Law news

Global Legal Clinic student shortlisted for LawWorks Pro Bono Awards

Tue, 07 May 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Professor Helen Carr Shortlisted for SLSA Impact Prize

Fri, 08 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Dr Alexandros X.M. Ntovas speaks at the United Nations International Maritime Organization

Mon, 17 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0100

On 17 April 2023, the Secretary-General of the United Nations International Maritime Organization (IMO) convened at IMO Headquarters a seminar on Legal Issues relating to Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS), including matters arising from the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The seminar was held in conjunction with the second session of the Joint Maritime Safety – Legal – Facilitation Committees of the MASS Working Group (MASS-JWG 2)

Private Law and Practical Reason Co-edited by Dr Haris Psarras Published

Mon, 03 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Private Law and Practical Reason is a collection of essays co-edited by Dr Haris Psarras (Associate Professor of Law) and Professor Sandy Steel (Faculty of Law, University of Oxford).

Professor Helen Carr co-authors Hidden Homelessness in Rural England report

Fri, 17 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

A new report featuring research from the ��ɫ��Ƶ says rural homelessness is on the rise and has been worsened by the pandemic and the cost-of-living-crisis.

��ɫ��Ƶ Law School Hosts Health and Social Rights Workshop

Thu, 02 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Dr Schmidt co-organises Competition Law in Context Workshop

Wed, 08 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

On 26 January 2023 the Competition Law in Context Workshop took place at Pembroke College, Oxford. This was co-organised by Dr Hedvig Schmidt in collaboration with the Swedish Network for European Legal Studies (SNELS) and The Oxford Centre for Competition Law and Policy & Journal of Antitrust Enforcement.

LLB Alumnae victorious in the Amicus student awards

Mon, 30 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In November 2022, Amicus awarded Mya Lalria and Jaya Shagpal the Stand Out award, commending their work as representatives for the charity.

LLB Students Win 2022 Cross Moot Competition

Fri, 20 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

IML Member publishes new research on the legal regulation of autonomous ships

Fri, 15 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0100

The IML Director, Dr Alexandros X.M. Ntovas, Associate Professor of Maritime Law, has contributed a chapter in the new seminal publication from Cambridge University Press on Emerging Technology and the Law of the Sea edited by James Kraska (United States Naval War College) and Young-Kil Park (Korea Maritime Institute).

ESRC-funded project 'Rehabilitating Probation': Website Launched

Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0100

Discovery Series: Dissertation Planning and Implementation – June 2022

Mon, 20 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0100

The UK's anti-legal populism: UK withdrawal from the ECHR considered through the lens of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement

Fri, 17 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0100

FSS Global Lounge Grand Opening Event - March 2022

Tue, 22 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Global Lounge Student Committee were excited to hold their first event in March with a great turnout. Many international students were in attendance representing many different countries.

Sentencing Academy Report published with ��ɫ��Ƶ Law School alumna, Anita Kebbati.

Wed, 26 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

��ɫ��Ƶ Law School alumna, Anita Kebbati, has recently published with the Sentencing Academy the report 'Would replacing short custodial sentences with suspended sentence orders better protect the best interests of the child when sentencing a mother to prison?'

Study led by Prof Lisa Whitehouse: Assessing the Court System’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Housing Possession Cases in England and Wales

Wed, 26 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Dr Lisa Whitehouse, Principal Investigator. Dr Stamatina Liosi, Post-Doctoral Research Assistant (August - October 2021).

Call for Papers – Workshop on Gender, Equality and Care Friday 20 May Online/��ɫ��Ƶ

Fri, 21 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Covid pandemic has raised the profile of care and those who provide it. Clap for Carers became a weekly ritual, albeit at a time when paid carers were often working in over stretched workplaces with inadequate PPE. The move to working from home and the closure of schools and childcare settings made children and other family members literally visible to employers and colleagues.

Dr Claire Lougarre and Dr A.M. Viens publish "The Role of the Right to Health in a "Hidden" Pandemic: Antimicrobial Resistance" on EJIL:Talk!, the blog of the European Journal of International Law

Thu, 20 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Whilst the World Health Organization recognises antimicrobial resistance as one of the top 10 global public health threats facing humanity, no research analyses how human rights law should respond to the unique dilemma raised by States' obligations to realise the right to health for all in the face of antibiotic resistance.

Rural Homelessness focus of new study

Tue, 30 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Rural homelessness is an unseen crisis in the countryside, driven by limited access to services and an absence of affordable homes. The extent of the crisis is unclear as limited rural data is captured in official statistics. Trends show that overall homelessness has increased in the last decade and where interventions have helped in urban areas, their impact is less successful in rural communities. A rural housing task force has joined forces to shine a light on the crisis by commissioning a 12-month research collaboration between academics at Kent and ��ɫ��Ƶ Universities.

Dr Ntovas teaches on the International Law of the Sea Summer Academy, Kadir Has University

Tue, 27 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Earlier in July, the IML Director, Associate Professor in Maritime Law, Dr Alexandros X.M. Ntovas participated in The International Law of the Sea Summer Academy, which has started its activities under the aegis of Kadir Has University.

PhD Researcher Awarded Prestigious Scholarship

This scholarship will support Stephen Hanvey in his important work on jurors, the impact of childhood sexual abuse trials, and support that should be provided to such individuals. Stephen is a valued member of the Law School's Centre for Justice Studies, co-supervised by Professor Harry Annison (Law) and Professor Kathleen Kendall (Medicine).

“Stephen has made great strides to date with his research, that speaks directly to the Modern Law Review’s mission to ‘deal with the law as it functions in society’”, said Professor Annison. “I have no doubt that Stephen’s work will go from strength to strength, supported by this MLR Scholarship.”

Law PhD Researcher Awarded Prestigious Scholarship

Luiza Romanadze represents ��ɫ��Ƶ in Vienna

The event featured over 40 university teams from across the globe, fostering a rich environment for developing negotiation and mediation skills. Additionally, Luiza attended the Pre-Moot Conference on 5 July, which included insightful panels on current trends in dispute resolution, such as the evolving role of technology in mediation and innovative strategies for cross-cultural negotiations.

CGC and SMMI host symposium

It included Mann's Annual Lecture, Three Lifeboats: Regina v. Dudley and Stephens as a Global Climate Law Case, and commentaries by Chris Armstrong, Antje Scharenberg, David Owen, Ainhoa Campos Velsaco, and Andrew Serdy.

Death Penalty Casework Project Awards Student Scholarships

Two of our recently graduated students, Eva-Mae Eighteen and Beatrice McLeod, were chosen by our Emeritus Professor, Andrew Rutherford, and DPCC Director, Dr Rose Tempowski, to receive funding to undertake a placement in a US capital defence office over the next few months.

Both students have received offers to volunteer in offices in the southern US and will go on to put the skills they have learnt through volunteering at the DPCC into practice first-hand. They will be interacting with clients, interviewing mitigation witnesses, drafting documents and conducting legal research to help chronically underfunded legal teams try and uphold defendants' due process rights. The DPCC is incredibly proud of these two students and is thrilled to be able to offer one student each year this opportunity going forwards.

Law School students visit IBM Hursley

They were accompanied by Dr Napoleon Xanthoulis and Dr Stephanie Law and three PhD researchers affiliated with the Law and Technology research centre. In advance of this visit, the students whetted their appetite by completing a short introductory course online, via IBM Skills Build, for which they received a certificate of achievement, and through which they obtained a broad overview of the work of IBM and the skills development training on offer.

The group was met by Prof (Hon) John McNamara, a Master Investor and the UK University Programs Lead at IBM, who was our expert host and guide for the morning. John firstly offered the group an exceptionally interesting tour of the Hursley Museum, a treasure trove of technological developments, which have emerged since IBM established itself at Hursley in 1958. Here they learned that key technologies which continue to shape our digital landscape and ecosystem were developed at Hursley; these include the Customer Information Control System, used in ATMs around the world. Exploring vintage equipment such as punch-card” technology used to record programming code and finding out about the first cloud systems used in data storage, the students were able to see IBM’s history in Hursley unfold and find out about how data processing has been developed and transformed over the decades.

The students learned about the fascinating projects in which John is involved, as well as IBM’s facilitation of AI and machine learning-led technology. As a group of lawyers interested in data protection, they had the opportunity to engage in a discussion of some of the legal and ethical considerations and challenges that arise in this cutting-edge field, leaving them with a lot of food for thought on the intersections of law, computer science, philosophy and political science.

