Hosted by the Oxford University Undergraduate Law Journal’s Podcast Editors, Chum Sdiq, Isaac Tan Kah Hoe, and Bonnie Yeo, and managed by Vice-Editor Yvette Young, the Oxford Undergraduate Law Podcast explores the law, its relationship with society, and its impact on everyday life. The OULP aims to bring academic legal discussion to a wider audience and is brought to you by the Oxford University Undergraduate Law Journal, with the kind support of Crown Office Chambers.
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When using artificial intelligence, we often care more about what the answer is rather than where it comes from. However, as Adrian Mak, a Fellow at the Stanford Law School AI Initiative explains, we should think more about the fact that the answer is usually generated from the sensitive personal data used in training such models. A co-editor of ‘Privacy and Personal Data Protection Law in Asia’ by Hart Publishing and contributor to ‘The Cambridge Handbook of Private Law and Artificial Intellige...
From the boundaries of implied consent in contact sports to antitrust disputes in collegiate programmes, legal rules both shape and respond to sporting practice. In this episode, we take a closer look at anti-doping regulation and the difficult balance it seeks to strike between protecting the rights of athletes and enforcing the rules of the game. Bonnie had the privilege of sitting down with Dr Jan Exner to consider anti-doping regulation and the frameworks that guide liability and sanctions. ...
When one is faced with a complex, multi-jurisdictional dispute, many questions may arise: Which court is the dispute to be resolved in? What law is applicable? Can the award rendered in one country be enforced in another? In response to these pertinent questions, Professor Reyes says that international arbitration is the answer. Professor Anselmo Reyes SC is a world-renowned international arbitrator, International Judge of the Singapore International Commercial Court (SICC), a member of the Inte...
Many of us scrutinise science and technology much less than we do the law. The field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) directly interrogates this incongruence. An interdisciplinary field, STS sees science and technology not as existing in a vacuum, but as producing types of authorities that can be studied just as much as law. Although science and technology are often treated as higher authorities that the law must follow as it inevitably lags behind, Professor Sheila Jasanoff (founder and ...
Straits are incredibly important for international shipping, energy security, and military purposes. However, climate change, ecological vulnerability, and piracy are testing the international legal framework governing the straits used for international navigation around the world. Professor Nilufer Oral discusses these challenges in her paper - 'Navigating the Oceans: Old and New Challenges for the Law of the Sea for Straits Used in International Navigation’. Rachel is honoured to interview her...
The jurisdiction of England and Wales has one of the highest numbers of children in detention across Western Europe, and is one of the few jurisdictions in Europe that still has mandatory life sentences for children. Given the frequency and severity of punitive measures levied towards children in England and Wales, it is all the more important that children are adequately represented in sentencing and appeal processes. However, whether this is a reality is a question that Elysia Boon explores in...
The definition of disability is primarily governed by the Equality Act 2010. One is considered to have a disability if they have a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on one’s ability to do normal daily activities. The law as it relates to disability affects a range of social interactions, from discrimination to a duty to make reasonable adjustments, and conversations surrounding it primarily focus on ethical considerations and the legal decisio...
With President Donald J. Trump's recent inauguration, the US election has been on everyone’s mind, but there are some equally important upcoming elections in 2025 and 2027 just south of the border. It is no secret that the Mexican judiciary is in dire need of reform and that the appetite to rid the system of corruption has never been greater. It cannot be said, however, that the reforms proposed by Manuel Lopez Obrador do anything to address these concerns. At their very best, they are a noble b...
Surrogacy is the practice of a person (the “surrogate”) carrying a child that may, or may not, be genetically related to them and giving birth to the child for another family (the “intended parents”). With the rise of modern family structures, and the demands that modern life places upon those who wish to have children, surrogacy has become a viable option for people unable to carry children or wish to have children at a later time in life. However, it is unclear if the laws and regulations surr...
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 Recognit...
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...
This episode delves into the profound impact of algorithmic management on employment and discrimination law, featuring Sangh Rakshita from the iManage project. It explores how automated systems challenge traditional employer-employee dynamics, creating information asymmetries, eroding human agency, and perpetuating discrimination. The discussion also outlines iManage's policy blueprint for regulating these systems, focusing on safeguards for worker rights and accountability.
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 gr...
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 partie...
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 thi...
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 ...
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 gove...
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 ...
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 ...
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 S...
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 em...
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.
Have you ever thought about studying international law? Is international law nothing more than a set of non-binding rules which is not enforceable? Have you wondered how, if at all, the international legal system can respond to the Russia-Ukraine war? And what is the UK’s relationship with international law in light of recent Brexit negotiations? Hosted by Vice-Editor in Chief Richard Wagenländer, this episode explores these questions with leading international law Professors Philippa Webb and D...
In this episode, Siobhan speaks to Professor Samuel Moyn on his extensive scholarship on human rights. Their conversation spans a broad range of topics, such as the historical and theological origins of human rights, problems with the modern conception of human rights, and Professor Moyn’s new book, Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War.
In this episode, Bianca speaks with Professor Ariel Ezrachi on the regulation of 'Big Tech' companies. The episode examines the role competition law plays in regulating digital platforms and the novel challenges that differentiate digital markets from regular markets through an introduction of competition law and a comparison of regulatory approaches of the EU and US.
