Foundation for Law, Justice and Society
by Oxford University
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Description
Podcasts from the Foundation for Law, Justice and Society, an independent institution affiliated with Wolfson College and the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford.
| Name | Description | Released | Price | ||
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1 |
Europe on the Brink? Constitutional Issues | An assessment of the future constitutional implications of the the eurozone crisis for the European Union. | 4/25/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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2 |
Europe on the Brink? Economic Issues | An economic assessment of the eurozone crisis by former Senior Economic Advisor to the European Commission and Deputy Director of the International Monetary Fund Max Watson. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/ | 4/25/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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3 |
Europe on the Brink? Political Issues | Graham Avery, Honorary Director-General of the European Commission, assessees the political implications of the eurozone crisis and suggests Britain may find itself relegated to a secondary role in a two-tier Europe. Graham Avery, who was recognized in the Queen's New Year Honours 2012 for services to European Affairs, suggests that David Cameron's veto over the proposed EU treaty changes in December could herald the development of a two-tier structure of EU membership, which may lead to serious economic and political problems for Britain. Describing Britain's EU policy as 'uncomfortably situated between a rock and a hard place', he outlines the risk of Britain having a marginalized role in Europe with the stark warning that 'if you are not at the table, you will be on the menu'. He goes on to attribute the eurozone crisis in part to poor management of the rules for the euro, and identified errors made by the Commission in accepting false economic accounts by Greece and the transgression of the rules by Germany and France with budget deficits exceeding 3 percent. | 4/25/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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4 |
Europe on the Brink? Introduction and Historical Issues | Introduction to the Europe on the Brink: Economic, Political, and Constitutional Issues Panel Discussion to inaugurate the Law, Justice and Society Research Cluster at Wolfson College, Oxford | 4/25/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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5 |
Abbe Sieyes, Guttenberg, and Habermas: Constitutional Revolutions in Egypt and the Arab World | This discussion assesses why the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt took constitutional form, given the previous constitutional histories and discussions. And second, can the revolutionary impulse to constitutionalize political authority succeed? Over the past decade, long before the fall of the Mubarak regime, Egyptian political debates turned sharply in a constitutional direction. Since then, the debates have been passionate, personal, and highly partisan (with likely majority actors favoring majoritarian devices, for instance). Judges, political activists, opposition activists, and the Muslim Brotherhood have all put forward suggestions for constitutional reform that often bear a surface resemblance to each other - but when one reads the details, one finds that the suggestions reflect very much the interests of the various parties involved. It is doubtful that the high hopes of Egypt's various communities and parties can be met. But an observer comparing current Egyptian debates to the abstract deliberations of 1971 cannot escape the conclusion that passion and interest - and, along with them, politics - have returned to Egyptian constitutional debates. | 3/26/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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6 |
Will Constitutional Theocracy bloom after the Arab Spring? | A critical analysis of Ran Hirschl's theory of 'constitutional theocracy' from the perspective of the Arab Spring. In a much discussed recent book, Ran Hirschl has claimed that there is a tendency to include in constitutions strongly religious language and that particularly in the Muslim world, we are witnessing calls for what he calls 'constitutional theocracy.' If Hirschl's characterization of current trends is correct, we should expect the Arab Spring to lead to the further embedding of 'constitutional theocracy'. Professor Clark Lombardi argues that we will need a more nuanced model of constitutionalized religion if we are adequately to describe what has been occurring in the Middle East and what is likely to happen in the wake of the Arab Spring. | 3/26/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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7 |
The Middle East Revolution: take 2, Constitutionalism | Professors Chibli Mallat and Tom Ginsburg assess the constitutional moment in the wake of democratic revolution. Once the head of the dictatorship is deposed, the constitutional moment starts. Working constitutions represent democracy's strategic depth in the Middle East, and provide the institutionalised future for nonviolence as a profound marker of the unfolding revolution. As the concert of draft constitutions, elections and governments unevenly marches across the region, the central common question concerns the reshaping of the social contract in the nonviolent revolution with its myriad hopes of tens of millions of participants as it is seeking the next, inevitable step after the removal of the dictator. The fall of the human symbol of repression, president, king or ayatollah may be a necessary condition. It is never sufficient. | 3/26/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Keynote Speech | Terry Davis, former Secretary General of the Council of Europe, gives the final keynote speech for The Evolution of International Norms and Norm Entrepreneurship: The Council of Europe in Comparative Perspective conference Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/ | 1/18/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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9 |