Napoleon, Stephanie and the entire group would like to extend our thanks to John and the team at IBM for such a thought-provoking and enriching experience!

Professor Harry Annison launches Growing Hope and Power briefing

Professor Annison, a member of the Centre for Justice Studies, first set out key insights from the briefing, setting up a series of collaborative sessions co-led with Justice Futures, exploring ways of thinking about and achieving systemic change in relation to questions of crime and justice.

This event was attended by a wide range of people leading third sector organisations, academics, people with lived experience of the criminal justice system, and representatives of the ��ɫ��Ƶ. "It was a pleasure to collaborate with Justice Futures - Gemma Buckland, Nina Champion and Anita Dockley - on this workshop that brought together a collection of stakeholders committed to achieving positive change", said Professor Annison. "It is gratifying to see my collaborative work with Dr Kate Paradine being able to play a small, but hopefully valuable, part in current debates about how positive change can be achieved in relation to questions of crime and justice. I was particularly delighted that we were able to hold this event at Hope Street; thank you to Lady Edwina Grosvenor and the Hope Street staff for their warm welcome."

The briefing paper, co-authored by Dr Kate Paradine and Professor Harry Annison, 'Growing Hope and Power', is available online.

The associated academic paper, co-authored by Dr Kate Paradine and Professor Harry Annison, ‘A vision for academic and third sector collaboration in (criminal) justice’ is published in the Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, and available open access (free for all) online.

How better communication could help prevent evictions

“I discovered from previous research that people actually don’t tend to engage in the arrears and repossession process even though their home in under threat” said Professor Lisa Whitehouse, a member of the People, Property, Community research centre. Letters pile up and court summons are ignored “and there wasn’t a lot of research explaining why.”

Funded by the abrdn Financial Fairness Trust, Professor Lisa Whitehouse set out, along with Research Fellow Dr Tracey Varnava, to fill in the evidence gap. The project aims to improve the lives of households in housing debt and at threat of eviction by identifying ways to improve meaningful communication between them and their housing provider, thereby reducing the likelihood of court proceedings and eviction.

Lisa and Tracey gathered data via a survey of people who had missed rent or mortgage payments, along with conducting court observations and interviews with tenants, mortgage borrowers, and advice service providers. The results are shedding light on why current practices aren’t working and what can be done to help.

Read Tacking housing debt and eviction to discover more about this research.

Professor Helen Carr Publishes Protection From Evicition Law Reform Briefing

The policy briefing explains why reform is necessary and what the intended impact and benefits would be for vulnerable tenants. The policy briefing also contains detailed amendments to the Protection from Eviction Act 1977 and the Housing and Planning Act 2016.

Protecting Vulnerable Tenants Policy Briefing Paper.pdf

��ɫ��Ƶ Law School Welcomes New Staff for 24-25 Academic Year

We are pleased to welcome two new colleagues joining us this academic year.

- Dr Andrea Pelliconi
- Madison Stevens

Dr Pelliconi joins us as Lecturer in Law. Dr Pelliconi’s PhD is from City St George’s, University of London and she was previously a Teaching Associate at University of Nottingham.

Dr Pelliconi’s research focuses on demographic engineering and its social and human rights impact under international law. She specialises in human rights, migration, and international criminal law.

Madison is in the final stages of completing her PhD at ��ɫ��Ƶ Law School, which will be submitted imminently. Her PhD is titled ‘Law and Risk Regulation: A Case Study on Solid Bulk Cargo Liquefaction.’ Her PhD research is funded by the ��ɫ��Ƶ Marine and Maritime Institute as part of their multidisciplinary project, ‘Solid Bulk Cargo Liquefaction: Strategies for Effective Control.’

Madison's research focuses on developing a hybrid governance model that combines public regulatory theory with private governance approaches to address complex global risks.

Professor Helen Carr Publishes Protection From Eviction Law Reform Briefing

Protecting Vulnerable Tenants Policy Briefing Paper.pdf

Dr Alexandros Ntovas participates in NATO Centre of Excellence proceedings

Through lively discussion and hands-on training, it examined relevant legal challenges facing the maritime law community and navies across multiple topic areas. This year the NATO Centre of Excellence increased the conference training program to provide additional learning opportunities for legal advisors and operators to improve their competence through numerous tabletop exercises, case studies, and fictional vignettes, which considered among other topics: Protection of Critical Infrastructure at Sea, Menace in the Red Sea Region, and New Developments in Autonomous and Unmanned Systems.

Dr Ntovas sat at the panel of ‘New Developments in Autonomous and Unmanned Systems’ and provided a panoptic view of the legal developments in the regulation of autonomous maritime systems from the European perspective, covering regulatory and project developments, including the potential impact of the recently adopted European Union Regulation 2024/1689 that lays down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence in providing developers and deployers with clear requirements and obligations regarding specific uses of Artificial Intelligence.

Dr Alexandros Ntovas delivers paper at the European Society of International Law

In his research paper, Dr Ntovas reflected on the recent decisions by the Legal Committee (111th session, 22-26 April 2024) and Maritime Safety Committee (108th session, 15-24 May 2024) to revise the International Maritime Organization’s road map for developing the Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships Code, which will be offered on a voluntary basis in 2025 and finally be adopted as a mandatory instrument by 2030 with proposed entry into force on 1 January 2032. He argued that, while the Code may address sufficiently the required changes in terms of making and applying future legislation that should not be inconsistent with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 (UNCLOS), the ostensibly simple question is whether autonomous ships will meet the legal requirement of hu-manning. In the ensued analysis, he pointed out that in addition to the first two turns, namely first in approaching the law-making process by means of a flexible code and second in moving the substantive application of the law toward goal-based rules, international law will need to take a third turn by interpretating any UNCLOS requirement of human presence in light of the functional legal theory.

Dr Alexandros Ntovas speaks at the Autonomous Ships Conference 2024, Copenhagen

In recent years, various ships projects involving coastal and ocean-going routes with different degrees of autonomy are being tested. Those will have great implications for naval architects, shipbuilders, shipping companies, and maritime systems providers. In December 2024, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) will host 109th session of the Maritime Safety Committee (MSC) where the Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) group will meet again. The Royal Institution of Naval Architects and the Danish Society of Engineers convened in Copenhagen, Denmark, the 3rd Autonomous ship conference on 20-22 November 2024 ahead of the IMO meeting. The conference was opened by Malene Axelsen Mundt, Director of Maritime Regulation and Legal Affairs at the Danish Maritime Authority (DMA).

Dr Ntovas sat at the panel of ‘Regulation’, which was moderated by Erik Ingolf Tvedt (DMA), and in his intervention, he reflected on the substance of the recent decisions in Legal Committee (111th session, 22-26 April 2024) and Maritime Safety Committee (108th session, 15-24 May 2024) to revise the IMO MASS Road Map the aim is to offer the MASS Code on a voluntary basis in 2025, with its final version to be adopted as a mandatory instrument by 2030 with proposed entry into force on 1 January 2032. While the MASS Code shall be expected to address sufficiently some of the essential changes in terms of making and applying future legislation that should not be inconsistent with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 (UNCLOS), the ostensibly simple question is whether autonomous (a concept that is yet to be conclusively defined) ships will meet the legal requirement of ‘hu-manning’, a term that he proposed to be used for combining in this context the existing manning requirement accruing from UNCLOS within the immediate prospect of technological advancements rendering the ship – ie., as a system combining processes and equipment – to perform data acquisition, analysis, decision making and action implementation, etc., without human assistance; but not precluding in the future and under certain conditions, all these to become also independent of human control.

Dr Megan Pearson Presents at MLR Reproductive Life in the Workplace Seminar

This seminar brought together legal professionals, academics, students, and trade unionists to explore the complex legal challenges at the intersection of justice, employment law rights, and living a reproductive life in the workplace. Dr Pearson’s paper was on 'Work/Life Balance Rights: Foregrounding Care in Work?' and considered the greater priority given to work/life balance rights in the Employment Rights Bill currently going through Parliament.

The full programme of speakers from the seminar can be viewed here: https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/news-events/events/2024/12/modern-law-review---seminar/

Dr S Chelvan Awarded Honorary Doctorate from the Open University

Dr Chelvan practices from 33 Bedford Row Chambers, where he joined as Head of Immigration and Public Law in November 2020.

