This lecture explores the global preoccupation with criminality in the early twenty-first century, a preoccupation strikingly disproportionate, in most places and for most people, to the risks posed by lawlessness to the conduct of everyday life. Ours in an epoch in which law-making, law-breaking, and law-enforcement are ever more critical registers in which societies construct, contest, and confront truths about themselves. It argues that, as the result of a tectonic shift in the triangulation of capital, the state, and governance, the meanings attached to crime and, with it, the nature of policing, have undergone significant change; also, that there has been a palpable muddying of the lines between legality and illegality, between corruption and conventional business – even between crime-and-policing, which exist, nowadays, in ever greater, hyphenated complicity.

Founder and co-head of Doughty Street Chambers, Europe’s largest human rights practice. He has argued leading cases in constitutional law, criminal law and media law. Author.

It is generally thought that China and the West have developed historically along different lines, each with its own understanding of society and the ideas and concepts on which society is founded.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the legal and jurisprudential context, where it is conventionally assumed that the two major civilizations proceeded according to wholly different understandings of society, relations among its members, and between the people and government.

The writings of Confucius seem to confirm this sense of separation. While we have all heard of Confucius; have probably at some time quoted from him, nevertheless he epitomizes the Chinese way of thought, which is taken to be a matter of curiosity but of no special interest.

In this lecture, Dr Ying Yu, Research Fellow of Wolfson College Oxford, will challenge these assumptions and offer the basis for a wholly new approach.

Through a close analysis of Confucius’ ideas, based on the original script, Dr Yu will show how similar they are to the jurisprudential foundations of western societies. In doing so, Dr Yu will pay particular attention to understandings of justice, both substantive and procedural.

Dr Ying Yu is a Research Fellow in Law Justice and Society at Wolfson College, Oxford, and a member of the Faculty of Law in the University of Oxford.

Ying’s main research interest is the rights of consumers and their legal protection, building on her former work on international trade, maritime law and private international law.

A History of Food Fraud and Its Detection
Dr Duncan Campbell (DPhil Soil Solution Chemistry, 1986)

Duncan’s talk will cover the long history of food adulteration from medieval Germany to 19th century America, the pioneers who applied scientific methods to its detection in the 19th century and some modern examples from Britain and further afield.

Duncan was a student member of St Cross College from 1982 to 1985. After his time at St Cross and a period of post-doctoral research, he broadened his horizons to apply chemical analysis to public protection and gained the qualification required to act as a Public Analyst in 1994.

Although small in number, Public Analysts play a key role in enforcing many aspects of food legislation in the UK, directing the analysis of food and providing expert opinion on the results. A leading member of the profession, Duncan has contributed to the wider debate on protecting the public’s interests in relation to food, as well as TV programmes including the second episode of Netflix’s documentary series ‘Rotten’ which sets out to expose fraud and corruption in today’s global food industry.

Drinks reception to follow.

http://hertfordfestival.strikingly.com/
It is a weekend which has something for everyone: Hertford alumni will give talks on a range of topics including tech and cryptocurrencies, literature, history, current affairs and entrepreneurship, while children can enjoy fun activities for all ages. With meals in Hall and music in the Chapel, we look forward to welcoming you, your family and friends to college.

Introducing a pioneering approach to ‘global legal epidemiology’, Prof Steven Hoffman will discuss legal mechanisms available for coordinating international responses to transnational problems, their prospects, and their challenges. Global legal epidemiology is the scientific study of international law as a factor in the cause, distribution, and promotion of outcomes around the world. It involves evaluating the effectiveness of international legal mechanisms on the basis of their quantifiable effects and drawing implications for the development of future treaties.

Prof Hoffman will draw on examples from public health, including tobacco control and antimicrobial resistance, identifying wider lessons for potential international treaties in other domains such as the environment, human rights and trade.

This talk has unfornately been cancelled.  It will be rescheduled for the New Year.

Talk followed by questions and discussion. This is part of a series of eight meetings on Thursday evenings, each one beginning at 7:30 and ending at 9pm.

