Oxford Undergraduate Law Podcast

Transgender people have existed throughout history. Yet, the way transgender identity intersects with the law is complex. Trans identity has been litigated and legislated, from the High Court case Corbett v Corbett in 1970, to the European Court of Human Rights case Goodwin v United Kingdom in 2002, to the Gender Recognition Act in 2004, to the recent 2023 judgement upholding the UK Government’s use of a Section 35 order to block the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. The Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill was a bill aiming to improve the system by which trans people can apply for legal recognition of their gender through a Gender Recognition Certificate. This Bill intended to remove the current requirements for a medical diagnosis, reduce the time that applicants for gender recognition need to have lived in their acquired gender from two years to three months, and reduce the age at which one may apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate from 18 years to 16 years. While the bill was supported by the Scottish Government, it was blocked by the UK Government with a Section 35 order under the Scotland Act. The Section 35 order means that the Bill cannot be implemented at this time, but the Scottish Government has committed not to withdraw the bill either.In this episode, Rach interviews Sharon Cowan on the intersections between the law and transgender identity. Professor Sharon Cowan is a Professor of Feminist and Queer Legal Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Sharon has published extensively on the legal regulation of gender and sex and is presently working on a comparative socio-legal project looking at the impact of law on transgender people. She was also involved in consultations on the Reform of the Gender Recognition Act. Recent projects also include a national empirical project looking at how women asylum claimants, whose applications are based on a claim of rape, are treated, and along with Dr Chloe Kennedy (Edinburgh) and Professor Munro (Warwick), she is a co-editor of the Scottish Feminist Judgments Project @ScottishFemJP.Articles mentioned:Cowan, Sharon (2005). “Gender is No Substitute for Sex”: A Comparative Human Rights Analysis of the Legal Regulation of Sexual Identity. Feminist Legal Studies 13 (1)Cowan, Sharon, The Best Place on the Planet to be Trans? Transgender Equality and Legal Consciousness in Scotland (December 1, 2020). Dunne, Peter. and Raj, Sen (2020) The Queer Outside in Law (Palgrave MacMillan), Edinburgh School of Law Research Paper No. 2020/05, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3777503Cowan, Sharon. (2009). Looking Back (To)wards the Body: Medicalization and the GRA. Social & Legal Studies, 18(2), 247-252. https://doi.org/10.1177/0964663909103627Sandland, Ralph. Feminism and the Gender Recognition Act 2004. Feminist Legal Stud 13, 43–66 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-005-1456-3Cowan, Sharon (2005). “Gender is No Substitute for Sex”: A Comparative Human Rights Analysis of the Legal Regulation of Sexual Identity. Feminist Legal Studies 13 (1): 93Books mentioned:Whipping Girl, by Julia SeranoAutogenerated transcript available at:https://rss.com/podcasts/oulp/1573226/#transcript

We all want to order our family lives around the values that matter to us, and family law is a means for us to achieve this order. Yet, as societies grow more multicultural and multireligious, we face a challenge - how can we protect the rights of religious citizens, while also enabling them to order their affairs according to their different religions? This complexities of navigating cultural and religious tensions in family law has arisen in visitation rights cases such as J v B [2017]. In the case of a divorce, what happens when, for example, one parent’s identity is not accepted by the religion and culture the children are raised in?In this episode, Rach interviews Tristan Cummings, the Baker-Fellingham College Assistant Professor at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. He did his undergraduate studies and the Bachelor of Civil Law at Oxford, where he was awarded the Vinerian Scholarship for Best Overall Performance on the BCL and the Law Faculty Prizes in Children, Families and the State and Comparative Equality Law. He is currently an Editor of the University of Oxford Human Rights Hub Journal. His research is focused on the intersection of family law, human rights law and religious freedom.We discuss Dr Cummings’ article in the Journal of Law, Religion and State today: ‘Utilizing Systems Theory and Reflexive Law to Navigate the ‘Collision Between… Un-connecting Worlds’ in Family Law’.Autogenerated transcript available at: https://rss.com/podcasts/oulp/1475459/#transcript

