Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
With the recent publication of the 2015-2016 editions of the Blackstone’s Statutes series, we asked some of the authors to select a piece of legislation from the series that has the most impact on their subject area.
Since its inception, the Islamic State (IS) has engaged in continuous behavior that violates the law of armed conflict (LOAC). These acts include the torture and killing of civilians; inhumane treatment of detainees generally, and in particular, women; forced compliance with religious and cultural practices; and, most recently, the systematic destruction and/or illegal sale of important cultural property.
The month of September marks commemorative services for both the United Kingdom’s National Police Memorial Day on the 27th, and the Australian Police Remembrance Day on the 29th.
As part of the launch of the sixth edition of ‘Redfern and Hunter on International Arbitration’, one half of the book’s authorial team Nigel Blackaby and Constantine Partasides QC met up with Law Vox podcast host George Miller. Together they discussed the evolution of international arbitration and the influential role Redfern and Hunter have played in the field.
Europe is currently scrambling to cope with the arrival of over one million asylum seekers. Responses have ranged from building walls to opening doors. European Union countries have varied widely in their offers to resettle refugees.
Where and when did the history of international law begin? Many scholars have argued about the definitive date and periodisation of certain dynamic developments, let alone which treaties, institutions, and figures have shaped the field’s core doctrines.
One of the principal dangers of admitting hearsay evidence in court is that a witness’s veracity cannot be tested by cross-examination. Notwithstanding that, where a witness is dead, or it is impractical for the witness to attend because she is out of the country, we may recognise the case for admitting hearsay under the Criminal Justice Act 2003.
In a recent Huffington Post piece entitled “Police Shootings Are About Class as Well as Race,” Jesse Jackson argued that the issue of police violence specifically, and an unjust and excessive criminal justice system in general, are disproportionately experienced by the poor, irrespective of race.
The legal wishes of the dead have long been fertile ground for domestic drama. Shakespeare’s As You Like It opens on the theme: “As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed me by will”.
In 2004, I was waiting on a tube platform and spotted posters asking: ‘Police – could you?’. I thought about that a lot and realised that, at that point in time, I couldn’t. I didn’t feel certain enough that, in difficult situations, I would have good enough judgement always to do the right thing. Fast forward ten years and I’d done a fair bit of growing up. I’d worked in a police force and spent a lot of time with officers – both regulars and Specials.
Should EU-US investment disputes be solved by arbitral tribunals constituted separately for each dispute, as is currently the case under most Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs), or should a permanent court be established? This is one of the key questions that might kill the efforts for what would be the largest regional free-trade agreement in history, covering 46% of world GDP: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
As a young ICSID neophyte, I once asked Aron Broches, the World Bank’s General Counsel from 1959 to 1979, how he had come up with the idea for the Centre. “It was in the air,” he explained. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, there were indeed a number of proposals circulating for the creation of an international arbitral mechanism for the settlement of investment disputes.
John Oliver’s sardonic spoof of televangelists raises important issues that deserve more than comic treatment. Oliver’s satire was aimed both at the televangelists themselves and at the IRS. In Oliver’s narrative, the IRS acquiesces to televangelists’ abuse by granting their churches tax-exempt status and failing to audit these churches.
Surveys show that a high percentage of British citizens “feel British.” But what exactly do people have in mind when they say this? People may think differently about this question, and perhaps it is also British to give various meanings to British identity. Still, can we define what it is to “feel” British? Or even what is un-British—be it a pattern of behavior, a belief, or a way of doing things?
On his recent visit to Kenya, President Obama addressed the subject of sexual liberty. At a press conference with the Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, he spoke affectingly about the cause of gay rights, likening the plight of homosexuals to the anti-slavery and anti-segregation struggles in the United States.
Starting in 2012, ICANN revolutionized the internet with the release of a vast number of new top-level domain spaces. With the launch of over 1000 new spaces in the near future, simply registering your client’s business name in one or two extensions may not prove sufficient to reach their audiences.