Law

The law team analyses the conceptualisation, application and implications of law across business environments and social contexts, focusing on human rights, employment law, corporate legislation, land rights, whistleblowing legislation and agricultural initiatives.

The research group maintains strong links with practice, the judiciary and the public sector, and contributes actively to law reform.

We combine intellectual leadership and cutting-edge practical insight to further understanding in six key areas:

the meanings of human rights
the regulation of industrial relations and the employment relationship
corporate manslaughter legislation
gender and land in Africa
whistleblowing legislation
low impact agricultural initiatives in Latin America.

The meanings of human rights

Human rights are often claimed to be universal, however, the reality is far more ambiguous and controversial. Different people hold different concepts of human rights. Our research reviews classical critiques of human rights, questions to what extent human rights can be protected effectively and improves understanding about the practical significance of theoretical issues by directly linking theory with practice.

Awarded a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (2009-2012), Professor Marie-Bénédicte Dembour has pursued her extensive research into migrants’ rights in a project entitled: Migrants have human rights too! Critical perspectives on the Strasbourg case law. Research findings have been included in Professor Dembour’s book, When Humans Become Migrants and have inspired a blog, which presents the main arguments of the book in a conversational manner for the general public.

Professor Dembour argues that the treatment of migrants is one of the most challenging issues that human rights, as a political philosophy, faces today. It has increasingly become a contentious issue for governments and international organisations around the world. Dembour’s research compares the treatment that claims lodged by migrants receive at the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Findings will be of interest to a diverse audience including non-governmental organisations and government legal advisers and policymakers concerned with migration.

This research builds on Dembour’s groundbreaking work, which challenged the human rights orthodoxy by proposing that there are four schools of thought. First published in her monograph, Who Believes in Human Rights? Reflections on the European Convention (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2006), Professor Dembour explored the position of each of these four schools on the foundation, universality, possible realisation, and legal embodiment of human rights and considered each school’s faith, or lack thereof, in human rights.

This model provided the structure for subsequent research examining the problematic access to human rights experienced by irregular migrants in Dembour’s work with Tobias Kelly in their volume entitled Are Human Rights for Migrants? Critical Perspectives on the Status of Illegal Migrants in Europe and the United States (Routledge, London, 2011).

Professor Dembour has been invited to present her findings in keynote speeches at conferences attracting international experts. Our world-leading research in this area gives invaluable insights into the limitations and potential of human rights protection.

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Watch Professor Marie-Bénédicte Dembour talking about human rights and business

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Listen to Professor Marie-Bénédicte Dembour’s podcasts

Articles on issues affecting migrants and asylum seekers

Explainer: how does the UK decide who gets asylum?

The false economy of giving sloppy legal advice to asylum seekers

Revealed: asylum seeker children face welfare lottery on arrival in Britain

Why the European Court of Human Rights is no friend to migrants

Life under the French veil ban is nothing like 'living together'

The regulation of industrial relations and the employment relationship

Charles Barrow leads research into the legal rights of trade unions to represent workers and take industrial action and the regulation of the employment relationship through collective bargaining between union and employer.

We explore the detailed and complex nature of laws regulating the conduct and organisation of industrial action and consider the extent to which employers can challenge the legality of strike action. We examine the influence of universal labour standards and international labour law and human rights instruments on domestic legal provisions that regulate internal and external trade union activities. We study the history and impact of the blacklisting of trade union activists and identify the stringent measures it is incumbent on governments to employ to combat such practices.

A review of new case law principles on the interpretation of collective agreements is an area of ongoing research.

Our approach involves theoretical perspectives, comparative analysis, and the examination of relevant international treaties and European Union and European Convention principles of law. We share knowledge on the legal framework surrounding the employment relationship at the collective level and the development of industrial relations best practice.

Employment law and closed material procedure

We examine the impact that the use of closed material procedure has had on fairness and transparency in the legal system. Where national security implications are raised, evidence can lawfully be withheld and proceedings can be held in secret, without the presence of the defendant or their legal representatives. This mechanism is used to deal with cases where a government body asserts that information is too sensitive to disclose.

This development appears to be a recurring theme in the British legal system. Since 1997, more than 15 pieces of legislation have been passed covering areas including parole board hearings, bail hearings, inquests, asset freezing cases and cases heard before The Special Immigration Appeals Commission. The Justice and Security Act 2013 extended this practice to general civil proceedings and amendments to the Employment Tribunals Act 1996 have provided a statutory framework for ‘secret’ employment tribunals.