The Open University award of an Honourary Doctorate is in recognition of Dr Chelvan's "services to the educationally underprivileged. ... [N]ominated for this award as a result of [his] exceptional efforts to improve the welfare of LGBTQ+ people seeking asylum in the UK and from [his] research into refugee law based on gender and sexual identity. [Dr Chelvan's] works sits well with the ethos of the Open University here in the UK, where we are known for our innovation, flexibility, accessibility and social justice mission."

Dr Chelvan is recognised by the legal profession as the pre-eminent legal expert on LGBT asylum law in the UK. Dr Chelvan’s work demonstrates his commitment to the rule of law and to promoting the rights and welfare of some of the most marginalised members of our society.

Chelvan's acceptance speech can be viewed here: https://t.co/3Q3yyWTi4x

Congratulations Chelvan!

Dr Pelliconi Chairs ICON-S Interest Group on Climate Change and Migration Webinar

The event brought together leading experts to discuss the Falepili Union, the world’s first bilateral agreement on climate mobility, which addresses the displacement of Tuvalu’s population due to rising sea levels.

The webinar provided a platform for critical reflection on how legal frameworks can support climate-affected communities while safeguarding their sovereignty and cultural identity. The event was hosted as part of the ICON-S Interest Group’s ongoing efforts to explore the intersection of climate change, migration, and global justice.

Dr Andrea Maria Pelliconi Visits Sahrawi Refugee Camps for Legal Status of Western Sahara Research

The Congress, themed “The Legal Status of Western Sahara and the Issue of Natural Resources,” brought together diplomats, jurists, academics, and representatives from national and international organisations to discuss the legal and political dimensions of the Western Sahara conflict. During her stay, Pelliconi visited key institutions in the camps, including the Parliament, schools, the central hospital, the Ministry of Equality (where she met with Minister Ms Salamo Aleycom), the Anti-Mine Association, the Association of the Families of Sahrawi Prisoners and Disappeared (AFAPREDESA), and the Museum of Resistance, among others. At the Congress, she contributed to discussions on the right to self-determination and independence in the African human rights system, the recent decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union on the Front Polisario II case, and climate vulnerability amid forced displacement.

This activity offered critical insights into the lived realities of the Sahrawi community and facilitated the development of academic and professional networks. It also strengthened engagement with research communities focused on international human rights, self-determination, and resource exploitation in conflict zones, raising awareness of human rights violations in Western Sahara. Pelliconi's participation was sponsored by the British Academy-Leverhulme Small Grant scheme.

SLS Death Penalty Casework Clinic Wins Champions of Justice Award

Staff and students have worked tirelessly performing document review on multiple death penalty cases, providing pro bono assistance to legal teams in the southern United States resulting in some exceptional outcomes. The DPCC, alongside the Centre for Justice Studies, recently hosted one of these teams for a lecture explaining just how impactful the work of DPCC volunteers has been in their cases. Students are able to volunteer for the DPCC across all undergraduate year groups, but must undergo a rigorous application and interview process overseen by Clinic Co-Directors Dr Rose Tempowski (Senior Teaching Fellow, SLS) and Mark Telford (Principal Teaching Fellow, SLS). Currently, 20 students are volunteering their time on a weekly basis and the Law School, through the Prof. Andrew Rutherford Capital Defence Bursary, has sponsored two recent graduates to undertake placements with capital defence teams in the United States.

Bestowed by Amicus, the award winners were selected by an independent panel comprising Professor Robin Maher (George Washington University, former Director of the ABA Death Penalty Representation Project); Dr Tunde Okewale OBE (Doughty Street Chambers) and HHJ Sarah Whitehouse KC (Central Criminal Court (Old Bailey)). The event featured a link up to Ohio's death row, with Keith LaMar sharing spoken word poetry accompanied by pianist Albert Marquès and Grammy award-winning saxophonist Jean Toussaint.

Dr S Chelvan Awarded Honorary Doctorate from the Open University

Congratulations Chelvan!

Centre Co-Directors Awarded Impact Acceleration Funding for Private Rented Sector Enforcement Improvements

As part of the IAA project, Mark will undertake a secondment at ��ɫ��Ƶ City Council’s Private Sector Enforcement Department from February to August 2025. Working with Councillors, Housing Officers and Officers from various other local authorities, Mark and Helen will develop policy and practice briefings on pro-active housing enforcement to help drive up housing standards and challenge poor management practices by landlords in ��ɫ��Ƶ. The project has also received support from the Higher Education Impact Fund and was showcased at the ESRC Festival of Social Science 2024.

The IAA project builds on Mark and Helen’s work as Expert Advisors to the Council’s Scrutiny Inquiry into Private Rented Housing which took place from October 2023 to April 2024. Following the Inquiry, Helen and Mark wrote about their experiences in the Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law in 2024. Their open access article was quoted extensively in a recent House of Commons Library Briefing Paper on Overview and scrutiny in local government.

Dr Tempowski Nominated as Finalist in OUP Law Teacher of the Year Award

��ɫ��Ƶ the Award:

The Law Teacher of the Year award remains the only national award to recognize and reward all-round law teaching excellence. We’re looking for extraordinary teachers: those who are passionate about what they do; those who add that extra special something to their teaching, and who inspire those they work with and teach.

You can follow the progress of the award on X/Twitter at @OUPLaw and by using #ltoty.

Explore previous years' awards and winners here.

Dr Dina Lupin Awarded €1.3m for Home in Crisis Collaboration Project

This project engages with the idea of climate crisis as one that is unfolding inside our homes. In centring the idea of ‘home’, we examine the ways in which the climate crisis is lived and felt at home and we examine what home means in a state of climate crisis, in which one can be unhomed and rehomed, rendered homeless in one’s home, and homesick in one’s homeland.
Legal understandings of crisis tend to overlook the interconnected and overlapping nature of crises, their complex temporalities, their histories, and the fact that crises are personal and manifest in intimate spaces. By engaging in humanities-based approaches to law, we develop a novel and perspective-shifting understanding of the climate crisis in law. Using home as a lens through which to understand the climate crisis, allows us to better understand the ways in which the crisis is intimate, shaped by gender, location, community, age, disability, sexuality, and how we know and live in our homes. This perspective allows us to better see how limited legal understandings of home can create and exacerbate damaging experiences of crisis.

The project is a collaboration between researchers based in Norway, Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom, co-designed with partners and Indigenous researchers and activists in South Africa, Canada (Empatheatre and Protecting our Home) and a global environmental law charity (ClientEarth). Through this collaboration, we are developing and building arts and humanities based approaches to address law’s otherwise conceptually limited resources, and to enable legal systems to recognize the meanings of home that accommodate the breadth what is being changed, lost and damaged in climate crisis. The team will adopt an arts and humanities approach, rooted in theatre, literature, and Indigenous practice to enable the creative aspect of law, that might otherwise remain outside the normal jurisdiction of legal thought.
The project objectives are to reveal diverse understandings of home and the ways it is constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed in the context of the climate crisis. Home in Crisis will develop new understandings of the climate crisis, its impacts, and how those ought to be addressed within and beyond law and its systems.

Call for Papers - SDG+10: A Global Legal Stocktake of Achievements, Opportunities and Challenges

We invite abstract submissions on any topic related to SDGs, including: Goals 13 and 7, non-proliferation of fossil fuels and energy resilience; Harnessing AI for SDGs; Trade, Investment and Sustainable Development: securing a positive relationship; SDG15: Biodiversity loss: Innovative approaches to conservation and use; Housing and SDG11: making ‘cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’; Shipping and Sustainability; and SDG17: Developing the private law framework to support sustainable development.

Abstracts should be sent to Hwon Lee (kl1n18@soton.ac.uk) by 31st March 2025. We encourage scholars and practitioners worldwide and at any career stage to apply. Please see the full Call for Abstracts here.

Annual Undergraduate Law Conference

This year's speakers were:

Benjamin McLoughlin – “To what extent are unmanned vessels compatible with the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea?”
Nora Belkhiter – “Preventing and Punishing Genocide: The Jurisdictional Weaknesses, Selective Enforcement and Geopolitical Impunity of the Genocide Convention”
Connor Jeffrey – “Even Sisyphus deserves a day off: Employment Rights in a Prison Labour Context”
Alexander Rea – “Parental Orders and their Statutory Provisions in the Context of Surrogacy: An Argument for Reform”
Iona Rice – “Examining the Scope of the Liability Convention for Space Incidents caused by Private Actors”
Nikoleta Efstathiou – “The Intersection of Generative AI and Bias: An analysis of the Risks and the EU Regulatory Approaches in the Private Sector”
Charlotte Haws – “A Comparative Analysis of Protection Orders in Cases of Domestic Abuse: Examining Gender-Based disparities in Romantic Relationships”
Eduard Ivan – “Common Petitions in the 14th Century: Feudalism’s Greatest Foe or its Greatest Ally?”
Revekka Chrysanthou – “Discrimination against Women in the Workplace: UK vs Iceland”
Kieran Boyd – “Will Labour’s Proposed Reform to Fire-and-Rehire tactics in the Employment Rights Bill 2024 Adequately Protect Employee Rights?”