The International 'Responsibility to Protect' and the 'Responsibility to Rebuild'- A Dual Agenda | Professor Richard Caplan, Oxford, gives a talk for The Evolution of International Norms and Norm Entrepreneurship: The Council of Europe in Comparative Perspective This one-day workshop will bring together officials and researchers working on the Council of Europe and international norms more generally. Our emphasis on the Council of Europe gives a concrete empirical starting point for consideration of international norms, norm 'entrepreneurship', and human rights. How do norms come onto the international political agenda? How are they turned into political or legal instruments? Who are the norm 'entrepreneurs'? Why do member states risk becoming entangled in an international normative and legal discourse about human rights that their governments may try to avoid 'at home'? Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/ | 1/17/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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10 |
From Conditionality to Disconnection-The Ambivalent Relationship between the Council of Europe and the European Union in the Fi | Professor Valsamis Mitsilegas, School of Law, Queen Mary, University of London gives a talk for The Evolution of International Norms and Norm Entrepreneurship: The Council of Europe in Comparative Perspective This one-day workshop will bring together officials and researchers working on the Council of Europe and international norms more generally. Our emphasis on the Council of Europe gives a concrete empirical starting point for consideration of international norms, norm 'entrepreneurship', and human rights. How do norms come onto the international political agenda? How are they turned into political or legal instruments? Who are the norm 'entrepreneurs'? Why do member states risk becoming entangled in an international normative and legal discourse about human rights that their governments may try to avoid 'at home'? Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/ | 1/17/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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11 |
Hard Law, Soft Law and the Politics of Standards: Regulating Political Parties in Europe | Dr Daniel Smilov, University of Sofia, gives a talk for The Evolution of International Norms and Norm Entrepreneurship: The Council of Europe in Comparative Perspective This one-day workshop will bring together officials and researchers working on the Council of Europe and international norms more generally. Our emphasis on the Council of Europe gives a concrete empirical starting point for consideration of international norms, norm 'entrepreneurship', and human rights. How do norms come onto the international political agenda? How are they turned into political or legal instruments? Who are the norm 'entrepreneurs'? Why do member states risk becoming entangled in an international normative and legal discourse about human rights that their governments may try to avoid 'at home'? It would be easy for states not to cooperate, or subvert 'norm production' inside the Council of Europe itself. Yet member states tend not to do this. This is part of what former Council of Europe Secretary General Terry Davis has referred to as 'the best kept secret in Europe'. The workshop sets out to unpack this 'secret' by combining a review of current research on the emergence and institutionalization of international norms using the Council of Europe as a focus for a discussion about the conceptual and empirical challenges of studying norm entrepreneurship. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/ | 1/17/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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12 |
The Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities: From Standard-Setting to Standard-Implementation | Professor Rainer Hoffmann, University of Frankfurt gives a talk for The Evolution of International Norms and Norm Entrepreneurship: The Council of Europe in Comparative Perspective This one-day workshop will bring together officials and researchers working on the Council of Europe and international norms more generally. Our emphasis on the Council of Europe gives a concrete empirical starting point for consideration of international norms, norm 'entrepreneurship', and human rights. How do norms come onto the international political agenda? How are they turned into political or legal instruments? Who are the norm 'entrepreneurs'? Why do member states risk becoming entangled in an international normative and legal discourse about human rights that their governments may try to avoid 'at home'? It would be easy for states not to cooperate, or subvert 'norm production' inside the Council of Europe itself. Yet member states tend not to do this. This is part of what former Council of Europe Secretary General Terry Davis has referred to as 'the best kept secret in Europe'. The workshop sets out to unpack this 'secret' by combining a review of current research on the emergence and institutionalization of international norms using the Council of Europe as a focus for a discussion about the conceptual and empirical challenges of studying norm entrepreneurship. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/ | 1/17/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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13 |
