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Item Embargo Article 18: Protection of the family(Pretoria University Law Press, 2024-12-06) Nyamutata, ConradThe African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (African Children’s Charter) emphasises the importance of protecting the family, particularly in the context of children’s rights. However, it does not provide a definition of the ‘family’, and its composition. Nonetheless, the criticality of the family as fundamental in African society is indubitable. Relationships leading to marriage and children were invariably cherished among African peoples. The African concept of human rights enforces the notion that children are a valuable part of society as traditional African culture recognises the worth of children and the need to protect them. It thus is not surprising that for a charter dedicated to children, the ‘family’, however conceptualised, forms a significant part of its social fundaments. The Preamble recognises that the child holds ‘a unique and privileged position in the African society’ and that for the child to fully develop their personality, the child must grow up in a ‘family environment that promotes love, happiness and understanding’. This chapter offers an analysis of article 18 of the African Children’s Charter. Overall, the Charter shows the quintessence of African values that recognise the importance of the family to African children’s upbringings. The Preamble presupposes that parties to the Charter considered ‘the virtues of their cultural heritage, historical background and the values of the African civilisation which should inspire and characterise their reflection on the concept of the rights and welfare of the child’. Therefore, the family and its protection need to be viewed within the broader context of the African valuesItem Embargo Article 20 Parental Responsibilities(Pretoria University Law Press, 2024-12-06) Mills, LizeArticle 20 of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC) imposes a range of measures of protection of children, and obligations upon states, parents and others responsible for children. It is a provision that is crucial to the daily life of children. Like with much of the ACRWC, its aims are ambitious, noble and far-reaching but, unfortunately, its instructions have been implemented only to a limited extent. While the provision has been used to support and supplement recommendations made by the African Children’s Committee and other non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the lived reality of too many children on the African continent falls short of the objectives article 20 set to achieve. Many of the aspirations and goals set by the African Children’s Committee in its Agenda 2040 have failed to reach their medium-term targets and the likelihood of their eventual success is doubtful. Nevertheless, one cannot underestimate the normative and institutional significance of article 20. Where it has been implemented, it has been responsible for many interventions and much improvement in the daily lives of children and their parents. Although there are similarities between article 20 and several of the provisions of the ACRWC, as well as other instruments of international human rights protection, it also has its own, unique contribution to make. It is the only provision that instructs parents to administer discipline in a way that considers children’s humanity, dignity and best interests. Yet, for whatever reasons, on numerous occasions, article 20 has been overlooked as a valuable instruction and aid in the global call to end corporal punishment in the home. This chapter examines this provision and discusses the opportunities that it provides to courts and other fora to develop African jurisprudence, and for state parties to align their policies and legislation with international standards.Item Metadata only “I’ve never met a barrister that sounded like I do”: accents, barristers and Bourdieusian capital(Taylor and Francis, 2024-05-06) Braber, Natalie; Ching, Jane; Jarman, Jane; Robson, Jeremy; Stevens, OliviaUse of Received Pronunciation (RP) is a proxy for particular kinds of elite social capital, but it is also a professional norm and part of the Bourdieusian habitus of the Bar. This article uses the first empirical study of accent discrimination in relation to barristers in England and Wales as a basis for a theoretical consideration of the interaction between barristers and others: clients, jurors, judges and other barristers. In particular it evaluates ways in which understandings about accent, as a facet of social or cultural capital, impact on individual career decisions. It concludes that while considerable progress has been made on diversity of the profession, targeted action by the regulator and the profession is required to address perceptions of discrimination (and manifestations of discrimination itself) in a profession to whose activities speech is foundational.Item Open Access Fitness to plead: R. v Ismael (Kamaladin)(Sweet and Maxwell, 2024-08-19) Ronnie MackayCase commentary on unfitness to plead in the context of guilty pleas.Item Metadata only Towards a global understanding of what is effective interviewing for investigations and information gathering(Routledge, 2024-08-09) Walsh, D.; Areh, I.; Bull, R.In this concluding Chapter, we reflect on the contributions to the authors of the chapters in the Handbook. As these chapters have largely, if not entirely, covered countries