Well done to all the presenters who did a fantastic job presenting their research. And many thanks to Dr Lupin for organising.

Barasha Borthakur Shortlisted in India UK Achievers Honours 2025

This initiative by National Indian Students and Alumni Union (NISAU), in partnership with the British Council, the UK Government, and the UK Higher Education sector, highlights the contributions of global changemakers strengthening India-UK relations and shaping critical global discourse.

To receive the recognition, Barasha Borthakur was invited to the UK Parliament on 12 February 2025. Barasha was also interviewed by organisations on 13 February about UK-India education. UoS’s team were there and talked about the exciting developments around UoS’s new campus in Delhi, India.

Present at the event were many MPs including Seema Malhotra MP, Minister for Migration and Citizenship, Minister of Equalities, UK Government, Minister Gareth Thomas, UK Minister for Services, Small Business & Exports.

��ɫ��Ƶ Law School Hosts Dr Christian Bergqvist as a Visiting Scholar

On 3 March, Dr Bergqvist gave a seminar titled 'AI Collusion – Should We Be Concerned?' as part of the Centre for Law and Technology seminar series Afternoon Tea Talks on the Law and AI.

With case law examples, Dr Bergqvist discussed how AI collusion and AI-driven decision making could enable companies to coordinate their behaviour in anti-competitive manners. Dr Bergqvist reflected upon the fundamental aspects such as the present of an enforcer and information exchange, that are essential to develop a successful cartel and highlighted that whilst AI and algorithms can support the collusion through more efficient enforcement and information exchange, those criteria are still required for the cartel to operate optimally. AI is therefore just a tool to improve the success rate of the cartel, but not a challenge that the competition authorities are not aware off or able to deal with.

Dr Bergqvist also gave a guest seminar to our students interested in competition law and intellectual property law as part of his stay. The seminar focused on Google and its many antitrust cases worldwide: ‘Taking Stock of Google’s Antitrust Troubles as the World Turns Against It’. In the seminar, the students were treated to a worldwide tour of Google’s cases by Dr Bergqvist who highlighted that the most prominent and troublesome cases for Google, but also discussed Google’s business strategies through the cases illustrating how Google is continuing to maintain it’s core business empire: the search engine.

Dr. Bergqvist is a leading expert in EU Competition Law, with a particular focus on its application to deregulated and network-based sectors such as telecommunications, energy, postal services, and transport. His research also delves deeply into issues related to abuse of dominance within these industries. With a wealth of experience as both an academic and practitioner, Dr. Bergqvist uniquely bridges the gap between theoretical research and practical application.

In recent years, his work has expanded to examine the complexities of digital platforms, Big Tech, and companies such as Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google (Alphabet)—analysing their profound impact on competition and regulation.

Centre for International Law and Globalisation Holds 2025 Rule of Law and Sustainable Development Seminar

Professor Werner Scholtz, Head of ��ɫ��Ƶ Law School, convened the event. Reflecting on the seminar, Professor Scholtz commented, “Participants from the Global South and Global North engaged in timely discussions about ex-situ conservation measures and wild animal welfare in the context of the loss of biological diversity.”

The papers delivered included:

Michael ’t Sas-Rolfes (University of Oxford) - Wild animal values and global conservation governance: An evolutionary perspective
Veerle Platvoet (University of Helsinki) - Ex situ conservation and Animal Agency
Rajat Banerjee (Alliance School of Law, India) - Revisiting the effectiveness of the Public Trust Doctrine in both in situ and ex situ conservation of wild animals: A theoretical treatise
Johanna Hjalmarsson (��ɫ��Ƶ Law School) - The case for a legal framework protecting whales from shipping
Kshitij Naikade (Symbiosis Law School, India) - Sustainable Utilization of Wildlife (SUW): Need of the hour to understand this grey area under CITES for a sustainable future
Dulki Seethawaka and Jayani Christina (University of Colombo, Sri Lanka) - A fallacy or reality: a legal analysis of the ex situ conservation measures in Sri Lanka
Celine Doak, South Africa Ostrich Farming - a critical analysis of South Africa’s flightless animal welfare and well-being legislation
Himangshu Kalita (National Law University, India) - From the wild to captivity: welfare and ethical challenges of Namibia’s elephant exports under CITES
Neil D’Cruze (Wildlife researcher, South Africa) - Lion farming in South Africa and the illegal international bone trade

Dr Louise Du Toit Joins Editorial Board of Transnational Environmental Law

Transnational Environmental Law (TEL) is a peer-reviewed journal for the study of environmental law and governance beyond the state. It approaches legal and regulatory developments with an interest in the contribution of non-state actors and an awareness of the multi-level governance context in which contemporary environmental law unfolds.TEL has a broad disciplinary focus open to scholarly contributions covering a wide range of environmental issues and the evolving dynamics between environmental law and other legal disciplines.

Dr Andrea Maria Pelliconi Obtains Grant Funding to Hold Workshop on Climate (Im)mobilities

The workshop aims to bring together six scholars from other institutions who are part of a project focused on the legal and policy responses to climate-related mobility and immobility and their impact on affected individuals and communities.

The goal of the workshop is to discuss and get feedback on work-in-project papers that will be part of a journal Special Issue, building upon a Blog Series on Climate-Induced (Im)Mobilities recently published on the Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA) blog.

Rehabilitating Probation Feature in Probation Inspectorate Consultation

"We are pleased to see that the finalised national probation inspection standards appear to have incorporated many of our suggestions, especially as regards Leadership and Governance", said Professor Annison. "We look forward to continuing to engage with HM Probation Inspectorate, and other stakeholders, going forwards."

Read the Rehabilitating Probation: Submission to HMIP Consultation on a National Inspection publication here.

For more about the Rehabilitating Probation project, see here.

Professor Harry Annison and ’Rehabilitating Probation’ ESRC research project team Contribute to National Debates on Criminal Justice Governance

Professor Annison shared key insights from the short briefing available here.

A recording of the event can be viewed here.

��ɫ��Ƶ Law School Students visit IBM Hursley

The group was hosted by Professor and Master Inventor John McNamara of IBM, who spoke at length with the students about Artificial Intelligence, innovation and IBM’s take on the importance of transparency and ethics policies around developing AI for the greater good of society. Prof McNamara also treated the students to a visit in the IBM museum which displays the very first IBM computers and typewriters.

This was the second visit of ��ɫ��Ƶ’s academic community to IBM and complemented the Law and Technology Centre’s Annual Talk, delivered by Prof McNamara on 26th February 2025.

��ɫ��Ƶ Law School Students Present Mediation Poster in the UK Parliament

Commenting on their presentation, Dr Romanazde said “the students represented the University with professionalism and enthusiasm”, as they spoke with Members of Parliament about the value of mediation in addressing complex challenges. Their poster focused particularly on how mediation can support constructive dialogue between host communities and refugees—an area where mediation’s potential remains underutilized. This initiative was part of a wider programme organized by the University of Warwick to bring young researchers into meaningful policy discussions.

The Law School is proud of its students’ achievement and their role in raising awareness about mediation at the national level. The Law School is also grateful to Dr Luiza Romanazde for dedication and support for the students in this initiative as CARA Fellow.

��ɫ��Ƶ Law School Student Team Successfully Selected for International Mediation and Negotiation Competition in Vienna

The ��ɫ��Ƶ team was selected by the event’s organising committee, reflecting the strength of its application and the club’s growing commitment to developing practical legal skills. The team consists of four Law School students — Niall Brolly, Andrew Littlejohn, Leyla Mammadova, and Carina Rusnac — who are currently training under the academic supervision and coaching of Luiza Romanadze, the founder of the Negotiation and Mediation Club at the Law School. Preparations for the competition are now fully underway, with weekly sessions focused on mastering negotiation techniques, refining communication strategies, and practising mediation skills.