11 October
The right to say untrue and damaging things
Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall St

18 October
Flat earth: a Marxist critique
Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall St

25 October
Tithe, timber, and the persistence of the ancien régime
Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall St

1 November
The dream of human life: art in the Italian Renaissance
Oxford Town Hall, St Aldates

8 November
Antisemitism: more geese than swans
Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall St

15 November
Marcus Aurelius and the self-help movement
Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall St

22 November
Hegelian contradiction and prime numbers
Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall St

29 November
Aleksandr Bogdanov (1873–1928) and the general science of organization
Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall St

In recent years, several developing countries have adopted regulatory laws to remain relevant in an increasingly globalized world. On the Indian Subcontinent, the entire Indian and Pakistani legal systems – their Constitutions and Codes of Civil and Criminal Procedure – are legal transplants, since they are either modelled on British Laws (Constitutions are modelled on the Government of India Act 1935) or were introduced by the British.

In the run up to joining the World Trade Organization, and as part of World Bank 2nd generation reforms, both India and Pakistan began to update their regulatory infrastructure, including laws regulating financial and capital markets, insurance, telecommunication, and electricity. The majority of these laws were modelled on western regulatory laws, yet the manner and extent to which these laws were adopted – and adapted – in the two countries was remarkably different, and led to very different outcomes. Whilst policymakers in both countries are aware that in order to succeed, adopted laws must be compatible with the context for which they are intended, there is less clarity as to how this compatibility is achieved.

In this workshop, scholars will discuss the experience of India and Pakistan to consider how the interplay of institutions can affect the legitimacy, compatibility, and ultimate success of these transplanted laws in the adopting countries.

Participants include:
Denis Galligan, Emeritus Professor of Socio-Legal Studies and Director of Programmes, Foundation for Law, Justice and Society, Oxford

Amber Darr, Senior fellow, Centre for Law, Economics and Society, University College London

Organised by Oxford Civic Society @oxcivicsoc. Al Bell, Director of Oxford Citizens Advice, talks about the charity’s role in helping Oxford people and influencing decision makers on a range of contemporary social and economic issues including debt, housing, Universal Credit and Brexit.. https://www.oxcivicsoc.org.uk/programme/

Chief Philologist of the Oxford English Dictionary Edmund Weiner will be presenting his talk, “Thew Grew out of their Name” to the Oxford Tolkien Society

Entry free for members, £2 for non-members

“Many words and names in Tolkien’s words seem to have had a complex inner history in his own mind. This talk will look at how Tolkien’s creative philological mind worked. It will be an unhasty ramble around Ent country, looking at names and topics of language construction and language theory, with even a quick visit to Humpty Dumpty!”

The 5th Annual Oxford Business and Poverty Conference will feature a diverse range of speakers addressing the Paradoxes of Prosperity. Sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/5th-annual-oxford-business-poverty-conference-tickets-57733957822
Hosted at the Sheldonian Theatre, the conference will feature keynotes by:
Lant Pritchett: RISE Research Director at the Blavatnik School of Government, former Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development
Efosa Ojomo: Global Prosperity Lead and Senior Researcher at the Clayton Christensen Institute
John Hoffmire: Director of Center on Business and Poverty and Research Associate at Kellogg Colleges at Center For Mutual and Employee-owned Business at Oxford University
Ananth Pai: Executive Director, Bharath Beedi Works Pvt. Ltd. and Director, Bharath Auto Cars Pvt
Laurel Stanfield: Assistant Professor of Marketing at Bentley College in Massachusetts
Grace Cheng: Greater China’s Country Manager for Russell Reynolds Associates
Madhusudan Jagadish: 2016 Graduate MBA, Said Business School, University of Oxford
Tentative Schedule:
2:15-2:20 Welcome
2:20-2:50 Efosa Ojomo, co-author of The Prosperity Paradox, sets the stage for the need for innovation in development
2:50-3:20 John Hoffmire, Ananth Pai and Mudhusudan Jagadish explain how the Prosperity Paradox can be used in India as a model to create good jobs for poor women
3:20-3:40 Break
3:40-4:10 Laurel Steinfeld speaks to issues of gender, development and business – addressing paradoxes related to prosperity
4:10-4:40 Grace Cheng, speaks about the history of China’s use of disruptive innovations to develop its economy
4:40-5:15 Break
5:15-6 Lant Pritchett talks on Pushing Past Poverty: Paths to Prosperity
6:30-8 Dinner at the Rhodes House – Purchase tickets after signing up for the conference
Sponsors include: Russell Reynolds, Employee Ownership Foundation, Ananth Pai Foundation and others