that have been seldom covered in the literature then such discourse in the chapter provides illumination to wider international audiences for the first time. While, undoubtedly, this is a good thing, more soberly such material and coverage more of than not provides a key message that there is much more to be done in many countries if the Mendez Principles are to avoid becoming a missed opportunity. This book can provide an additional opportunity to assist the endeavours of those seeking change to more ethical forms of investigative interviews and interrogations. It also highlights a number of areas of prospective research, that are required to develop further understanding of the challenges and possible solutions when encountering implementation of the principles without distorting them.Item Embargo Police Questioning: From ‘Common Sense’ to Ethics, Science, and Global Principles(2024-08-09) Areh, I; Walsh, D.; Bull, R.This preface undertakes an introduction to the book's themes, its origins and its purpose. Itp rovides a rationale for its purpose as well as providing coverage of scientific developments and recent changes most notiably that of the UN declaration of the Mendez Principles in 2021, while duiscussiing states' reposes to that decalration that provides further evidence of the need for the Handbook. This preface also detials the structure of the Handbook and signposts various initatives that will provide opportunties to underpin implementation of the Principles.Item Open Access Investigating organised human trafficking crimes: case studies of police investigations in England(Taylor and Francis, 2024-09-24) Pajon, L.; Walsh, D.Investigating organised human trafficking criminality is neither easy nor straightforward. Among the complexity is the need to balance and secure multiple, and often competing, investigative goals. Using case studies of actual human trafficking investigations in England, the present exploratory study provides insights into the tensions between safeguarding victims while also (at the same time) building up evidence against those who exploit them in order to secure a successful prosecution. Findings reveal that factors associated with the assessed level of risk of victims, the intelligence available at the start of the investigation and police resources (balanced with opportunities and risk to secure the investigative goals) influence the investigative approach followed and strategies implemented, particularly those aiming to engage with victims. The exploratory findings illustrate the importance of intelligence in risk assessment and decision-making processes during police operations, but also the need to conduct yet further research on risk assessment within the context of human trafficking investigations to inform policy and decision-making policing practices.Item Open Access Reconceptualising The Role of Actual Causation in Criminal Law(Hong Kong Law Journal (Sweet & Maxwell), 2024-07-04) Baker, D. J.This article examines two important themes arising from several recent Court of Appeal decisions concerning causation in criminal law. The first theme analysed will be the issue of factual causation in cases where the free, deliberate, and informed act rule is relevant. The second interrelated theme that will be analysed is the requirement not to look to prove factual causation in cases where V has died because D failed to take an opportunity to prevent what was causing V’s death from continuing to cause V’s death. In such cases the duty to act is used to ground liability and thus causal indeterminacy does not allow D to evade criminal liability.Item Open Access Corporate Non Compliance with Section 54 Modern Slavery Act 2015: "Nobody's kicking our ass"(Journal of Modern Slavery, 2024-06) Lawson, Karen; Walsh, D.Section 54 of the UK’s Modern Slavery Act requires certain companies to publish annual statements, detailing steps taken to manage risks of modern slavery. However, many companies still have yet to fulfill their most basic legal requirements. Prior research has largely examined the quality of published statements; thus, the reasons and remedies for non-compliance are not wholly understood. The present study directly sought the views of non-compliant companies, finding apathy and the lack of repercussions for non-compliance as central to their continuing inertia. We also argue for a number of measures, including stronger penalties and enforcement, to increase compliance rates.Item Metadata only Entrepreneurship: An Auspicious Context for Examining Its Connection to Wellbeing(Palgrave Macmillan, 2023-09-01) Gali, N.; Chui, Susanna L. M.Item Open Access Politeness, face, and rapport-building in remote and face-to-face investigative interviews with witnesses(2024-05-22) MacLeod, N.; Oxburgh, G.; Walsh, D.; Farrugia, L.; Nash, A.In guidance issued to police interviewers in England and Wales, the concept of rapport is placed front-and-centre, highlighted as a crucial element of the ‘Engage & Explain’ element of investigative interviews since the PEACE framework was widely adopted in 1993 (see CPTU 1992a, 1992b). Although rapport-building has been shown to be effective, there is little information in the research on what this means in practice – particularly in linguistic terms – and rapport is notoriously difficult to operationalise (Pounds, 2019). This paper aims to elucidate the relationship between face-work and rapport building in investigative interviews with witnesses. To do this, a small corpus of