These procedures raise issues of principles of fundamental concerns such as the right to a fair hearing provided under the European Convention of Human Rights and equal treatment directives under EU law.

Read Gilliane Williams' article Secret evidence coming to an employment tribunal near you in The Conversation.

Corporate manslaughter legislation

We analyse the implications and application of corporate manslaughter legislation in the workplace and criminal liability of organisations for deaths in custody.

Recent years have seen the enactment of new legislation governing corporate liability for death caused by gross negligence through business activities. The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 in the UK has been heralded as an important landmark in corporate criminal liability. Our research examines the potential impact of the Act, upon companies and their directors in the UK.

We scrutinise recent cases where there have been fatalities in the workplace due to gross negligence of the management, and look at the evolving approach of the prosecuting authorities and courts. From our investigations, it would appear that the potential net of corporate criminal liability has been spread further. If prosecutions are successful, large corporations may face severe fines; however it is small companies and their directors that will usually bear the burden of increased penalties for corporate failure.

We determine to what extent the legislation successfully targets those who cut costs by taking unjustifiable risks with people’s safety.

Whistleblowing legislation

News stories increasingly concern whistleblowing and calls for greater accountability. In this context, examination of the associated legislation and its impact across the workplace is critical.

In the UK, we have had comprehensive whistleblowing legislation for over a decade. Our research group considers how law and policy can be used to make workplace whistleblowing effective in the early detection and prevention of wrongdoing.

We seek answers to the questions of how disclosures made by whistleblowers should be pursued, how much protection whistleblowers should be afforded and consider the level of fines levied against firms whose wrongdoing is exposed through such disclosures.

We examine the legal framework for whistleblowing in the UK and the requirements placed upon workers, employers and regulators. We look at evolving recommendations about whistleblowing policy within the workplace and whether employers can create a culture where employees are confident about raising concerns about wrongdoing, fraud or misconduct.

We aim to improve understanding about business attitudes and practices relating to this issue and determine what more can be done by government, employers, regulators, policy makers and society.

Low impact agricultural initiatives in Latin America

Research into the socio-environmental, institutional and political context for low impact agricultural initiatives in Latin America is being conducted by visiting research fellow, Dr Glory Rigueros Saavedra. The Newton Fund has awarded funding to enable participation in research networks on agriculture, water and climate change in Brazil. As a development studies and rural sociology specialist, Rigueros Saavedra has worked on issues of agroecology and organic and fairtrade cooperatives in Colombia, Mexico and the UK.

Her interests include livelihoods, participation, gender and cultural diversity but also multinationals, the exploitation of natural resources and global justice. As part of her academic, political and trade union work she has lobbied and written about Colombia and social justice in a number of publications including The Morning Star and Open Democracy. Her report on the multifaceted progressive initiatives of the Bogota Humana government: Colombia, Education and Gender in Context, has been published in the book Education and Social Change in Latin America (Motta and Cole, 2013).

Research projects

Human rights and four schools of thought

Multinational corporations and human rights

Whistleblowing legislation

Human rights and migrants

Unaccompanied minors

Legal regulation of trade unions

Restorative justice and young people's offending

Alcohol abuse and young people's offending

Litigants in person

Research team

Jeanette Ashton
Charles Barrow
Alison Bone
Hedley Christ
Professor Marie-Bénédicte Dembour
Sarah Field
Lucy Jones
Dr Richard Lang
Judith Riches
Gilliane Williams
Joanna Wilding

Visiting Research Fellows

Dr Glory Rigueros Saavedra

Output

Publications

Williams, G (2016) Secret evidence: coming to a tribunal near you. The Conversation, 11 January.

Barrow C (2013) Trade union rights in the United Kingdom and article 11 of the European Convention: past failures and future possibilities European Human Rights Law Review, 2013 (1) ISSN 1361–1526

Barrow C (2013) Balloting requirements and the right to strike: The retreat from Metrobus Law Teacher 47(2) pp 218–227

Barrow C (2011) UK Courts, balloting requirements and the right to strike: recent developments Law Teacher 45 (1) pp 132–144. ISSN 0306-9400

Barrow C (2010) The Employment Relations Act 1999 (blacklists) regulations 2010: SI 2010 No 493 Industrial Law Journal 39 (3) pp 300-311. ISSN 0305-9332

Barrow, C (2010) Demir and Baykara v Turkey: breathing life into Article 11 European Human Rights Law Review, 4 pp 419–423. ISSN 1361–1526

Barrow C (2002) Industrial Relations Law. Routledge/ Cavendish: London.