The high seas are under severe pressure from both direct and indirect human impacts, including the effects of over-fishing, plastic debris and climate change. In this talk, Prof Alex Rogers will present what a network of marine protected areas in the high seas might look like, protecting 30% of known conservation features and taking into account climate change impacts. We will also hear from Dr Gwilym Rowlands, who will consider how such a network of marine protected areas could be enforced and the potential benefits to the ocean.

The question of how far a state should authorise the peacetime collection and use of intelligence gathered by secret agents and by interception of communications has long been a thorny issue of public policy. Today, new ethical and legal questions arise from the ability to access in bulk personal information from social media and from Internet use and to apply artificial intelligence trained algorithms to mine data for intelligence and law enforcement purposes. In his talk Sir David Omand, a former director of GCHQ, will lay out an ethical framework for thinking about these powerful developments in modern digital intelligence.

Speaker: Professor Sir David Omand GCB is a visiting professor in the War Studies Department, King’s College London and at PSIA, Sciences Po, Paris. He was previously UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator, Permanent Secretary of the Home Office and Director, GCHQ. He is the author of Securing the State (Hurst, 2020) and, with Professor Mark Phythian, Principled Spying: the Ethics of Secret Intelligence, (Oxford University Press, 2018).

In this lecture, lawyer Mary Bartkus shares her firsthand experience of the international litigation of multibillion dollar claims against Big Pharma when a medication taken by millions of users worldwide is withdrawn.

She will address the impact of the withdrawal and United States litigation on regulators, legislators, and on cross-border litigation in common law and civil law jurisdictions across six continents.

When Merck & Co., Inc. withdrew the innovative painkiller Vioxx (Rofecoxib) from more than eighty countries following evidence that high-dosage use could cause an increased risk of heart attack and stroke, thousands of US citizens brought personal injury claims.

A Texas jury awarded more than $250 million to one individual claimant. Although that verdict was reduced and later overturned on appeal, and most US juries found for the company, with more than 26,000 US court claims yet to be tried and another 14,100 waiting to be filed, the company agreed to resolve the US personal injury claims for $4.85 billion, a deal said to be “favourable” to the company and “clearly at the low end of general expectations”.

Internationally, claims were brought in waves following developments in the US. These international cases would be heard and decided in jurisdictions with different traditions and conditions for litigants.

In Australia, a justice of the Federal Court dismissed all claims against Merck & Co., Inc. in class litigation, finding “Merck had done everything that might reasonably be expected of it in the discharge of its duty of care”. The Full Court overturned an award of damages to the individual representative claimant for failure to establish causation, and awarded full costs to the company; the High Court denied claimants leave to appeal. Claims of remaining group members then were resolved.

In England, claimants abandoned multi-party actions filed in the High Court. In Scotland, the parties litigated and resolved individual actions. In Canada, the parties litigated and resolved overlapping class and individual actions in ten provinces. Courts regularly dismissed cases in civil law jurisdictions.

The lecture considers this landmark international litigation alongside the challenges companies face when investing billions of dollars to develop innovative medications, and asks: Who won and who lost?

Mary E. Bartkus is Special Counsel at Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP, a member of the Bars of New York and New Jersey; previously Executive Director & Senior Counsel, Merck & Co., Inc.

At this workshop, a roundtable of experts will examine the issue of state capture and the implications for the constitutional order.

