Northumbria Journals
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Hope, dystopian futures and Covid-19 as the ‘event’ that changed the world (forever?)
Get PDFFilm and series writers have for some time have projected imaginative yet sometimes quite real possible end-of-the-world scenarios. The evolution of blockbuster science-fiction films from the mid-20th century onwards initially generated scenarios related to threats to humanity from alien invasions. Then, towards the 1990s and at the turn of the 21st century, there emerged climate-related catastrophes, impending meteorite or asteroid collisions, bio-attacks as well as the general collapse of politics, law and order and revision of social life on earth into some perpetual violent and hostile land. In the same vein, other possible futuristic apocalypses have also been depicted through the inception of ‘unknown’ and ‘fatal’ viruses which all but wipe out humanity save one brave hero or heroine who takes it upon themselves to rescue the future from the past: somehow, however, averting the crisis and the world is saved. In many of these films, the devastation left on the planet inevitably resets humanity and in the aftermath the dawn of a new future is left in the responsible hands of a few survivors. All the while, only ‘hope’ somehow got them through. Using such portrayals of end-of-world scenarios and dystopian future films and series as possible avenues for our potential trajectory and different conceptions of ‘hope’, this paper speculates about our future in a post-Covid world using aspects of Žižek’s critical discussions on hope and hopelessness (2018) and Tom Moylan’s (2020) concept of the ‘dystopian structure of feeling’
FOSTA: A Transnational Disaster Especially for Marginalized Sex Workers
Get PDFThe Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) has caused immeasurable economic harm and compromises workers' safety and harm reduction practices. The law has had the most harmful effects on the most marginal sex workers—people of color, transgender and non-binary people, people with disabilities, and working-class sex workers. Further, while FOSTA is a U.S. law its harms reverberate worldwide. Empirical data already demonstrates the damages of FOSTA to sex workers. With draft bills proposing to study the law (S.3165 - SAFE SEX Workers Study Act), and pending legal challenges, scholars continuing to gather data can help demonstrate to the U.S. Congress that reliable evidence unequivocally shows that they should repeal FOSTA. There is a need for intersectional analysis that explores the uneven impact of FOSTA, especially its effects on transgender and non-binary sex workers, who, alongside Black, Indigenous, and Latinx, and disabled sex workers, are often at the highest levels of risk. In this article, drawing from 34 in-depth interviews with transmasculine and non-binary sex workers, expanding existing studies documenting the harms of FOSTA on sex workers, I provide empirical evidence showing how the law has adverse effects on the most marginal and that such results are not limited to the U.S
Grounding Inside/Out Professional Identity Formation by Developing Wholehearted Lawyers with Therapeutic Intent
Get PDFProfessional identity formation of law students ideally encompasses both development of the necessary attributes of lawyers as well as a robust philosophy to inform the character of their engagement with the justice system throughout their career. Susan Brooks’ Wholehearted Lawyering teaching principles and practices provide a sound basis for developing the complex core personal, interpersonal, and relational skills necessary for law students and lawyers to maximise constructive interactions within the legal system. Vulnerability Theory and Therapeutic Jurisprudence too, provide sound principles to guide students’ and lawyers’ purposeful engagement with the legal system, particularly to facilitate greater access to justice through resilience-building and therapeutic contributions and impacts. This article proposes an Inside/Out pedagogy that develops students’ awareness of these necessary personal and interpersonal attributes (the Inside) and that provides a framework for purposive engagement grounded in improving access to justice (the Out). This pedagogy systematically embeds both Brooks’ Wholehearted Lawyering scholarship to develop students’ core professional attributes, and principles drawn from Vulnerability Theory and Therapeutic Jurisprudence to stimulate students to crystallise their own purpose as lawyers. The article then examines the development and application of this pedagogy in an Australian legal clinic established in 2020 at Western Sydney University in New South Wales, Australia
A Study of Supervisor and Student Views on the Role of Clinical Legal Education in Developing Commercial Awareness
Get PDFThis article examines the role of clinical legal education in developing commercial awareness, a key employability skill. Using data collected from a mixed-methods research study involving a visual data collection tool (a diamond), this research contributes to understanding of whether, and how, clinical legal education develops law students’ commercial awareness. This study provides the first detailed empirical evidence of the importance of commercial awareness to those teaching and learning in clinic, the teaching activities that supervisors use and that students identify as developing commercial awareness, and the impact of those activities in a graduate recruitment context. This data is important because commercial awareness is required across a range of graduate sectors, including the legal profession, and law students have a variety of available career options. The results indicate that whilst students and supervisors deem commercial awareness very important, there are differences between the two groups in terms of their understanding of what it means, and the type of clinic activities identified as developing commercial awareness. The results suggest that there is a genuine, but yet not fully realised, opportunity for students to develop commercial awareness in clinic. As well as providing a unique insight into the role of clinical legal education in developing commercial awareness, the author makes recommendations for clinicians on how best to support students in developing their commercial awareness.