The University is proud to support its students in this opportunity to gain international experience and represent it on the global stage. The Law School is especially grateful to Dr Romanadze for all her hard work as CARA Fellow supporting the students.

Find out more about the 10th CDRC International Mediation and Negotiation Competition in Vienna here

Special Issue on Online Safety Act 2023 and Online Harms Published

The Special Issue brings together a group of specialists in the area of online safety to dissect the Online Safety Act 2023 and its impact on important aspects of our online world. The articles can be divided into two broad themes:

1) scrutiny of the Online Safety Act 2023 regulatory approach, whether it will sufficiently curtail online platforms’ behaviour and their responsibilities to ensure safety online; and

2) evaluation of the moderation of harmful and illegal content with a specific focus on freedom of expression and pornography.

Guest edited by Dr Hedvig Schmidt, the special issue also features articles from the Law School’s Professor Remi Nwabueze, Professor Uta Kohl and Dr Stephanie Law.

Climate (Im)Mobility: Legal and Policy Pathways to Displacement and Entrapment in the Global Climate Emergency

We’ll have speakers from or based in Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Pacific. The programme can be found here: Workshop Program - Climate ImMobilities 09 June 20_v2.docx. The workshop is sponsored by the Social & Legal Studies journal and the ��ɫ��Ƶ Law School. It is convened in collaboration with Sara Arapiles (University of Lund, Sweden), and 2025 Visiting Fellow at Oxford's Refugee Studies Centre and Pratik Purswani (Jindal Global Law School, India), who is a 2025 International Visiting Fellow with the ��ɫ��Ƶ's Institute for Arts and Humanities (SIAH) who will be joining in person. This workshop builds on a previous seminar on Climate Change and Migration organised last year at the University of Nottingham, sponsored by the Socio-Legal Studies Association. The papers will be published in a Special Issue of the Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies.

Dr Alexandros Ntovas Joins United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Expert Group

��ɫ��Ƶ Law School Student Team Represents University at IBA-VIAC CDRC Mediation and Negotiation Competition

A student team from the ��ɫ��Ƶ Law School had the honour of representing the University at the prestigious IBA-VIAC CDRC Mediation and Negotiation Competition in Vienna. The team of four students – Carina Rusnac, Leyla Mammadova, Niall Brolly and Andrew Littlejohn – engaged with fellow participants from over 60 countries, gaining valuable insight into international perspectives on negotiation, mediation and alternative dispute resolution (ADR).

The competition offered immense networking opportunities, allowing our students to connect with leading experts and professional assessors in the ADR field. The team also received valuable feedback throughout the negotiation rounds and contributed to the discussions that highlighted the diverse approaches taken in mediation throughout different cultures.

The team has expressed sincere thanks to the Law School and especially the support provided by the Head of School, Professor Werner Scholtz, who equipped students with academic and financial support, essential for their participation in the competition. The Mediation and Negotiation Club has received special recognition from both the students and the University, thanks to the dedicated efforts of Luiza Romanadze in preparing the students for the competition. The masterclasses provided by Luiza allowed the team to master their negotiation strategies which are essential for any professional role, and particularly vital for future lawyers.

The students are looking forward to representing the University in future international competitions, where they can continue to build on their success and strengthen University’s presence on an international platform.

The University supports its students in engaging in international experiences to broaden the scope of their studies, while gaining recognition on a global platform. This achievement reflects not only the hard work of the coach and the students, but also a reflection of the law school’s growing presence on the international legal education stage.

The University is looking forward to seeing what the students can accomplish next.

Centre for Private and Commercial Law holds Unaccountable Director Workshop

Organised by Professor Brenda Hannigan (Professor of Corporate Law), invited speakers included Professor Charlotte Villiers, University of Bristol, Professor Andrew Johnston, University of Warwick, Professor Anne Lafarre (University of Tilburg), Professor Catherine Malecki, (Rennes 2 University) and Professor Monica Fuentes (Universidad Complutense de Madrid).

Given the possible retreat at EU level from the key sustainability reporting and due diligence Directives, the workshop explored what the direction of travel is now likely to be, considered the evolution of UK and EU reporting requirements, noted the possible unintended consequences of the existing framework in the form of greenwashing and green hushing, addressed possible entity and individual liabilities and asked whether appropriate enforcement design can incentivise corporate compliance.

It was a very enjoyable, constructive and productive discussion of one of the most pressing corporate issues, enhanced by the presence of our European colleagues.

What can you do with a Law Degree?

If you’re thinking about studying law at university, you’re probably wondering where it could lead. Most people immediately picture courtrooms, robes, and legal dramas. That’s certainly one possibility. But law is much broader than that. It’s a subject that gives you the tools to think clearly, argue well, and understand how society functions. It opens up a wide range of career paths. Whether you want to become a solicitor or barrister, work in government or policy, join a business or start your own, a law degree gives you a solid academic foundation and the flexibility to go in many different directions.

A law degree doesn’t limit your future — it opens it up. Whether your interests lie in business, politics, international development or beyond, the intellectual training law provides is widely respected and highly transferable.

Kirsty McDougall, Lecturer in Law, ��ɫ��Ƶ; specialist in competition law

‘Renters’ Rights – Understanding the impact of new legislation

The event ‘Renters’ Rights – Understanding the impact of new legislation’ provided an opportunity to learn how upcoming legislation for the private rented housing sector will impact the role and actions for housing authorities in the region. The new Bill aims to transform the experience of private renting and will be the biggest change for the sector in decades.

Delegates from nearly all local authorities in the Hampshire and the Solent region were able to acquire insights from several legal and housing experts, including a representative of Government in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), who ensured that participants were up to date and empowered to navigate the upcoming legislation.

Sue Littlemore, Director Civic University, said:

The challenge of ensuring high quality private rented housing is a real issue for local
authorities across Hampshire and the Solent. As a Civic University for the region, we aim to
mobilise our outstanding research expertise and insights to help transform lives and
livelihoods across our area. Our local authority partners tell us unsafe, unhealthy and
unpleasant living conditions blight the lives of too many in our region and we were
delighted to bring academic and sector experts together with local authorities to learn how
together we can address the challenge.

Professor Helen Carr, Professor of Property Law & Social Justice, commented:

The Renters’ Rights Bill when enacted will implement the biggest transformation of the
relationship between landlords and tenants since the 1980s. The Bill places extensive
responsibilities on local authorities. This conference helped bring home the scale of the
challenge but also provided a positive opportunity for attendees to hear how the University
of ��ɫ��Ƶ can provide help with our extensive expertise in housing, homelessness
and property law.

Samantha Hall, Head of Housing & Environmental Health, Test Valley Borough Council
added:

The Renters’ Rights Bill is an opportunity to transform the private rented sector, setting
decent home standards and creating more stability. The proposed changes are significant,
it is important to us to support both landlords and tenants to understand their new
responsibilities and continue to have a thriving private rented sector. This event provided
great knowledge sharing which will help shape our delivery plans as well as enabling me to
connect with others across the region who will be working through the same challenges.

The event builds on existing work between the ��ɫ��Ƶ’s School of Law and ��ɫ��Ƶ City Council, with the University providing expertise into their scrutiny inquiry on the private rented sector in the city. Further work with other authorities is hoped to follow on after this session.

Research Workshop on AI, Equality and the Law

Call for Abstracts:

Themes and questions

We welcome submissions that engage with the broad theme of AI, Equality and the Law. Papers may address, but need not be limited to, the following themes and questions:

Women, Equality and AI:

feminist perspectives on AI ethics and governance; gendered impacts of AI in the context of reproductive health, domestic work, or caregiving.

Labour market inequality and AI:

the distributive impacts of workplace AI; the regulation of platform work and algorithmic management; algorithms and the right to equal pay for equal work.

AI as a solution to inequality:

applying AI to achieve equality through accountability, transparency, and explainability in AI systems.

AI and discrimination:

AI and its relationship to any form of discrimination; intersectionality and AI; de-colonial approaches to AI governance and accountability; racialised impacts and uses of AI; challenges and opportunities of AI for securing disability justice.

Submission Guidelines

The organising committee invites abstract submissions (max 500 words) to scclaw@soton.ac.uk
The deadline for submission is 5th Jan 2026.
Acceptance decisions will be communicated by the end of January.

Further information

There is no fee for attending the workshop. Limited travel and accommodation expenses may be available for participants who lack access to institutional funds.