Barrow C (1998) Briefcase on Employment Law. Routledge/ Cavendish: London.

Barrow C (2001) Blackstones Guide to the Employment Relations Act 1999. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Barrow C (2003) Employment Law: Law Cards. Cavendish: London.

Dembour M-B (2012). 'Gaygusuz Revisited: The Limits of the European Court of Human Rights' Equality Agenda', Human Rights Law Review, Vol. 12 (4), abstract available online.

Dembour M-B and Kelly T (2011) Are Human Rights for Migrants? Critical Perspectives on the Status of Illegal Migrants in Europe and the United States, London: Routledge.

Dembour M-B (2010) 'Critiques', in D Moeckli, S Shah and S Sivakumaran (eds), International Human Rights Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp64-86.

Dembour M-B (2010). 'Postcolonial Denial: Why the European Court of Human Rights Finds it so Difficult to Acknowledge Racism', in K Clarke and M Goodale (eds) Mirrors of Justice: Law and Power in the Post-Cold War Era. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp45-66.

Dembour M-B (2009) 'In the Name of the Rule of Law: The European Court of Human Rights' Silencing of Racism', in GK Bhambra and R Shilliams (eds) Silencing Human Rights: Critical Engagements with a Contested Project. Palgrave Macmillan, pp184–202.

Dembour M-B and Kelly T (eds) (2007) Paths to International Justice: Social and Cultural Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Dembour M-B (2006) Who Believes in Human Rights? Reflections on the European Convention, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Law in Context Series).

Cowan JK, Dembour M-B and Wilson RA (eds) (2001) Culture and Rights: Anthropological Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, pp1–26.

Field S & Jones L (2013) 'Five years on: The Impact of the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007: Plus ca change?', International Company and Commercial Law Review, 24 (6) p239.

Field S & Jones L (2011) ‘Corporate Criminal Liability for manslaughter: the evolving approach of the prosecuting authorities and courts in England and Wales’ Business Law Review 2011 32(4) 80–86

Field S & Jones L (2010) ‘Innovations in Assessment: An investigation into the role of blended learning as a support mechanism for assessment’ The Law Teacher, Volume 44 Issue 3, 378

Jones L (2013) Introduction to Business Law. 2nd Edition Oxford University Press, Oxford

Jones L and Field S (2011) ‘Death in the workplace: who pays the price?’ Company Lawyer, 32(6) 166–173

Jones L (2011) Introduction to Business Law. 1st Edition Oxford University Press, Oxford

Jones L, Swan Z and Turner J (2010) ‘Reinvigorating Law for the Business Student’ Practice and Evidence of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education 5(1) 46–49

Rigueros Saavedra G (2013) Colombia: Education and gender in context. In: S.Motta and M. Cole (Eds) Education and Social Change in Latin America. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke

Conferences

For Marie-Bénédicte Dembour

25-27 June 2013: invited speaker to the workshop on ‘The Rituals of Human Rights Law’ organised by Hilary Charlesworth at the University of Canberra.

28 March 2013: keynote address at the conference entitled ‘A Sea of Troubles? Problematizing Migration Law’ held at Birkbeck College.

27-28 Nov 2013: respondent to keynote paper by Francis Snyder at the conference on ‘Teaching Legal Anthropology in Europe’ held at the Max Planck Institute in Halle.

19 April 2013: chairing the panel on ‘The Migration Industry’s Profits, Migrants’ Risks, State Responsibility?’ at the Symposium on ‘Regulating Transnational Work and Family in Times of Crisis’, Vrije University Migration and Diversity Centre.

13 Feb 2013: ‘Human Rights? Think Business’, given as part of the CROME seminar series of the Brighton Business School.

18 Dec 2012: ‘Migrant First, Human Second? Comparing the Approaches of the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights’, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, research event involving a 30-minute presentation by Dembour and questions from the audience, opening up a seminar series where the draft chapters of Dembour’s forthcoming OUP monograph will be weekly discussed from late April to July 2013.