Presentations:
How state capture is possible in a competitive democracy

Daniel Smilov, Associate Professor, Political Science Department, University of Sofia; Programme Director, Centre for Liberal Strategies, Sofia

Shortcuts to modernity? Anti-corruption as a panacea for state capture

Bogdan Iancu, Associate Professor, University of Bucharest

Abby Innes, Assistant Professor in Political Economy, European Institute, LSE

State capture or state hegemony? Understanding state-business dynamics in the Gulf Cooperation States

Elham Fahkro, Lecturer of Legal Writing and Research, NYU Abu Dhabi

Capturing the judiciary from the inside

Katarína Šipulová, Senior Researcher, Judicial Studies Institute, Masaryk University, Brno

Accounting for state capture: reflections on the South African Experience

Nick Friedman, Biegun Warburg Junior Research Fellow in Law, Oxford

For centuries, England’s elite have covered up how they got their hands on millions of acres of our land, by constructing walls, burying surveys and more recently, sheltering behind offshore shell companies. But with the dawn of digital mapping and the Freedom of Information Act, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for them to hide.

In June’s House Matters, Open House welcomes Guy Shrubsole, the author of the new book ‘Who Owns England?’. Cat Hobbs, the founder of ‘We Own It’, will be chairing the discussion and we’ll also have the Who Owns Oxford group demoing their new website which intends to visualise contemporary and historic land ownership in the County and tell stories of how it affects us all.

Trespassing through tightly-guarded country estates, ecologically ravaged grouse moors and empty Mayfair mansions, writer and activist Guy Shrubsole has used these 21st century tools to uncover a wealth of never-before-seen information about the people who own our land, to create the most comprehensive map of land ownership in England that has ever been made public.

From secret military islands to tunnels deep beneath London, Shrubsole unearths truths concealed since the Domesday Book about who is really in charge of this country – at a time when Brexit is meant to be returning sovereignty to the people. Melding history, politics and polemic, he vividly demonstrates how taking control of land ownership is key to tackling everything from the housing crisis to climate change – and even halting the erosion of our very democracy.

It’s time to expose the truth about who owns England – and finally take back our green and pleasant land

It is now well-accepted that digital media platforms are not merely information intermediaries, but also central control points of the Internet. They have become the so-called ‘deciders’ and ‘custodians’ of online speech, leading to the privatization of Internet governance.

In China, domestic platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, and Toutiao have become the mediators, gatekeepers, and governors of online news and information. In order to perform this role, platforms have to work closely with the Chinese state in guiding and controlling public opinion.

The aim in this workshop is to advance analysis and understanding of the role platforms play in the governance of online news and information, and their relations with the state. After opening with a close study of the situation in China, the workshop will consider the experience of western nations, which also have to rely on private platforms to tackle issues like online hate speech, disinformation, and political or terrorism propaganda.

The workshop will gather together a number of academics working in related areas to discuss this highly topical and immensely important issue.

Presentations:
Governance regarding public opinion in a platform era: a study of China
Jufang WANG, Center for Cultural and Media Policy Studies, Warwick University

China’s control of digital infrastructure in comparative perspective
Ralph SCHROEDER, Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University

The new governance and freedom of expression
Damian TAMBINI, Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics

Algorithmic public sphere: controlling access to knowledge in the digital age
Roxana RADU, PCMLP/CSLS, Oxford University

Participants:
Wang Jufang, PhD candidate in Media and Communication, Warwick University, and former vice-director of news of CRI Online

Denis Galligan, Emeritus Professor of Socio-Legal Studies and Director of Programmes, Foundation for Law, Justice and Society, Oxford

Roxana Radu, Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford’s Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy

Ralph Schroeder, Professor in Social Science of the Internet, Oxford Internet Institute, and director of its MSc programme in Social Science of the Internet

Damian Tambini, Associate Professor, Department of Media and Communications, LSE

Commentators:
Jacob Rowbottam, Associate Professor, University College, Oxford University

Pu Yan, Doctoral Student, Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University

Join us at Blackwell’s on Broad Street to hear John Dyson in conversation with Ruth Deech on his life and career in a discussion of his new memoir, A Judge’s Journey.