The Council of Europe and the death penalty: intergovernmental legitimation as enabling and constraining | Dr Kundai Sithole, Oxford, gives the seventh talk for The Evolution of International Norms and Norm Entrepreneurship: The Council of Europe in Comparative Perspective This one-day workshop will bring together officials and researchers working on the Council of Europe and international norms more generally. Our emphasis on the Council of Europe gives a concrete empirical starting point for consideration of international norms, norm 'entrepreneurship', and human rights. How do norms come onto the international political agenda? How are they turned into political or legal instruments? Who are the norm 'entrepreneurs'? Why do member states risk becoming entangled in an international normative and legal discourse about human rights that their governments may try to avoid 'at home'? It would be easy for states not to cooperate, or subvert 'norm production' inside the Council of Europe itself. Yet member states tend not to do this. This is part of what former Council of Europe Secretary General Terry Davis has referred to as 'the best kept secret in Europe'. The workshop sets out to unpack this 'secret' by combining a review of current research on the emergence and institutionalization of international norms using the Council of Europe as a focus for a discussion about the conceptual and empirical challenges of studying norm entrepreneurship. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/ | 1/17/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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14 |
Sixty Years of Normative Production in the Council of Europe: The Legal Nature, Elaboration, Challenges and Trends of the CoE C | Manuel Lezertua, Director of Legal Advice and Public International Law (Jurisconsult), Council of Europe: gives the sixth talk for The Evolution of International Norms and Norm Entrepreneurship: The Council of Europe in Comparative Perspective This one-day workshop will bring together officials and researchers working on the Council of Europe and international norms more generally. Our emphasis on the Council of Europe gives a concrete empirical starting point for consideration of international norms, norm 'entrepreneurship', and human rights. How do norms come onto the international political agenda? How are they turned into political or legal instruments? Who are the norm 'entrepreneurs'? Why do member states risk becoming entangled in an international normative and legal discourse about human rights that their governments may try to avoid 'at home'? Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/ | 1/17/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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15 |
Explaining the Momentum behind the Council of Europe's Norm Entrepreneurship | Dr Gwendolyn Sasse, Oxford, gives the fifth talk for The Evolution of International Norms and Norm Entrepreneurship: The Council of Europe in Comparative Perspective This one-day workshop will bring together officials and researchers working on the Council of Europe and international norms more generally. Our emphasis on the Council of Europe gives a concrete empirical starting point for consideration of international norms, norm 'entrepreneurship', and human rights. How do norms come onto the international political agenda? How are they turned into political or legal instruments? Who are the norm 'entrepreneurs'? Why do member states risk becoming entangled in an international normative and legal discourse about human rights that their governments may try to avoid 'at home'? Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/ | 1/17/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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16 |
War, Law and the Cold War: Making the European Convention on Human Rights | Professor Anne Deighton (Oxford) gives the fourth talk in The Evolution of International Norms and Norm Entrepreneurship: The Council of Europe in Comparative Perspective This one-day workshop will bring together officials and researchers working on the Council of Europe and international norms more generally. Our emphasis on the Council of Europe gives a concrete empirical starting point for consideration of international norms, norm 'entrepreneurship', and human rights. How do norms come onto the international political agenda? How are they turned into political or legal instruments? Who are the norm 'entrepreneurs'? Why do member states risk becoming entangled in an international normative and legal discourse about human rights that their governments may try to avoid 'at home'? Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/ | 1/17/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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17 |
Where do norms come from? | Dr Jennifer Jackson-Preece (LSE) gives the second talk for The Evolution of International Norms and Norm Entrepreneurship: The Council of Europe in Comparative Perspective This one-day workshop will bring together officials and researchers working on the Council of Europe and international norms more generally. Our emphasis on the Council of Europe gives a concrete empirical starting point for consideration of international norms, norm 'entrepreneurship', and human rights. How do norms come onto the international political agenda? How are they turned into political or legal instruments? Who are the norm 'entrepreneurs'? Why do member states risk becoming entangled in an international normative and legal discourse about human rights that their governments may try to avoid 'at home'? It would be easy for states not to cooperate, or subvert 'norm production' inside the Council of Europe itself. Yet member states tend not to do this. This is part of what former Council of Europe Secretary General Terry Davis has referred to as 'the best kept secret in Europe'. The workshop sets out to unpack this 'secret' by combining a review of current research on the emergence and institutionalization of international norms using the Council of Europe as a focus for a discussion about the conceptual and empirical challenges of studying norm entrepreneurship. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/ | 1/17/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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18 |