The rise of algorithmic management has allowed for new ways to measure, control, and sanction workers. Yet, it is unclear how employment law and discrimination law can respond to a world where automation has not replaced workers, but their bosses. In this episode, Rach interviews Sangh Rakshita from iManage, a pioneering project based in the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights funded by the European Research Council. iManage intends to develop the first systematic account of the challenges and potential of algorithmic management, examine its implications for legal regulation, and develop concrete solutions to avoid harmful path-dependencies. iManage is led by Prof Jeremias Adams Prassl and comprises Halefom Abraha, Six Silberman, Sangh Rakshita, and Aislinn Kelly-Lyth. Sangh Rakshita completed her BCL in law at Oxford, and has previously consulted with organisations such as the United Nations Development Programme and the Human Rights Watch. She also teaches Regulation of Internet Technologies for Stanford University, and has worked as a law and technology researcher at the Centre for Communication Governance, India and as a legislative assistant in the Parliament of India.Articles mentioned:Adams-Prassl, J., Abraha, H., Kelly-Lyth, A., Silberman, M. ‘Six’, & Rakshita, S. (2023). Regulating algorithmic management: A blueprint. European Labour Law Journal, 14(2), 124-151. https://doi.org/10.1177/20319525231167299Reuben Binns, Jeremias Adams-Prassl and Aislinn Kelly-Lyth. 2023. Legal Taxonomies of Machine Bias: Revisiting Direct Discrimination. In 2023 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT '23), June 12-15, 2023, Chicago, IL, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 14 Pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3593013.3594121Autogenerated transcript available at: https://rss.com/podcasts/oulp/1341032/

We have recently seen the rise of financial influencers, who may, for example, give investment advice on social media. However, as seen in the GameStop short squeeze or recent cryptocurrency fraud scheme scandals, financial influencers may come with issues such as conflict of interests. In this episode, Rach interviews Felix Pflücke. Felix Pflücke is a legal academic focusing on European Union law. He read law at the undergraduate level at the Universities of Maastricht and Glasgow and at the graduate and postgraduate levels at Brasenose College, Oxford. He has been a lecturer in law at Oxford since 2018, in Contract, Tort and EU Law. He is part of the INDIGO Project of the University of Luxembourg, which addresses the impact of digitalisation on the implementation of policies in Europe. His research combines a comparative and empirical approach to understand how online platforms function and how consumer redress can be improved, and leading outlets like the European Law Journal and Oxford University Press featured his research. He recently published a paper, ‘Regulating Finfluencers’ in the Journal of European Consumer and Market Law, which critically analyses whether the current framework sufficiently protects consumers.Autogenerated transcript available at: https://rss.com/podcasts/oulp/1325412/

In this episode, Juliet Van Gyseghem interviews Nisha Waller. Nisha is a final year PhD candidate in the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford and is a researcher at charity law practice APPEAL. Nisha's PhD research focuses on complicity law (commonly referred to as 'joint enterprise') and its relationship to the criminalisation of young black men. Over the course of her doctorate, Nisha has visited a number of prisons in England, interviewing young black men convicted as secondary parties to murder. Her research is also informed by interviews with legal practitioners and the families of those convicted.JENGbA's website: https://jointenterprise.co/Key reports on JE: https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/publications/dangerous-associations-joint-enterprise-gangs-and-racism, https://barrowcadbury.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Stories-of-Injustice-women-and-JE.pdf, https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/publications/usual-suspects-second-editionAPPEAL https://appeal.org.uk/

Sustainability and carbon neutrality have become one of the world’s foremost priorities. As a result, companies may potentially employ sustainability agreements with their competitors. However, these agreements may fall afoul of competition law. In July 2023 and October 2023 respectively, the European Commission and the UK Competition and Markets Authority have released guidelines to differentiate between sustainability agreements that are anticompetitive, and those which are permissible. In this episode, Rach speaks with Benoît Durand about the potential intersections between competition law and sustainability agreements, and the tension between maintaining a healthy competitive market and enabling the cooperation necessary to advance global goals. Benoît Durand is a Partner at RBB Economics. RBB Economics is a global leader in competition economics, which works alongside law firms to advise companies in the context of competition law investigations by enforcers or in the context of litigation in front of courts. He has a PhD in Economics from Boston College and has over 20 years of experience in competition economics, particularly in the context of competition law investigations, and he has advised companies like Nespresso, Google, Amazon, British Airways and DuPont, among others. He was previously the Director of Economic Analysis at the UK’s Competition Commission (which is now part of the UK Competition and Markets Authority) in London, and a member of the Chief Economist Team at the Directorate General for Competition at the European Commission, in Brussels.Autogenerated transcript available at: https://rss.com/podcasts/oulp/1235124/

Whistleblowers have been essential figures in uncovering secrecy and demanding public accountability, both for state institutions and private organisations. But disclosure comes with significant risks to the whistleblower. In this episode, Juliet Van Gyseghem speaks with Dr Vigjilenca Abazi about the legal mechanisms that have been put in place to protect whistleblowers and the integrity of their disclosures. Dr Vigjilenca Abazi is an Assistant Professor at Maastricht University, and co-drafted the model EU Directive for the protection of whistleblowers. Our conversation will touch on the Directive, as part of a wider exploration of whistleblower law. We’ll be discussing the conflicting interests that complicate potential solutions, and explore the law’s interplay with non-legal routes to build a wider culture of transparency and accountability.