For any queries, please contact the Conference Organizing Committee at scclaw@soton.ac.uk

��ɫ��Ƶ Represented at the 21st ICC Mediation Competition

The team was formed of Carina Rusnac and Leyla Mammadova, and were selected to participate among approximately 60 top university teams from around the world. The competition brought together leading universities to engage in intensive international commercial mediation simulations under the ICC Mediation Rules, offering a unique opportunity to develop advanced negotiation, advocacy, and conflict-resolution skills.

The ��ɫ��Ƶ team represented the University with professionalism, resilience, and strong teamwork, gaining valuable international experience and contributing to the University’s growing presence in global mediation and dispute resolution forums.

The team’s participation in the competition was made possible thanks to the support of the leadership of the School of Law, in particular Professor Werner Scholz, whose commitment to experiential learning creates valuable opportunities for students to develop both practical and soft skills alongside legal excellence.

The team was coached by Luiza Romanadze, whose guidance and mentoring played a key role in the team’s preparation and performance throughout the competition.

Congratulations to Carina and Leyla. Their participation in this prestigious international competition highlights the strength of experiential learning at the ��ɫ��Ƶ and the growing importance of mediation as a core skill for future legal professionals.

UoS-Christ University Tort Law Moot Competition Takes Place

The competition was a great success, and we are excited to expand the event further next year. A special thank you to Dr Madison Stevens for drafting the moot problem and serving as one of the judges.

The Law School’s mooting coordinator Dr Barasha Borthakur chaired the session and extended congratulations to the Christ University team on emerging as winners. Both teams performed exceptionally well and demonstrated impressive preparation, professionalism, and advocacy. Well done to the UoS team comprising Muhammad Asad, Roxana-Anya Viziteu and Liya Sunny.

Taking Stock and Looking Forward: The Past, Present and Future of Equality Law

Professor O'Cinneide began by reflecting on the distinctive role of equality law in shaping new social norms rather than simply enforcing existing standards of conduct. He highlighted both the significant progress made since the emergence of modern equality law in recent decades and the continuing challenges in achieving substantive equality. The talk also noted growing contestation around equality as a value in several jurisdictions, and concluded by emphasising that lawyers and legal scholars should not be complacent about the future development and fate of equality law.

Colm O’Cinneide is Professor of Constitutional and Human Rights Law at University College London (UCL) and Vice-Dean (Research) of the Faculty of Laws. A graduate of University College Cork and King's Inns, he has published extensively in the fields of comparative constitutional, human rights and anti-discrimination law.

The Stefan Cross Centre for Women, Equality and Law is grateful to Professor O’Cinneide for taking the time to deliver a talk at ��ɫ��Ƶ, and we look forward to our next event, which will be a workshop on AI and Equality in April.

Carnival UK working with ��ɫ��Ƶ Law School

Based at its headquarters in Harbour Parade, ��ɫ��Ƶ, Carnival UK has welcomed LLB students into its respected in-house legal team, led by John Snyder, a ��ɫ��Ƶ Law School alumnus.

Over the past year, three LLB students have undertaken placements within the team, gaining valuable insight into the breadth and complexity of legal practice in a major multinational business — from commercial matters to regulatory compliance and operational support.

Iona Rice, LLB (2025), said:

‘My experience at Carnival UK was a brilliant introduction to the in-house legal world. I admired how closely the legal team worked with other commercial sectors and gained practical exposure to commercial contracts, IP matters and many other elements of law. Working with such a supportive legal team was the highlight of my placement and John’s advice stayed with me as I went on to complete my SQE exams with the goal of becoming a solicitor.’

Jack Fey, third year LLB student, said:

‘My work experience at Carnival UK provided invaluable insight into the dynamic and commercially focused environment of an in-house legal team. Observing how the legal team drives business objectives, rather than simply reacting to legal issues, significantly enhanced my commercial awareness and reaffirmed my commitment to pursuing qualification as a solicitor.’

Ben McLoughlin, LLB (2025), said:

‘My placement was a fantastic opportunity to join Carnival UK’s in-house legal team allowing me to gain practical legal experience at a global company located just a short distance from the Highfield campus. I was able to see the varied work carried out in-house ranging from customer relations to employment matters to vessel certification and international maritime conventions.’

Carnival UK, general counsel, John Snyder said:

‘As an alumnus of ��ɫ��Ƶ Law School, I am especially proud of the partnership we have built and pleased to offer this opportunity to support and help educate the next generation of ��ɫ��Ƶ lawyers. Our legal team benefits from the enthusiasm and fresh perspectives the students bring and we are delighted to play a part in their professional development.’

Dr Ntovas Releases Major New Monograph on International Fisheries Law and Ocean Governance

Fisheries Compatibility Disputes: Agreeing to Disagree, Committed to Conserve (February 2026); available here.

The book offers a rigorous and forward-looking contribution to the sustainable regulation of straddling and highly migratory fish stocks—resources that sit at the intersection of sovereignty, science, and sustainability. By examining how these vital stocks occupy a contested regulatory space across jurisdictions, Dr Ntovas addresses one of the most complex and pressing challenges in contemporary ocean governance. Through detailed doctrinal, historical, and jurisprudential analysis, the book traces the evolution of international fisheries law across foundational United Nations instruments, including the 1958 UN Fishing and Conservation Convention, the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the 1995 UN Fish Stocks Agreement. It advances a compelling case for consistent treaty interpretation and for the principled use of peaceful dispute settlement as a mechanism to strengthen international cooperation and safeguard marine ecosystems. At a time of intensifying ecological pressure and geopolitical tension, Fisheries Compatibility Disputes underscores the importance of resisting unilateralism and creeping jurisdictionalism in favour of coherent, rules-based ocean governance. The analysis situates fisheries compatibility disputes within the broader jurisprudence of treaty interpretation, offering both conceptual clarity and practical insight.

The publication further consolidates ��ɫ��Ƶ Law School’s international standing in law scholarship, with Dr Ntovas’s work reflecting further the ��ɫ��Ƶ’s commitment to research excellence addressing global sustainability challenges.

The book has received strong endorsements from leading international scholars and practitioners, who describe it as:

"A rigorous, comprehensive, and authoritative study that makes a significant contribution to the development of international fisheries law."
– David Joseph Attard, International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea

"Ntovas has crafted a comprehensive and compelling argument for addressing compatibility disputes through compulsory and binding settlement procedures. The breadth and depth of the historical analysis of the regulation of these vital fish stocks further strengthen the force of the overall argument. At a time when clarity in resolving international disputes is greatly needed, this book enriches the law of the sea and supports its continued development."
– Kristine Dalaker, Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security, Australia

"A brilliant legal analysis of the inherent ambiguities in articles 63(2) and 64 of the 1982 UN Law of the Sea Convention, as subsequently addressed in the 1995 UN Fish Stocks Agreement, explored through the prism of compulsory dispute settlement."
– Erik Franckx, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium and Nelson Mandela University, South Africa

"The new definitive treatise on the complex regime of international fisheries law, examining the interaction among the 1982 UN Law of the Sea Convention, the 1995 UN Fish Stocks Agreement, and regional lex specialis—and how compatibility disputes are to be resolved."
– James Kraska, Harvard Law School, USA

"Ntovas delivers a lucid, authoritative analysis that reframes international law on fish stocks, offering indispensable insights into conservation, cooperation, and dispute settlement for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers alike."
– Michael William Lodge, Barrister, formerly UN Secretary-General of the International Seabed Authority

"This book offers a systematic and incisive analysis of international fisheries law and governance, with particular attention to the challenges of ensuring compatibility of conservation and management measures, richly supported by jurisprudence and State practice."
– Young Kil Park, Korea Maritime Institute, South Korea

"A timely and in-depth insight into the scope and content of responsibilities linked to the obligations to cooperate and uphold the compatibility rule in the pursuit of sustainable fisheries—along with potential future avenues through compulsory dispute settlement."
– Adela Rey-Aneiros, formerly EU Delegation in Northeast Atlantic Coastal States’ Fisheries Negotiations

"Ntovas makes a compelling case for third-party adjudication of compatibility disputes arising under article 7 of the 1995 UN Fish Stocks Agreement."
– André Tahindro, formerly UN Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, and Informal Consultations and Review Conference of the UN 1995 Fish Stocks Agreement

This landmark publication will serve as a key resource for students and scholars of public international law, environmental law, and ocean governance, as well as for practitioners engaged in compatibility-related fisheries disputes.