recorded mock interviews between a PEACE-trained interviewer and research participants assuming the role of witness to a moderate crime were assembled from a larger set collected as part of a project investigating the efficiency of investigative interviews conducted online as compared to via traditional face-to-face methods . These comparisons are not the subject of this paper; rather, we attempt to map rapport-building strategies evident in the mock interviews onto understandings of face work in interaction.Item Embargo Invoking Human Rights to Protect Unmarried Couples(Lexis, 2022) Rodway, HelenThis article explores the methodology developed in Re an application by Siobhan McLaughlin for Judicial Review (Northern Ireland) [2018] UKSC 48 and other recent cases that have seen cohabitants use the European Convention on Human Rights to gain access to legal protections originally intended exclusively for spouses and civil partners. It will be argued that whilst McLaughlin demonstrates a robust approach to discrimination affecting unmarried couples, the methodology is caveated leading to questions surrounding whether its scope is wide enough to have any substantial benefit in future litigation. This article undertakes a systematic analysis of the stages of an ECHR claim to argue that the developments in these cohabitation cases should be welcomed, and that there is a role for human rights to play to alleviate the discrimination facing cohabitants. However, the continued acceptance of the legitimacy of promoting formalised relationships to justify different treatment alongside a disproportionate weight attached to the presence of children means that the methodology may have limited application.Item Embargo Maternity Allowance: the Last Bastion of the Marriage-Based Benefits System Under Threat from Article 14(Sweet and Maxwell, 2022) Rodway, HelenThis article explores whether Maternity Allowance (MA) (insofar as it allows spouses and civil partners who are not employed but take part in their spouse’s business but not analogous cohabitees to qualify) is compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights art.14 when read with art.8 and/or art.1 of the First Protocol on the basis that it discriminates against cohabitants and their children. Through a systematic analysis of an art.14 claim, this article examines the methodology developed in McLaughlin’s Application for Judicial Review (Northern Ireland), Re to determine whether it could be relied upon in a claim challenging MA. As will be seen, there are differences between Widowed Parent’s Allowance, the benefit challenged in McLaughlin and MA. However, it will be evidenced that the methodology developed in McLaughlin has the scope to be deployed successfully in the context of MA. Ultimately, this article will conclude that a successful challenge to MA could be the latest example of cohabitants using strategic litigation to potentially further the legal protections available to them.Item Metadata only Coercion, Control and Criminal Responsibility: Exploring Professional Responses to Offending and Suicidality in the Context of Domestically Abusive Relationships(Sage, 2023-09-12) Munro, Vanessa E.; Bettinson, Vanessa; Burton, MandySignificant strides have been made in the law's recognition of harms arising from domestic abuse. In England and Wales, the Serious Crimes Act 2015, and in Scotland, the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018, have supported a more holistic understanding of the dynamics of abuse and the means by which coercion and control are deployed to cement and supplant perpetrators’ violence. In this article, we explore what the introduction of these offences means in other situations where questions regarding the impact of abuse upon victims’ agency arise: specifically, where victims commit an offence that might have been compelled by abusive behaviour or take their own lives in contexts that might indicate perpetrators’ liability for suicide. In particular, drawing on interviews with professionals across both jurisdictions, we highlight the precarity of recognition of the effects of coercive control and the need to engage in more complicated discussions about when and why context matters.Item Open Access Applications of Legal Psychology in Japan: Current practice, research knowledge, and future directions(Universiy of California Press, 2024-03-05) Orthey, R.; Satchell, L.; Rechdan, J.; Kyo, A.; Walsh, D.We examine practices in the Japanese criminal investigation in light of investigative interviewing, concealed crime knowledge detection, and line up identification procedures. The investigative interviewing section considers suspects and victims and& eyewitnesses separately. Each section features a description of current Japanese practice, followed by a review of the current state of the literature. Each section ends with a reflection and suggestions for future research.Item Open Access The Material Constitution and Extractive Political Economy(Cambridge University Press, 2023-01-15) Lander, JenniferMongolia’s recent transition to a mineral exporting economy has much to tell us about the relationship between economic change and constitutional transformation. It reveals how the legal construction of markets invite a bevy of transnational economic and legal ‘actors, norms and processes’ which interact with the national constitution. Natural resource extraction, in particular, is charged with the potential to catalyse material constitutional change