Norm Entrepreneurship - Theoretical and Methodological Challenges | Professor Jeffrey Checkel (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver), gives the first talk in The Evolution of International Norms and 'Norm Entrepreneurship' The Council of Europe in Comparative Perspective workshop This one-day workshop will bring together officials and researchers working on the Council of Europe and international norms more generally. Our emphasis on the Council of Europe gives a concrete empirical starting point for consideration of international norms, norm 'entrepreneurship', and human rights. How do norms come onto the international political agenda? How are they turned into political or legal instruments? Who are the norm 'entrepreneurs'? Why do member states risk becoming entangled in an international normative and legal discourse about human rights that their governments may try to avoid 'at home'? It would be easy for states not to cooperate, or subvert 'norm production' inside the Council of Europe itself. Yet member states tend not to do this. This is part of what former Council of Europe Secretary General Terry Davis has referred to as 'the best kept secret in Europe'. The workshop sets out to unpack this 'secret' by combining a review of current research on the emergence and institutionalization of international norms using the Council of Europe as a focus for a discussion about the conceptual and empirical challenges of studying norm entrepreneurship. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/ | 1/17/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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19 |
The Indirect Origins of the Judicial Constitution: 2011 Annual Lecture in Law and Society | In this Annual Lecture, Oxford Professor of Socio-Legal Studies Denis Galligan presents a number of illuminating constitutional snapshots from the last 300 years to explore the limits of representative democracy. and advanced the concept of the People as corporation to account for the constitutional prominence of social justice and rights at the expense of provisions for direct political representation | 6/20/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The History of Modern Constitutionalism | This lecture establishes the ten essentials of modern constitutionalism, as first developed in the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776 It shows how these essentials gained ground in the evolving American constitutions up to the mid-nineteenth century and how they spread over to Europe in 1789, where the theoretical foundation of modern constitutionalism was established. The lecture also develops a revisionist approach to the established preeminence of the American and French constitutional traditions and argue for a more global perspective. | 11/22/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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21 |
Politicizing Law, Judicializing Politics: A Realist Approach to Comparative Constitutionalism | This lecture by Professor Ran Hirschl explores the strengths and weaknesses of studying comparatively the socio-political foundations of constitutions and constitutional institutions worldwide. The past few decades have seen a sweeping convergence to constitutional supremacy and a corresponding increase in the political importance of constitutional courts worldwide. This trend is widely perceived as a reflection of progressive social or political change, or simply as the result of societies' or politicians' uncritical celebration of rights. Against this canonical backdrop, a realist approach has emerged that draws on comparative research to provide a richer explanatory account of the causal relationships between constitutional law and various political, social, or economic phenomena. This increasingly prevalent approach goes beyond portrayals of constitutions as aspirational documents or solutions to systemic problems of coordination and commitment. It identifies concrete supply-side factors that are conducive to the establishment, maintenance, and demise of constitutional orders, most notably the changing interests and incentives of pertinent political, judicial, and economic stakeholders. Drawing on various examples of constitutionalization, Professor Ran Hirschl from the University of Toronto will elucidate the analytical foundations of this emerging approach and its main theoretical insights. The lecture will explore the strengths and weaknesses of studying comparatively the socio-political foundations of constitutions and constitutional institutions worldwide. | 5/24/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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22 |
Human Rights and their Limitations: The Role of Proportionality | The former President of the Israeli Supreme Court Aharon Barak addresses the appropriate balance between security and the safeguarding of human rights. | 6/5/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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23 |
Equality in an Era of Responsibility | John Roemer, Professor of Political Science and Economics at Yale University, explores the historical formulations of responsibility in egalitarian theory, and argues for a more direct and non-contractarian approach to its integration. | 4/30/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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24 |