Centre for People, Property and Community Hosts Modern Studies in Property Law 2026 Conference

The conference opened on 30 March with a keynote given by Prof John Mee exploring developments in the law of proprietary estoppel – an area of law which continues to pose doctrinal difficulties around the meaning of ‘reasonable reliance’ and how this is satisfied.

Other highlights included the closing keynote panel exploring the future of leasehold in light of the draft Commonhold Reform Bill. The panel deftly brought together the perspectives of a former Law Commissioner, Prof Nick Hopkins (UCL), a practitioner, Philip Rainey KC, and judge, Siobhan McGragh (President, First Tier Tribunal (Property Chamber)). The panel discussion reflected on the complexities and dynamics of real people and real property and the disputes arising between them. The spirited discussion considered whether commonhold and the mooted reforms will be the answer for those living in flats. This discussion was recorded and the aim is for this to be made available on the Law School’s YouTube page.

Commenting on the conference, co-organiser Dean Taylor, Lecturer in Law, said “it was a great privilege sharing with my colleagues in organising this conference and putting the programme together. We were keen for the conference to demonstrate the diversity of contemporary property law scholarship and the papers duly delivered, speaking to each other so wonderfully. I am grateful to those who presented and attended and ensured this was such a vibrant and stimulating three days. We also owe a debt of gratitude to our events team for ensuring the conference ran so smoothly.”

Fellow co-organiser Prof Helen Carr, Deputy Head of ��ɫ��Ƶ Law School (Research), added, “The conference demonstrated the best of contemporary property scholarship – from sophisticated explanations of doctrinal complexity to novel explorations of how property is implicated in the major global challenges of sustainability and AI. It was also very reassuring to see how exciting the future of property law scholarship is, as early-career scholars explore its challenges in innovative ways.”

Prof Lisa Whitehouse, Dr Mark Jordan and Dean Taylor will be co-editing the edited collection of papers selected from the conference with a view to publication by Hart Publishing.

You can view the programme directly here. Photos from the conference can be viewed on the Law School’s Flickr page here.

Dr Megan Pearson Presents at MLR Reproductive Life in the Workplace Seminar

The full programme of speakers from the seminar can be viewed here: https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/news-events/events/2024/12/modern-law-review---seminar/

Is a Social Media Ban for Under 16s a Panacea for Online Child Safety?

Dr Stephanie Law

On Monday the 15th of June 2026, a week before announcing his resignation as Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer confirmed that the Government would introduce legislation to implement a social media ban for children and young people in the UK.

The under-16s social media ban reflects a significant step in the UK’s attempts to regulate the online environment, and more specifically, to provide for “a safer digital childhood”. Indeed, for the supporters of a blanket age-based ban, the Labour Government’s commitment constitutes a necessary intervention to protect children’s safety and wellbeing, amongst growing public concern about social media use and the risks arising from children’s access to social media content that may exacerbate mental health concerns and existing vulnerabilities, expanded opportunities for engagement amounting to cyberbullying or exploitation, exposure to material relating to self-harm, suicide and eating disorders, as well as hate speech and misinformation.

While the background of the broader discussions on children’s online safety encompass many tragic incidents, it is necessary to consider whether young people’s exposure to risk in their increasingly intertwined offline and digital lives will effectively be reduced by an age-based ban. Until now, the UK has stopped short of introducing a blanket ban on young people accessing social media platforms. Instead, the Online Safety Act 2023 establishes obligations on platforms to remove illegal content, and content which is harmful to children.

The popularity of social media bans

The UK’s proposal follows a similar ban implemented in Australia at the end of 2025 while proposals have also been advanced in France, Portugal and Spain. At the EU level, the European Parliament adopted a resolution in November 2025 proposing that the EU adopt a minimum age requirement of 16 for access to social media and video sharing platforms, as well as AI companions. Young people between the ages of 13 and 16 would be able to access such platforms only with parental consent. This age-based ban is envisaged to operate alongside and strengthen the enforcement of the EU’s Digital Services Act (similar to the UK’s proposed ban).

The UK proposes to ban under 16s from accessing user-to-user social media platforms, that is to say, platforms that allow for social interactions between users and on which content can be posted; this would include platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X, Snapchat and TikTok. Moreover, the Government intends to implement a requirement that access to certain harmful features on platforms, such as livestreaming, stranger communication (including in gaming) and “romantic companion” chatbots, is restricted to over 18s.

The ban will not apply to direct messaging platforms, like WhatsApp. With these measures, the Government hopes to adopt a model for protecting children online, which goes beyond a simple blanket ban, and instead responds to both the risks children face and their broader experiences online. These risks, the Government argues, are exacerbated by the real-time accessibility of potentially harmful content and tech companies’ use of algorithmic recommender systems, which undermine the scope for effective content moderation.

The decision to introduce a ban follows a short consultation, undertaken between the months of March and May of 2026, in which the Government sought the views of the general public, including parents, guardians and young people, children’s charities and civil society organisations, as well as other stakeholders, including teachers, academics and industry partners. The consultation received over 115,000 responses, with the Government concluding that 9 out of 10 parents and two-thirds of children support restrictions on under-16s accessing certain social media platforms.

The timeframe set out by Keir Starmer and Liz Kendall, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, reflects the Government’s prioritisation of the social media ban. Starmer indicated that the Government would “move at speed” to drive secondary legislation through Parliament using the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, with the intention of putting the ban into place in the Spring of 2027.

The Government has indicated that Ofcom will be responsible for establishing “accurate, robust, reliable and fair” age assurance mechanisms which protect privacy rights, with the aim of ensuring that children cannot work around these restrictions. Platforms will be responsible for implementing these mechanisms, meaning that the platforms and not children themselves will be penalised for non-compliance. Ofcom is designated as the independent regulatory body for online safety in the Online Safety Act 2023; it is competent to identify – through the adoption of guidance and codes of practice – the practices that online platforms should follow to ensure compliance with their obligations, monitor, investigate and assess compliance and take enforcement measures.

The problems with a blanket age-based ban and its alternatives

The decision to restrict under-16s access to social media platforms is by no means uncontroversial. While there is broad consensus across law and policy-makers, public health researchers and child protection advocates that children and young people face a number of risks from accessing specific types of content and from various forms of online engagement, the nature and severity of the risk of those harms is not homogenous. This necessarily gives rise to questions as to the appropriateness of a blanket age-based restriction, relative to alternative interventions that would still allow children and young people to benefit from the opportunities that digital technologies provide. These include – amongst others – access to educational resources (indeed, the UK Government has indicated education platforms are not targeted by the ban), the development of socialisation skills, social inclusion and integration into supportive communities, and exposure to diverse cultures and viewpoints.

The problematics of the ban are significant. There is a danger that the implementation of a blanket ban merely gives the appearance of a Government being proactive, creating a false sense of security as to being in control of a significant problem, in a way that may undermine scope for further regulatory intervention. Regulating a rapidly evolving and complex digital environment driven by a small number of powerful tech companies necessitates informed and critical discussions about the role of technology in society.

While the UK Government indicates that online platforms will be required to implement effective age assurance mechanisms, there is a possibility that parents, guardians and educators will bear the burden of “policing” children’s access and use of technologies that are constantly developing.

As research on the Australian experience illustrates, 85% of under 16s continue to use social media platforms, either by bypassing “simple” age verification mechanisms (i.e. being asked to enter their age), using fake profiles or (a challenge identified by the UK Government), on more rare occasions, using a VPN. Six months after its implementation, the effectiveness of the ban is not yet clear, however the Australian Government has since enacted new legislation to empower its regulator to monitor, enforce and punish non-compliance with the ban.

The UK’s under-16s social media ban must be executed with a view to also implementing alternative interventions that would target the effective enforcement of content moderation obligations by Ofcom. At the same time, a safe digital environment requires safer platform design, and access to resources that aim at improving digital literacy (with enhanced provisional support for the most vulnerable of young people).

Platforms as the real culprits?

On the one hand, the way in which online platforms are designed enhances the risk of harm to children by maximising user engagement. Such design choices include the use of addictive design features and recommender systems, weak default privacy settings and limited transparency, behavioural profiling and targeted and personalised advertising.

Research suggests that digital markets are characterised by substantial power, control and knowledge asymmetries between individuals and tech companies, which leads to an erosion of autonomy, manipulation, exploitation, and addiction as well as broader societal harms to fundamental rights and democratic participation. Digital environments are characterised by digital asymmetry, which describes the structural and systematic conditions of these systems, and leads to digital vulnerability, which is dynamic, contextual and structural; every individual is potentially vulnerable, a condition which may shift depending on the digital environment with which they are faced.