within the state, by virtue of its profound socio-environmental impacts, the generation of new conflicts over resource control within the state and the exposure of national institutions to transnational investment norms within the context of volatile global commodity markets.Item Open Access Funerary Rites and Rights of the Dead: Jurisprudence on covid-19 Deaths in Kenya, India and Sri Lanka(Brill, 2023-01-12) Nyamutata, ConradPandemics are associated with exponential mortality rates, creating heavy burdens on communities. The high death rates affect how societies traditionally conduct funerary practices as governments impose regulations on the preparation of bodies and the conduct of the funerals to stem the transmission of the virus. In societies associated with deeply entrenched customary funerary practices, such limitative measures attract defiance. The tensions between public health objectives and funerary traditions have played out in a number of societies resulting in litigation. At the core of the disputes is whether the right to manifest religion or belief can be upheld, and relatedly, whether the dead have rights to dignified burials irrespective of pandemics. During the covid-19 pandemic, some courts had to grapple with these difficult questions. In this paper, I take a jurisprudential excursion on some disputes in Kenya, India and Sri Lanka to assess the adjudication of conflicts which arose from covid-19 pandemic deaths.Item Embargo Decolonising and decriminalising child marriage in Africa(Wiley, 2023-08-25) Nyamutata, ConradChild marriages, often attributed to culture and gender inequality, are prevalent across Africa. Several countries have moved to criminalise the practice. At the core of the criminalisation debate are the fundamental tensions between statutory (state) law on the one hand, and religious and customary law on the other. The growing momentum towards punishment, targeted almost invariably at male offenders, is meant to address the conflict between cultural practices that lead to child marriage and the protection of children's rights. However, some countries have not criminalised child marriage. Thus, the outlawry of child marriages is not universal on the continent. The agitation towards criminalisation—I describe this as ‘popular punitvism’ ‐ as a panacea, is animated by Western penological justifications, principally, deterrence. However, Western criminological and penological theories may not fully account for a phenomenon in other social and geographical spaces. The paper argues for decolonising and decriminalising child marriages in Africa but not legalising it.Item Embargo Critically-ill children and the international human rights system: assessing the status and role of the UNCRPD in the case of Archie Battersbee(Brill, 2024-01-10) Nyamutata, ConradOver the past few years, some parents and clinicians in the UK have argued about decisions on the fate of critically-ill children, with the cases ending in protracted and emotionally-sapping legal disputes. The long -running legal conflicts have played out in the public eye, eliciting conflicting opinions. At the core of the disputes is whether parents or clinicians should determine the appropriate course of action. In the event of the disagreements, the domestic court intervenes guided by the ‘best interests’ principle. A corpus of scholarship, falling on either side of the debate, has captured the contradictions. Until recently, the discourse had focused on the common recourses to domestic courts and the European Court of Human Rights. However, in the recent case of incapacitated 12-year-old Archie Battersbee, his parents sought redress from the international human rights system through the Committee on the Rights of People with Disabilities to stop termination of his life support. The courts barred the involvement of the Committee on the basis that the UK had not incorporated the treaty which birthed the Committee. The case brought into sharp focus the relationship between international law and domestic law. First, this paper asserts that the weight (not) given to international law by the domestic courts was inconsistent with its treatment of international obligations in other cases. Secondly, the position that unincorporated treaties do not have legal effect in domestic proceedings is ambiguous. Finally, the treaty body appeared ill-suited to handle a case of a critically-ill child in the face of the impatient demands of local justiceItem Open Access The ideological construction of Western ISIS-associated females(John Benjamins Publishing, 2020-05-04) Nyamutata, ConradSince the outbreak of the war in Syria, some Western women and girls have travelled to the warzone to join the group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and marry some of the group’s fighters. However, since the collapse of the ‘caliphate’ some of the women and girls have been stranded amid reluctance to accept them back to countries of origin. The women and girls have been the subject of various descriptions and labels. This is a conceptual and theoretical study which examines the ideological construction of females who travelled from Europe and West to join ISIS. The paper uses discourse analysis to examine the use of particular labels in the Western media, drawing primarily from the British press, on the ISIS-associated females seeking return to the West. The paper finds that a naturalized and dominant discourse has developed in the ideological construction of the females