John Dyson is one of the leading lawyers of his generation. After a successful career at the Bar, he rose to become a Justice of the Supreme Court and Master of the Rolls. In this compelling memoir, he describes his life and career with disarming candour and gives real insights into the challenges of judging. He also gives a fascinating account of his immigrant background, the impact of the Holocaust on his family and his journey from the Jewish community in Leeds in the 1950s to the top of his profession. Although he may be perceived as being a member of the Establishment, this arresting story shows how he continues to be influenced by his Jewish and European roots.

Lord John Dyson was a Justice of the UK Supreme Court from 2010 until 2012 and the Master of the Rolls and Head of the Civil Justice System in England and Wales from 2012 until 2016.

Ruth Deech, Baroness Deech, is a British academic, lawyer, bioethicist and politician, and the former Principal of St Anne’s College, Oxford. Deech sits as a Crossbench peer in the House of Lords (2005–) and chaired the Bar Standards Board (2009–2014).

Tickets for this event are £5. Doors will open at 6.45pm at which time there will be a small bar available. For more information, please contact our Customer Service Department on 01865 333 623 or email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk.

Alongside our conference on 19th October, Greene’s Institute will be hosting our first public event: a special interactive keynote with Professor Henrike Lähnemann (University of Oxford). This event promises to be a fantastic exploration of one of the most important acts of translation in European history. All are welcome.

An elusive breed of criminal entrepreneurs from China known as the Big Circle Boys (BCB) remain an intrigue to organised crime specialists. Apart from anecdotal reporting about their alleged dominance in the Canadian underworld and elsewhere, little is known about who they are or how they work. Confusingly, they have been coined with a number of organizational descriptors ranging from ‘cartel’, ‘black society’, ‘organised criminal group’, ‘mafia group’, ‘gang’, ‘criminal enterprise’, ‘criminal groupings’, and ‘non-entity.’

In this book colloquium, a panel of speakers will discuss Alex Chung’s recent book: Chinese Criminal Entrepreneurs in Canada, Volume I and Volume II and explore the BCB’s criminal undertakings.

Participants:
Alex Chung, Research Fellow in University College London’s Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy

Denis Galligan, Emeritus Professor of Socio-Legal Studies and Director of Programmes, Foundation for Law, Justice and Society, Oxford

Daniel Silverstone, Director, Liverpool Centre for Advanced Policing Studies

Joe Whittle, PhD Candidate, Liverpool John Moores University

Adam Smith is world-famous as a founding father of economics, and well-known to political theorists and philosophers for his Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS). His work as a jurist is much less well known. As a notorious perfectionist, he worked for decades on a book that would have spanned the ground between the moral philosophy of TMS and the empirical sociology and economics of Wealth of Nations (WN). He never completed it, and on his deathbed he asked his executors to destroy his manuscripts. Which, sadly for us, they did.

But thanks to two near-miraculous survivals we know a great deal about what Adam Smith’s book on jurisprudence would have said. Two of his Glasgow students kept detailed notes of his lectures there between 1762 and 1764. One set was rediscovered in 1895, the other in 1958. They were taken in successive academic years, and they show that Smith shifted the order in which he presented his topics, but not the essentials of his course. The two independent sources validate each other.

Professor Iain McLean will lay out the principles of Smith’s jurisprudence; show how it forms the bridge between TMS and WN; and try to show Smith’s half-submerged influence on the new republic of the United States, in whose revolution he took a great deal of interest.

The lecture opens a one-day workshop on Tuesday 13 November on the jurisprudence behind the writings and philosophy of Adam Smith.

Iain McLean was born and brought up in Edinburgh. He is Senior Research Fellow in Politics at Nuffield College, Oxford. One of his research interests is the interaction of the Scottish, American, and French Enlightenments of the 18th century. His Adam Smith: Radical and Egalitarian (2006) was written at the instigation of Smith’s fellow Fifer Gordon Brown.

This workshop explores the themes raised in Professor Iain McLean’s lecture of 12 November: Adam Smith as Jurist.