Key words: Commercial Awareness, Clinical Legal Education, Graduate Employability; Diamond Ranking, Law Student
Book review: Briggs, D., Telford, L., Lloyd, A., Ellis, A. and Kotzé, J. (2021). Lockdown: Social Harm in the Covid-19 Era. Palgrave Macmillan.
Get PDFIs the neoliberal era coming to an end? : Macro-economic change in the shadow of covid-19
No full textIt is easy to become enthralled by foreground events, especially when they are as devastating as the Covid-19 pandemic. However, to really get a sense of what is going on, one must also look at the background. Beyond the pandemic’s spectacular foreground, we have seen a range of changes that might encourage the more optimistic among us to form the view that the neoliberal era is approaching its terminus. Barely comprehensible sums of money have been created to cushion the pandemic’s heavy blows, and a range of policy initiatives have emerged that are obviously antagonistic to the main shibboleths of neoliberalism. However, the language of neoliberalism remains. The myths that assisted neoliberalism to maintain its global supremacy for over forty years – especially those that misrepresent our money system – continue to be presented to the general public as if they were unchallengeable truths. So, what is really going on? Looking principally at events in Britain, this article attempts to shed some light on the evolution of global capitalism
Clinical Legal Education: Human Rights, and Arts and Crafts Cafés
Get PDFThis practice report provides an account of two outreach projects that enabled different community groups, members of staff at Royal Holloway, University of London, and students at Royal Holloway’s Legal Advice Centre, to discuss human rights in an accessible and relatable way, which empowered the delegates, and encouraged open dialogue.
At the first event, Royal Holloway and the Afghanistan and Central Asian Association collaborated to host an online Being Human café as part of the Being Human 2020: a Festival of Humanities programme organised and set up annually by the School of Advanced Study, University of London and funded through the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy. The café “Afghan Women Small Spaces Café: Sewing Pathways to Human Rights” took place via Zoom. Meeting over Afghan tea and cake, participants - from the public, generally from the Afghan diaspora community and researchers - used mixed participatory methods including artwork, sewing and conversation to explore what everyday habits and material objects tell us about ourselves and each other. Working with these, and other culturally specific lived experiences, Marshall linked her research, on human rights law’s purpose of ensuring universal dignity, equality and rights, to French writer Georges Perec.
Following this style of Café, the authors created the Autism Legal Rights Café, in partnership with the Sycamore Trust U.K. At this second event, Marshall’s research on everyday spaces was developed into a short talk about law, everyday spaces, objects and being human at a focused arts and crafts workshop for young women with autism. Particularly during Covid-19 lockdown, it was explored how and why our objects took on a new meaning. This talk included an analysis of Species of Spaces where Perec traced what is truly daily, those everyday habits and material objects of which our lives consist, what goes without saying. Perec claims, although these do not seem to pose any problems, we need to ask what they may tell us about what is important in life, what makes it worth living
Tick, Tock, Boom! A Critical Forecast on Violence in Post-Pandemic UK
No full textThis article offers a critical forecast on violent crime as the UK begins to emerge from the global Covid-19 pandemic. The article is structured into three thematic sections that separately address three key issues related to the issue of violence contemporarily. Firstly, the article places in context the rise in serious forms of violent crime across England and Wales that occurred in the years preceding the arrival of Covid-19. Secondly, it considers, briefly, the pandemic’s impact upon violence, specifically the effect of lockdown upon patterns of violence. Thirdly, and finally, the article provides a critical forecast, which draws together some of the points identified in the preceding two sections. This final section suggest that serious violence may become a more significant issue in the UK’s post-pandemic context of inequality, austerity legacy, the harms of lockdown to vulnerable groups, and the cost-of-living crisis.  
Experiences of Sex Workers in Times of Pandemic: from Lawful to Risk-Producing Environments in Switzerland.
Get PDFThis paper aims to shed light on the difficulties faced by sex workers (SW) during the Covid-19 pandemic. The research was carried out in collaboration with a non-governmental organisation (NGO) supporting SW in canton Vaud, Switzerland.
Drawing on the idea, developed by Scoular (2015), that the law is not sufficient to address the problems faced by SW, we propose to consider Swiss SW’s experiences in order to analyse interactions between the law and other societal forces in times of pandemic.
We used a mixed-methods approach (observations, focus groups and questionnaires) to understand the needs of the SW, the assistance that has been offered to them, and the obstacles they have encountered in accessing it since March 2020.
Our findings suggest that SW were confronted with a broad range of financial, administrative, psychological and relational difficulties that were conducive to health risks. We call for political responses and structural changes to promote SW’s empowerment and improve their working conditions