study to close the gaps in jus in bello by contextualising the questions of civilian protection, victimisation and state responsibility by evaluating the US’s war-sustaining theory as a justification for the destruction of a territorial state’s natural resources that are occupied by ANSAs.
From the 31st of August until the 3rd of September Dr Peter Coe convened the Media and Communications Law Subject Section at the Society of Legal Scholars’ Annual Conference at Durham University. Peter was joined by speakers from around the world, discussing subjects ranging from advertising in the time of COVID, to corporate reputation, to the development of privacy law, to misinformation and disinformation.
On Tuesday the 31st of August, Dr Peter Coe formed part of an international panel of experts convened by the British Association of Comparative Law to discuss ‘The regulation of hate speech online and its enforcement in a comparative perspective.’ Peter’s paper discussed the UK’s Draft Online Safety Bill and its potential implications for free speech.