Workshop Programme

09:25 Welcome and introduction

Denis GALLIGAN, Professor of Socio-Legal Studies Emeritus, University of Oxford and Director of Programmes, Foundation for Law, Justice and Society

09:30–11:00 Session 1

Adam Smith and the Formation of the Scottish Legal Profession

John CAIRNS, Professor of Civil Law, Edinburgh University

Adam Smith, Religious Freedom, and Law

Scot PETERSEN, Bingham Research Fellow in Constitutional Studies, Oxford University

11:00–11:15 Tea and Coffee

11:15–12:45 Session 2

Adam Smith, David Hume, and Edmund Burke: A Common Legal Heritage?

John ADAMS, Chairman, Foundation for Law, Justice and Society and Adjunct Professor in Political Science at Rutgers University

Adam Smith on the Social Foundations of Constitutions

Denis GALLIGAN

12:45–14:00 Lunch

14:00–16:15 Session 3

Justice as Sentiment

Hossein DABBAGH, Philosophy Tutor, Oxford University

Adam Smith: Between Anti-paternalism and Solidarity

Daniel SMILOV, Associate Professor, Political Science, Sofia University

“Pieces upon a Chessboard”: The Man of System in Liberal Constitutionalism

Bogdan IANCU, Associate Professor, Bucharest University

16:15 Concluding Discussion

In this lecture, in honour of Edward Greene, Donald Meek will describe the fascinating process of Gaelic Bible translation in Scotland and Ireland. Beginning with the standard Gaelic Bible, translated between 1767 and 1804, Donald will explain its creation, and its debts to the work of earlier translators and revisers, including the Rev. Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle (who produced ‘Kirk’s Bible in 1690), but pre-eminently to the foundational labours of the translators of the Bible into Classical Gaelic in Ireland in the earlier seventeenth century. Both the principal translators of that period – Bishop William Ó Dómhnaill and Bishop William Bedell – studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where they were trained in biblical languages by the first Master of Emmanuel, Lawrence Chadderton. By way of comparison and contrast, brief reference will be made to the somewhat different histories of Bible translation into Manx and Welsh. The lecture will conclude with some discussion of the profound influence of the Gaelic Bible on the development of modern Scottish Gaelic literature, and its enduring legacy

Lord Sumption will discuss the impact on our constitution and political system of the referendum of 2016 and its aftermath.

Part of the Oxford Martin Lecture Series: ‘Shaping the future’

In this book colloquium, a panel discussion will assess British judge and historian Lord Sumption’s provocative bestseller Trials of the State: Law and the Decline of Politics, which expands on arguments first laid out in his 2019 Reith Lectures.

In the past few decades, legislatures throughout the world have suffered from gridlock. In democracies, laws and policies are just as soon unpicked as made. It seems that Congress and Parliaments cannot forge progress or consensus. Moreover, courts often overturn decisions made by elected representatives.

In the absence of effective politicians, many turn to the courts to solve political and moral questions. Rulings from the Supreme Courts in the United States and United Kingdom, or the European court in Strasbourg may seem to end the debate but the division and debate does not subside. In fact, the absence of democratic accountability leads to radicalisation.

Judicial overreach cannot make up for the shortcomings of politicians. This is especially acute in the field of human rights. For instance, who should decide on abortion or prisoners’ rights to vote, elected politicians or appointed judges? Jonathan Sumption argues that the time has come to return some problems to the politicians.

Panellists:
Denis Galligan, Professor of Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford

Ezequiel Gonzalez Ocantos, Associate Professor in Politics & International Relations, Oxford

This seminar is part of our public seminar series on ‘Exclusion from School and its Consequences’, led by the Department of Education and convened by Harry Daniels (Professor of Education) and Ian Thompson (Associate Professor of English Education & Director of PGCE).

Speaker: Lucinda Ferguson (University of Oxford)

Seminar Abstract: The House of Commons’ Education Committee (2019) criticised the education system’s treatment of children with disabilities on the following terms:

“[C]hildren and parents are not ‘in the know’ and for some the law may not even appear to exist. Parents currently need a combination of special knowledge and social capital to navigate the system, and even then are left exhausted by the experience. Those without significant social or personal capital therefore face significant disadvantage. For some, Parliament might as well not have bothered to legislate.”

