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Professor Shaheen Sardar Ali was elected as Associate member of the International Academy of Comparative Law (IACL) in its election round of 2015. Founded at The Hague on 13 September 1924, the IACL is the leading international institution bringing together scholars in the field of comparative law. According to its Statutes, membership of the IACL is composed of Titular Members and Associate Members who in turn, elect new Associate Members

Recent years have seen extensive discussion about the continuing retreat from marriage, the increasing demand for the right to marry from previously excluded groups, and the need to protect those who do not wish to marry from being forced to do so. At the same time, weddings are big business, couples are spending more than ever before on getting married, and marriage ceremonies are increasingly elaborate. It is therefore timely to reflect on the rites of marriage, as well as the right to marry (or not to marry), and the relationship between them.

To this end, this new interdisciplinary collection brings together scholars from numerous fields, including law, sociology, anthropology, psychology, demography, theology and art and design. Focusing on England and Wales, it explores in depth the specific issues arising from this jurisdiction’s Anglican heritage, demographic development, current laws and social practices.

Dr Illan rua Wall gave a keynote at the 2015 Critical Legal Conference in the Aula Leopoldina at the University of Wroclaw in Poland. He presented five theses on crowds. In response to the events of Occupy, the Indignados, the so-called Arab Spring and the miriad of other recent disorders, he developed a legal theory of disorder and political turbulence.

African Constitutional Reviews, Elections and Human Rights: The Case of Tanzania

Professor Chris Maina Peter will be holding a research seminar on ‘African Constitutional Reviews, Elections and Human Rights: The Case of Tanzania.’ The seminar will begin with lunch at 12:30 and will start at 1pm in S2.12.

Professor Peter will be discussing the ongoing Tanzanian Constitutional Review and electoral process in the context of African Constitutional Reviews. Recent review processes in Africa have had significant implications for human rights and democracy and in the case of Tanzania this has raised significant issues in relation to the right to self-determination as well as general human rights including women's rights.

Professor Chris Maina Peter is a leading African expert on Human Rights and Constitutionalism. He is Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam and a Member of the UN Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

(Law, Warwick), Associate Professor Vicki Squire (PaIS, Warwick), Professor Nick Vaughan-Williams (PaIS, Warwick), Dr Angeliki Dimitriadi (ELIAMEP, Athens), and Dr Maria Pisani (Malta), have been awarded over 150K for an project entitled 'Crossing the Mediterranean Sea by boat: Mapping and documenting migratory journeys and experiences.’

Crossing the Mediterranean Sea by boat: Mapping and documenting migratory journeys and experiences
While migrant deaths en route to the European Union are by no means new, the level and intensity of recent tragedies is unprecedented. More than 1850 deaths were recorded January-May 2015, demanding swift action on the part of EU Member States. This project produces a timely and robust evidence base as grounds for informing policy interventions developed under emergency conditions across the Mediterranean. It does so by assessing the impact of such interventions on those that they affect most directly: migrants or refugees themselves. This project undertakes such an assessment by engaging the journeys and experiences of people migrating, asking:

• What are the impacts of policy interventions on migratory journeys and experiences across the Mediterranean?
• How do refugees or migrants negotiate complex and entwined migratory and regulatory dynamics?
• In what ways can policy be re-shaped to address migrant deaths at sea?

The project focuses on three EU island arrival points in Greece, Italy and Malta. Qualitative interview data, both textual and visual, is produced through an interdisciplinary participatory research approach. The project contributes: an interdisciplinary perspective on the legal and social implications of policy interventions in the region; a comparative perspective on migratory routes and methods of travel across the Mediterranean; a qualitative analysis of the journeys and experiences of refugees and migrants; and methodological insights into participatory research under emergency conditions.

Warwick Law school students have recently been interviewed for the Boar, to discuss the legal representation they're providing to death row inmates in the USA as part of a summer internship.

Please see below for the article:

The Annual Research Report showcases the varity and excellence of the law school's research activities, and the strength of the School as a research community.

Please see below for the report

The CJC is delighted to have been awarded funding by the ESRC to host an event as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science on Saturday 14 November 2015.

The CJC multi-format event aims to bring together different perspectives on the experience of punishment, in order to raise awareness of, promote social science research on and generate debate on prisoner wellbeing and its consequences to criminal justice policy and practice. The full-day event will encourage an interactive open debate between academics and non-academics through drawing on a range of perspectives on the topic, from that of those responsible for formulating and implementing prison policy, and that of social scientists researching punishment and criminal justice, to that of those with first-hand, lived experiences of punishment within prisons. Interactive sessions will include: screening and discussion of the film ‘Herman’s House’ (a movie about the communication between an architect and a life prisoner in the US); a workshop run by the Empty Cages Collective about the conditions and experience of imprisonment in England and Wales; and an exhibition of prisoners’ creative self-expression (letters, photography, paintings, etc.) followed by discussion.

Professors Jackie Hodgson and Roger Leng have been funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF), and will be conducting a research study into“Securing a fair trial through excluding evidence? A comparative perspective” . The project runs from 2015-2017 and is a collaboration between the criminal Justice Centre at Warwick and scholars from Switzerland, Germany, China, Taiwan and Singapore.

The June issue of Social and Legal Studies has been jointly edited by and Dominic de Cogan from Cambridge.

The issue focusses on Tax Law: Complexity, Politics and Policymaking.

Details can be found at

The special issue features contributions from, among others, Sol Picciotto (Lancaster), who retains links with Warwick Law School.

This volume brings together a broad range of scholars working within a variety of procedural traditions in Europe, North America and China. The first section contains three papers that address the use of discretion during the investigation and prosecution stage of criminal proceedings; the second section deals with negotiated justice and various types of plea agreements in Spain, China and Italy.In the third section, different approaches to the exclusion of evidence are discussed, relating to Switzerland, Germany and a potential EU approach. The fourth section discusses discretion in relation to the death penalty in the US. At the heart of these issues is the problem of reconciling prosecutorial and judicial discretion with the principle of legality. The need to avoid arbitrary decisions is key,but the authors come to differing conclusions as to the impact and value of judicial discretion at different stages of the process and in different jurisdictions.

Treaty conflicts are not merely the contingent or inadvertent by-products of the increasing juridification of international relations. In several instances, States have deliberately created treaty conflicts in order to catalyse changes in multilateral regimes. Surabhi Ranganathan uses such conflicts as context to explore the role of international law, in legal thought and practice. Her examinations of the International Law Commission's work on treaties and of various scholars' proposals on institutional action, offer a fresh view of 'mainstream' legal thought. They locate in a variety of writings a common faith in international legal discourse, built on liberal and constructivist assumptions. Ranganathan's three rich studies of treaty conflict, relating to the areas of seabed mining, the International Criminal Court, and nuclear governance, furnish a textured account of the specific forms and practices that constitute such a legal discourse and permit a grounded understanding of the interactions that shape international law.