7 Dec 2012: Participation in the ‘Journée d’études sur la Vulnérabilité saisie par les juges en Europe’, Paris-Sorbonne.

28 Nov 2012: ‘Migrant First, Human When? Comparing the Approaches of the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights’, seminar given jointly to Justice and Violence, Sussex Centre for Migration Research (SCMR) and Law Sussex Research Centers.

6 Nov 2012: ‘State sovereignty v. Migrants Rights: Who wins before the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights?’, seminar given to Oxford Human Rights Hub and Law and Migration Series. Reported on the Oxford Human Rights blog.

28 Sept 2012: Discussant at the closed dialogue seminar on ‘Human rights, children’s rights and migration’, University of Antwerp.

9 May 2012: Discussant at a workshop on ‘The face-veil ban in Europe’, University of Ghent.

13-14 March 2012: ‘All Equals or Some More Equal than Others? Why Gaygusuz failed to create a new line of jurisprudence at Strasbourg’, paper given at the conference on ‘Access denied’, VU Amsterdam.

8-9 March 2012: Discussant following the presentation by the UN Expert on Indigenous Issues of its Draft Report at a Seminar on Indigenous Languages and Cultures, Brunel University. Available online.

Sources/links

Professor Marie-Bénédicte Dembour's podcasts

Collaborations

Funding

Invited three-month fellowship, Migration Law Research Programme, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (€20,000)
2012–2013: This was a personal invitation which allowed Professor Marie-Bénédicte Dembour to carry on working on the When Humans Become Migrants monograph

Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (£127,085)
2009–2012: This fellowship award allowed Marie-Bénédicte Dembour to prepare the bulk of the When Humans Become Migrants monograph

British Academy small research grant (£1,994)
2005: This research grant led to the Paths to International Justice conference and edited volume

Arts & Humanities Research Board (AHRB) Research Leave Scheme (£7,082)

2004: This funding allowed Marie-Bénédicte Dembour to finish the Who Believes in Human Rights? monograph

Leverhulme Research Fellowship
2001-2003: This fellowship led to Marie-Bénédicte Dembour’s monographWho Believes in Human Rights?

Awards, recognition, impact

11 December 2013 – 41st Globalisation Lecture upon the 65th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in cooperation with Amnesty International

Professor Marie-Bénédicte Dembour was invited as a panellist at this lecture held at Felix Meritis in Amsterdam on the topic ‘Human Rights: what’s the use?’.

29 May 2011 – International symposium by Dutch branch of Amnesty Internationalon its 50th anniversary, entitled ‘Human rights – The Last Utopia?’

Professor Marie-Bénédicte Dembour gave the keynote address entitled ‘Human Rights: the Four-School Model’ at this high-level event organised by Amnesty international Netherlands’ top executive at The Hague and attended by activists, academics and students.

10 March 2011 – Nordic Educational Research Association (NERA) Congress on ‘Rights and Education’ in Jyvaskyla, Finland

NERA is the main association for researchers in education in the European Nordic countries and the scholarly proceedings of the conference gathered a few hundred people.

Professor Marie-Bénédicte Dembour was invited to give the keynote and opening speech entitled ‘Human Rights in Education: Which Rights, for Whom and to What End?’

March 2009 – Torkel Opsahl Memorial Lecture given at the University of Oslo

Torkel Opsahl was Professor of consitutional and international law at the University of Oslo from 1965. In addition, he was a member of the European Human Rights Commission, the United Nations Human Rights Committee and took part in two UN missions to prisoner-of-war camps in Iran and Iraq. He chaired an independent commission on Northern Ireland and an international expert commission assigned to investigate war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.

Professor Marie-Bénédicte Dembour delivered the memorial lecture entitled ‘What are Human Rights? Four Schools of Thought’.

December 2013 – Course for diplomats from the Arab region organised by Clingendeal, Netherlands.

Clingendeal, the Netherlands Institute of International Relations, is a think tank and diplomatic academy aiming to enhance insight in international relations.

Professor Marie-Bénédicte Dembour contributed to the course developed for 20 diplomats from Tunisia, Morocco, Libya and Jordan with the ‘Human Rights and the four-school model: which role and position for the diplomat’ session.
www.clingendael.nl/