Justice after Atrocity: A Cosmopolitan Pluralist Approach | Why do ordinary people perpetrate genocide and crimes against humanity? How can these perpetrators be held accountable? Are international prosecutions effective? Is imprisonment a fitting punishment? This lecture explores the potential and limits of liberal criminal law as a method of accountability in the aftermath of atrocity. Drawing from a variety of case-studies, including Rwanda, Timor-Leste, and Bosnia, the lecture argues that the lexicon of justice should transcend the courtroom and the jailhouse. Although accountability for atrocity is a shared cosmopolitan value, pluralism suggests that the process of accountability could well take different forms in different places, to diversify the post-conflict justice narrative and, it is argued, render it more effective. | 1/29/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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25 |
Beyond the Third Way in Labour Law: Towards the Constitutionalization of Labour Law? | Professor Collins argues that New Labour was responsible for the real break from the political settlements of the Trade Disputes Act 1906. He suggests that a new social contract is required that constitutionalizes social and economic rights. Blair's Third Way agenda was radically different from the early twentieth century political settlement in three respects. First, it was largely uninterested in the distribution of wealth in society; second, it conducted direct regulation of working conditions where that was believed necessary to support policy goals; third there was an acceptance, inherited from the preceding conservative governments, that individual bargaining in the context of competitive market forces would be the primary determinant of pay and conditions. To many people, what seems to be missing are certain guarantees to prevent a return to the simple free market in labour of the nineteenth century. This concern can be expressed as a need to reinvent the social contract, to rebalance the economic constitution, or to constitutionalize labour law. | 12/2/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 26 | If the Public Would be Outraged by Their Rulings, Should Judges Care? | A Report and Analysis of the 2007 Annual Lecture in Law and Society delivered by Professor Cass Sunstein, organised by the Foundation for Law, Justice and Society in association with the Law Faculty, Oxford. It is clear that judicial rulings can, and sometimes do, provoke public outrage. A significant body of literature in political science seeks to demonstrate the extent to which courts sometimes work to reduce the likelihood and intensity of such outrage. The normative question of whether judges should attend to outrage has received only episodic attention. Conventional views of this question maintain that it is wrong for judges to be affected by the likely reception of their rulings, since a key function of an independent judiciary is to check and sometimes override intensely held populist judgements. Questioning such a view, Professor Sunstein suggested two reasons why public outrage might matter. The first reason is consequentialist, claiming that judges should take potentially adverse effects of a ruling into account. The second reason is epistemic, holding that intense public convictions may provide relevant information about the correctness of judicial conclusions. An understanding of the significance of public outrage in judicial reasoning informs thinking on the relation between democracy and judicial review, and depends crucially on empirical questions concerning the real-world capacities of various institutions. | 8/11/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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If the Public Would be Outraged by Their Rulings, Should Judges Care? | This Foundation for Law, Justice and Society Annual Lecture, delivered by Professor Cass Sunstein on 24 May 2007, questions the limits and legitimacy of judicial independence in the face of public opinion. | 8/11/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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28 |
Contract, Obligation, Rights and Reciprocity in the New Modern Welfare State | This lecture, delivered by Lord Raymond Plant on 18 April 2007, opened the inaugural workshop in the Foundation's programme on 'The Social Contract Revisited'. | 8/11/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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29 |
Courts, Legislatures, Administrators, and the Making of Social Policy | This lecture, delivered by Professor Martin Shapiro on 25 June 2006, opened the inaugural workshop of the Foundation's programme on 'Courts and the Making of Public Policy' | 8/11/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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30 |
FLJS and Aspen Institute Lecture: Detention without Trial in Wartime Britain | Delivered by Prof. AWB Simpson at the Aspen Institute on 7 Jul 08, it gives an account of the response of the courts to detention without trial during WWII. It serves to open a two-day seminar entitled 'In Times of Crisis Can We Trust the Courts?' The lecture argues that the courts largely abandoned any role in protecting civil liberty, on the ground that, under the emergency legislation of the time, this was not their responsibility. It goes on to explain how the ratification of the European Convention on Human Rights, and its incorporation into domestic law under the Human Rights Act of 1998, has radically altered the position, though the inherent problems involved when regular courts become involved in monitoring the activities of security services in times of crisis have not gone away. | 8/8/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Transformative Constitutionalism and Socio-Economic Rights | In a keynote lecture the Chief Justice of South Africa addressed the relationship between the entrenchment and enforceability of socio-economic rights in South Africa. Chief Justice Langa argued that the Constitution is best understood as a manifesto for positive transformation towards an equal society. | 7/2/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
| Total: 31 Episodes |