In this episode, Professor John Armour and Professor Thom Wetzer discuss their joint research paper, ‘Green Pills’ with Dorothea Oyetunde, and the role of this novel mechanism in making corporate climate commitments credible. In light of the move to transition to a net-zero economy, they discuss why corporate climate commitments matter in the first instance, and how the problem of the lack of credibility in corporate climate pledges arises. Through identifying a gap in traditional corporate governance measures, Professor John Armour and Professor Thom Wetzer discuss the need for their ‘Green pill’, a contractual mechanism allowing firms to deliver a degree of commitment that can be tailored to the firm’s circumstance, resolving the credibility problem. The adoption of the 'green pill' emphasises the important role that legal frameworks can play in resolving the societal challenges arising from the climate crisis. The research paper is also joint work with Professor Luca Enriques.

In this first episode of Trinity Term 2023, Chen discusses the historical foundations, politics and evolution of legal translation in the EU with Professors Alice Leal (Witswatersrand) and Martina Bajčić (Rijeka). They also discuss the cultural implications and challenges of having versions of treaties and judgments in 27 Member State languages; and the impact of recent developments such as Brexit on the role of English, and on the status of member state languages more widely. Professor Martina Bajčić is the Head of the Department of Foreign Languages at the University of Rijeka and an Associate Professor of the Law Faculty. Her research and teaching interests are in the area of legal terminology, multilingual aspects of EU law, LSP and institutional translation and interpretation, on which she has published an impressive plethora of books and articles in journals including Perspectives and the International Journal of Language & Law. Professor Alice Leal has studied, taught and researched in Brazil and Austria, and is now Head of the Translation and Interpretation Studies department at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. Alice has written prolifically on the epistemology, politics and philosophy of legal translation. Her second book, Language policy and the future of Europe, co-written with Sean O’Riain, will be published by Routledge in June of this year.

In this episode Dorothea Oyetunde speaks with Professor Scott Hershovitz about his theory of 'Law as a Moral Practice', which is the title of his upcoming book, to be released in December 2023. Professor Hershovitz's book invites readers to re-conceptualize the way we understand the relationship between our legal obligations and our moral obligations, in an attempt to resolve the ongoing debates in jurisprudence as to how the law relates to morality and whether individuals have an obligation to obey the law.

In this episode, Dorothea Oyetunde and Dr. Nicola Palmer will discuss the legality of the UK-Rwanda Asylum Partnership, which involves offshoring refugees to Rwanda. She will also discuss why the partnership has been reached with Rwanda specifically, the issues that arise from externalising responsibility for asylum procedure and the need to take into account considerations of Rwanda's political context and foreign policy.

In this episode, Chen will discuss administrative and constitutional law which Dr Ewan Smith, including accountability mechanisms, good faith in public law and whether the UK should adopt a codified constitution. Dr. Smith has studied, researched and taught in inter alia Paris, Harvard and three elite Chinese Universities. He has practicised law in the US, and worked for the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In the last few years, he has been a Hauser Global Fellow at New York University Law School, a Fixed Term Student at Christ Church (Oxford) and an Early Career Fellow at the Oxford Bonavero Institute of Human Rights. He is now an Associate Professor at University College London.

In this unique episode, Professor Matthias Schmoeckel (Director of the Institutes of Legal History and the Law of Public Notary at the University of Bonn, Germany) discusses with Chen how Canon Law and the Protestant Reformation influenced the development of law in Europe, and developments in German Law after the fall of the Third Reich.

In this episode, Dorothea Oyetunde speaks with Professor Susan Bright about the Grenfell crisis, five years on. They discuss the continuing impact the crisis has on its victims, who are still in these buildings with fire safety issues.The problems faced by the victims, including challenges surrounding legal remediation, tracing accountability and the mental well-being impact of living through the crisis, have not been resolved. Professor Bright’s discussion aims to highlight these issues and emphasize the need for a new approach.For further information on the topics discussed in this episode, visit Professor Susan Bright’s blog, Housing After Grenfell.You can also read her publication on the Building Safety Crisis on the fifth anniversary of Grenfell here; https://blogs.law.ox.ac.uk/blog-post/2022/06/building-safety-crisis-5th-anniversary-grenfell-tower-fire

In this episode, new Podcast Co-Editor Chen discusses Section 5 of the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004 with Dr. Sarah Singh, researcher and lecturer at the University of Liverpool Law School. They will discuss problematic implications of this legislative provision and its application in the courts, in particular the criminalisation of domestically abused mothers who did not inflict harm but supposedly “failed to protect” or “failed to prevent harm” to their children.