In this presentation, I combine legal analysis, theory, and evidence from practice to argue that the law is ill-equipped to support children at risk of permanent exclusion from school, particularly children with disabilities or other additional needs. I focus on the English experience, which is quite distinctive from that of other nations in the UK. I first outline the reality of permanent exclusion and introduce the legal framework.

I then consider the extent to which children’s rights arguments might support improvements in practice for these vulnerable children. I proceed to argue that much of the difficulty lies in our current conceptions of the nature of childhood, how we regard children compared to other ‘minority’ groups, and the implications of this for the legal regulation of their lives. I consider whether an intersectional perspective might assist here, and offer some concluding thoughts on how to bring about the necessary cultural shift and make the law work for vulnerable children at risk of exclusion from school.

Open to all and free to attend. Registration required at: http://www.education.ox.ac.uk/events/law-and-exclusion-from-school/

This book colloquium will discuss Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, her influential account of the challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, specifically, how the commodification of personal information threatens our core values of freedom, democracy, and privacy.

In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behaviour modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth.

Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new “behavioural futures markets”, where predictions about our behaviour are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new “means of behavioural modification”.

The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a “Big Other” operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff’s comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled “hive” of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit – at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future.

With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future – if we let it.

Participants include:
Dr Christopher Decker, Economist and Research Fellow, Faculty of Law, Oxford

Denis Galligan, Professor of Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford

Ivan Manokha, Lecturer in Political Economy, Oxford

Praise for The Age of Surveillance Capitalism:
“Easily the most important book to be published this century … this generation’s Das Kapital.”
— Zadie Smith

Parliamentary sovereignty is a fundamental principle shared by democracies around the world, based on the belief that political power should be subject to scrutiny by elected representatives accountable to the people they serve.

Yet in recent years, this reciprocal democratic settlement between politicians and citizens has been under attack from nationalist authoritarian regimes, anti-liberal populist movements, and disinformation wars – so-called ‘fake news’ – designed to divide and mislead electorates.

The UK Parliament, widely seen as the model for parliamentary systems worldwide, has been the centre of competing claims around national sovereignty generated by both the Brexit debate and the devolution of power to the constituent nations of the United Kingdom.

The longue durée of the COVID-19 lockdown and the contested prorogation of Parliament prior to that have called into question just how sovereign parliament really is.

Join us for this year’s Oxford Putney Debates, as we examine The Sovereignty of Parliament to determine who really wields ultimate power – and expose the shifting power dynamics at work under the fault lines of post-Brexit Britain.

____________________________________________________________________

For the first time ever, we will be staging the Putney Debates as a free, interactive, online-only series of debates, open to all and accessible from the comfort of your own home.

The 2020 Oxford Putney Debates will be chaired by the renowned legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg and the founder of the Oxford Putney Debates Professor Denis Galligan.

Our expert panellists include Court of Appeal judges, legal and political commentators, philosophers and campaigners, and constitutional experts, who will set out their vision over a unique series of video commentaries and live webinar debates, staged online throughout October and November.

The Debates will be launched on 21 October with a livestreamed Keynote Lecture on The Future of Parliamentary Sovereignty and the video release of the opening presentations for the first debate.

Each week thereafter, we will release a new video package of expert commentaries from our panellists, culminating in a final debate on 18 November.

In the week prior to each debate, you can watch the video to get an expert primer on the issues at hand, before joining the debate and putting your question to the panel.

Register at: www.OxfordPutneyDebates.com

We are pleased to reschedule this talk by Dr Estelle Zinsstag (Edinburgh Napier University/University of Oxford) which was originally planned for March 2020 and postponed due to COVID-19.

Dr Zinsstag will present her research on restorative justice and cases of sexual violence.

This event will be held online via Zoom (link TBA). Please contact joy@minthouseoxford.co.uk for more information.