Children and young people may be particularly vulnerable (and are treated as such, for example, in consumer law), with social media exacerbating existing vulnerabilities (through for example, the use of recommender systems which direct vulnerable individuals to increasingly extreme content).

Digital literacy to prepare children for their digital adulthoods

On the other hand, greater digital literacy is required; young people under 16 will, within a few short years, be faced with digital environments which will very likely be vastly different, more complex and more dangerous than those currently in existence. In order to be able to navigate these regimes safely, young people must be equipped with the knowledge and critical analytical skills to – inter alia – recognise misinformation and malicious communication, assess algorithmic recommender systems and manipulative design features, make informed decisions and respond effectively to the risks arising from harmful online content. Under the Online Safety Act 2023, Ofcom has a key role to play in promoting media literacy.

However, what is clear is that the question as to whether the UK’s proposed social media ban for under 16s is appropriate and proportionate cannot be framed as giving rise to a binary choice; restrictions on children and young people’s access to social media must be implemented hand-in-hand with effective content moderation, the regulation of platform design and digital literacy endeavours.

Corporate deregulation – time for investors to play their voting cards?

Professor Brenda Hannigan

In an ill-advised move, the board of BP recently rejected a shareholder resolution so preventing its circulation to shareholders ahead of the company’s annual general meeting (AGM). As the FT reported (11 March 2026), the resolution addressed strategies to maintain shareholder value in the not unlikely event of a decline in demand for fossil fuels. It was filed by a group of 16 institutional investors and some retail investors brought together by a Dutch green investor group, Follow This.

The board’s rejection of the resolution made the news because we are accustomed to corporate boards maintaining at least a semblance of co-existence alongside shareholder engagement, empowerment and stewardship. Not in this case. In all probability, the resolution would have gone almost unnoticed by the media, had it not been rejected by the board.

The episode seemed to reflect in many ways the current position. There is a business clamour for capital, flexible markets and a wider pool of investors. The Government has responded with deregulation initiatives aimed at driving ‘growth’ and ‘competitiveness’. The consequence, whether or not intended, is an increase in board autonomy and a consequential diminishing of the role of shareholders. The cumulative effect of recent changes should be a wakeup call for shareholders who need to find their voice and show a greater willingness to challenge boards.

Regulatory retreat by the Financial Conduct Authority

The deregulation agenda is driven, in part, by the collapse in London listings over the past decades (for many reasons including the growth of private capital and the perceived regulatory burden of being listed). In March 2009, there were 1130 UK listed companies, by March 2026, there are 764. It is a similar picture on AIM, the Alternative Investment Market. Hence there have been numerous reviews of listing and capital raising (Hill (2021), Kalifa (2021), Austin (2022)) , followed by a new UK listing regime (UKLR). It was devised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) with the intention of attracting listings and investors to a deregulated market and came into effect in July 2024.

A significant element of the new listings regime is the removal – despite robust investor objections – of shareholder approval of substantial transactions and related-party transactions (i.e. with directors, substantial shareholders and associated companies so potentially rife with conflicts of interest). The requirement for approval was long regarded as a defining component of the gold standard, London premium, listing. Following consultations, the FCA was persuaded by strong support for abolition (unsurprisingly) from the companies themselves, their legal advisers and UK market operators [paras 6.16, 6.19, 6.29].

The FCA noted that companies would not proceed in any event with such transactions without the support of their largest shareholders – in effect, acknowledging that only shareholders in the inner circle matter [para 6.50 to 6.57]. It considered that shareholders have other tools such as statutory shareholder meetings (invariably post hoc) and the ability to requisition meetings (only if they hold more than 5%, and unlikely in practice). Of course, the FCA also noted, shareholders can remove directors, but this nuclear option is rarely publicly exercised, or they can disinvest. The latter option seems a strange suggestion given part of the policy background here is precisely to stop disinvestment and attract investors to London listings.

Legislative retreat by the Department for Business and Trade

If the FCA is the inner ring of this deregulation, the outer ring is the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) which has taken an increasingly deregulatory stance.

In January 2026, the DBT, under a Labour Government, abandoned the long-promised and much-anticipated Audit Reform and Corporate Governance Bill — legislation that had its origins in the Brydon Review (2019) and which was intended to increase oversight and accountability, not just of corporate auditors, but also of directors. Investors would have benefitted potentially from these reforms, given they struggle with oversight of the directors. The ‘difficult decision’ (in the words of the DBT Minister), after six years of work, was hidden in a lengthy DBT press release.

In this regard, the DBT was following in the footsteps of the previous Conservative Government which, in October 2023, reneged on a commitment, again reflecting Brydon, to introduce requirements for a variety of board statements on matters such as distributable profits, distributions, risk management and resilience, including the risk of material fraud. Such statements would have forced boards to verify and stand by this information. In this case, the withdrawal came even though the draft regulations were already before Parliament.

These U-turns would suggest effective lobbying from big business and their lawyers, under cover of the many economic and political crises of current times, to reduce transparency and block any measures which might expose directors to any individual accountability. The result, if not the declared aim, of these changes is to reinforce the power of corporate boards and weaken shareholder democracy.

The withdrawal of the ‘public register’ of shareholder dissent

A further example of successful lobbying is the DBT’s announcement, in November 2025, that the Government had asked the Investment Association to cease to maintain the public register. This public register was set up in 2017 and recorded significant shareholder dissent, categorised for this purpose, in accordance with the UK Corporate Governance Code (2024), Provision 4, as votes against the board recommendation on a resolution of 20% or more.

The request is inexplicable: why ask the Investment Association to discontinue a mechanism which usefully collected the relevant information in one place? The information is publicly available in any event but would require a searcher to have the patience to trawl through the National Storage Mechanism, company by company. There is no cost to the companies or to the Government. The only explanation is that the DBT bowed to business pressure: boards disliked being featured on a register which alerted investors and other interested stakeholders to shareholder discontent, especially if the company appeared (as some did) year after year.

Ironically, BP is one of the beneficiaries of this deregulatory change. Proving that shareholders can resist board demands, BP shareholders did vote down two resolutions supported by the board including refusing to accept a new set of articles (52.88% against) which, inter alia, would have allowed the directors to hold only virtual (electronic) AGMs. They also voted heavily (74.15%) for a shareholder resolution calling for disclosures on exploration capital expenditure and the creation of shareholder value which had been opposed by the board. Had the public register of dissent still been in use, BP would have been an entry on it.

More deregulation to come – what shareholders must do

There are other deregulation initiatives in the pipeline. DBT plans to allow virtual AGMs (vigorously opposed by institutional shareholders as a lesser form of public accountability, giving boards greater control of shareholder engagement than a physical meeting) and intends to streamline (i.e. reduce) corporate reporting, primarily for the largest companies. Of course, a switch to virtual meetings will need shareholder approval since commonly it will require an alteration of the company’s articles of association. Shareholders will want to think about whether they are willing to support such a change and the implications for their engagements with the company.

The DBT also intends to deregulate (reduce) disclosure by the largest companies so investors need to reflect on what information they are willing to do without and be prepared to stand their ground on reduced disclosures if they are unhappy. Let the largest institutional shareholders vocally oppose related-party transactions, even if they no longer have a vote on the matter.

Contrary to initial expectations, it may be that the result of the deregulatory measures favouring boards is to force a level of engagement and voting from shareholders which has not previously been the case. Shareholders need to realise that they do have a weapon – their votes – and they should make considered use of them.

��ɫ��Ƶ Law School Students Compete in IBA-VIAC CDRC Mediation and Negotiation Competition

The competition provided exceptional networking opportunities, allowing our students to connect with leading experts and professional assessors in the ADR field. Throughout the negotiation and mediation rounds, the team received valuable feedback while also taking part in discussions that highlighted the diverse approaches to mediation adopted across different cultures.

The team expressed sincere gratitude to the Law School, particularly to the Head of School, Professor Werner Scholtz, whose academic and financial support made their participation in the competition possible. The Mediation and Negotiation Club also received special recognition from both the students and the University for the dedicated efforts of Luiza Romanadze in preparing the team for the competition. Her training sessions enabled the students to refine their negotiation and mediation skills, essential abilities for any professional career and particularly valuable for aspiring lawyers.

The team looks forward to representing the University in future international competitions, where they hope to build on this experience, continue developing their skills, and further strengthen the ��ɫ��Ƶ's presence on the international stage.

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