Dr Jaime Lindsey of Essex Law School has recently published a book titled Reimagining the Court of Protection: Access to Justice in Mental Capacity Law with Cambridge University Press. Dr Lindsey provides an original account of the workings of the Court of Protection as one of the first researchers authorized to observe hearings and access the court’s files. Using original empirical data, the book takes a socio-legal approach to understanding how the Mental Capacity Act operates in practice to achieve access to justice.
Dr Lindsey contributes to the call for the reform of this important court from a procedural justice perspective, to ensure a better experience for those who use it, and to meet the requirements of access to justice.
A piece detailing further information about this book was published on Cambridge Blog and can be found here.
In collaboration with the Oxford Centre for Competition Law and Policy & Journal of Antitrust Enforcement, the Swedish Network for European Legal Studies (SNELS) invites the public to a workshop in honour of emeritus Professor Steven Anderman at Essex Law School.
Björn Lundqvist (SNELS/Stockholm University) and Hedvig Schmidt (Southampton Law School) will host the workshop which seeks to capture the common theme oriented towards the “big ideas” which kept Professor Steven Anderman’s attention throughout his academic career: ‘competition’ as a means to secure the very basis of the EU’s legal order. Steven has an outstanding talent to place legal problems into a broader context and framework. This is what the workshop would like to retrace in his work, and what the workshop will seek to portray.
The workshop will be held on 26 January 2023 in the Harold Lee Room at Pembroke College, Oxford from 1.20pm-7pm GMT.
For registration and any further questions regarding this invitation, please email the network coordinator Palle Söderberg at palle.soderberg@juridicum.su.se.
Policing in England and Wales is under more scrutiny than ever, following high-profile criminal and disciplinary cases involving police officers, low charging and detection rates (not least for rape and sexual offences cases), and lingering concerns about how forces deal with women and people from minority communities.
On 21 July 2022, the Home Affairs Committee launched an inquiry into the priorities of policing at a time when public confidence in the police is low and six of the nation’s forces have been hit with special measures. The Committee will publish its final report in early 2023. Dr. Simon Cooper responded to the Committee’s call for evidence.
Dr Cooper’s research, previously reported exclusively in The Times and published in Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, found that Police and Crime Panels (PCPs), introduced as part of flagship Conservative reforms in 2011 are ‘toothless’, leaving police accountability, for the first time in history, largely dependent on the one-to-one relationships between Chief Constables and elected Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs).
His submission to the Home Affairs Committee argues that the relational accountabilities of Chief Constables, PCCs and PCPs are unbalanced, untested, and risky.
In addition to recommending that the role and powers of PCPs be strengthened, a key conclusion of his submission is that the Home Secretary must exercise their statutory power and consult with the parties bound by the Policing Protocol to examine if the Policing Protocol should be varied or possibly replaced.
Notably, Dr. Cooper’s submission also calls on the Home Secretary to introduce a Memorandum of Understanding to bind PCCs and Chief Constables to ensure ‘effective, constructive working relationships’ are not just a quixotic pursuit but a practical reality that helps safeguard the accountability and governance of policing.
Essex Law Research Blog 