Call for submissions, for Volume 2 Issue 1 has been extended until Monday 13th January. So if you have thought of submitting a piece for consideration then there is still time to do so.

The Birkbeck Law Review now has a twitter page: please follow us at @bbklawreview 

The Birkbeck Law Review is accepting submissions for volume 2 issue 1. The deadline for this issue is the 1st January 2014. For more information, including submission guidelines, please look on the website home page. If you have any queries please email us via the contact page on the website.

The staff at the law review are looking forward to receiving your submissions.

A very warm welcome to the second issue of the Birkbeck Law Review.

We open this issue with an interview with Baroness Hale of Richmond, who generously granted us some time on a bright afternoon in July to discuss the continued development of human rights in the UK as well as her opinion on the state of equality in the highest tiers of the judiciary. Her keen interest in the next generation of lawyers, and the challenges they face, goes some way to showing why she is an inspiration for so many, and we are very pleased to be able to have her here.

We are extremely excited to announce that the second issue of the Birkbeck Law Review is due to be released on Tuesday 8 October. This issue, which will appear in print later this month, leads with a feature interview with the Baroness Hale of Richmond, who as we know is currently the Deputy President of the Supreme Court, as well as a brilliantly written foreword by our Patron, Sir Terence Etherton, the Chancellor of the High Court.

Our cover article was written by Birkbeck's own Simon Thorpe, who in his analytical piece on Occupy Wall Street and Occupy London, discusses its socio-legal foundation and resulting impact to our understanding of rights, democracy and constitution. James Fisher, Zoha Jamil, Rossella Pisconti and Agnieszka Szpak also offer their views on important issues from cultural defence, to the US regime in Guantanamo Bay.

We are especially grateful to members of the Editorial Board, the Advisory Board, as well as the faculty and staff at the School of Law who have been instrumental in getting the review to where it is now. Special thanks also to Sir Terence Etherton for his kind (and continued) support of the review, as well as to Wendy Lynwood, Peter Fitzpatrick, and Jose Bellido who have helpfully provided guidance on our reviewing and copy-editing processes.

Finally, we would also like to thank you, the reader, for your continued interest. We hope that this review is as helpful for you, as it was for us.

Following the beginning of the new school year, we would like to once again encourage you to meet with us to learn more about the Birkbeck Law Review. We currently have openings for Editors and other staff (read more about it here) for Birkbeck students that are deeply passionate about law, writing, or other tasks like web and social development.

We will also plan a meet and greet, as well as an orientation event for prospective members in November. For more information, remember to sign-up for our mailing list or contact us at the e-mails provided.

(Photo courtesy Jim Moran)

We are very pleased to announce that the first issue of the Birkbeck Law Review will be released today, Monday 8 April.

The issue can be found online at bbklr.org/publications and will be available in print later in the month.

The Birkbeck Law Review was developed primarily to allow students to publish their work in a peer-reviewed publication. While there is a North American tradition of high-quality student-led law journals, many British institutions don’t provide the same opportunities. With Birkbeck’s School of Law entering its twentieth year, we wanted to mark the occasion with something that would be useful to students, to Birkbeck, and to the wider academic community. Our aim was to provide students with an opportunity to publish their work alongside established academic authors, as well as creating a venue for faculty and practitioners to publish well-written pieces that otherwise would have been overlooked.

Our cover article for this inaugural issue is by Birkbeck Law School's own Professor Peter Fitzpatrick and our winning submission was written by PhD candidate Jonas-Sébastien Beaudry of Oxford University. These pieces are published alongside work from Gerard LeCain (Birkbeck, LLB); Max Byrne (Birkbeck, LLM); Frederick Cowell (Birkbeck, PhD); Ben Mills (Birkbeck, MA); and Philip Ashton (University College London, LLM). 

An interview with the Chancellor of the High Court, Sir Terence Etherton, by editors Edward Chin and Vincent Chao, and a review of The Cambridge Companion to Human Rights written by our online editor Annette Thompson complete the issue.

For further information or to ask about purchasing a hard copy of the first issue please see bbklr.org.

With the Law School at Birkbeck celebrating its 20th anniversary, there was a talk reflecting on critical education, its history, research and public engagement. Which then went on to consider the future of the critical legal scholarship.

Speakers at this event included:

Patricia Tuitt (Birkbeck, Executive Dean of the School of Law).
Alan Norrie (University of Warwick, Professor of Law).
David Kennedy (Harvard Law School, Professor of Law and Director of the Institute for Global Law and Policy).
Costas Douzinas (Birkbeck, Professor of Law).
Nicola Lacey (All Souls College Oxford, Senior Research Fellow).


All talks given by the speakers can be found at this link:
http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2013/01/critical-legal-scholarship-and-education-its-past-and-future/

Judicial diversity, accessibility, and evolution of social values are dominant features in the contemporary study of law. The Birkbeck Law Review was fortunate enough to spend time with Lord Justice Etherton, the newly appointed Chancellor of the High Court, yesterday in a wide-ranging interview to be published in our upcoming edition.

Sir Terence, the first openly gay judge to be appointed to the high echelons of the judiciary, formerly served as head of the Law Commission and was made an Appeal Court judge in 2008. We spoke at length about themes concerning judicial reform, changing social norms, and his personal insight into evolution of the judicial system in England and Wales.

During the interview, held Monday morning at the Rolls Building, he also advised law students to keep an open mind regarding future career choices for their valuable law degrees, and suggested that becoming a barrister or solicitor was not necessarily the only, or best, available option.

The full transcript of the interview, with a foreword by Editor Edward Chin, will be available in the April edition of the Birkbeck Law Review

Wednesday 30th January 2013, Keynes Library Birkbeck College.

Walking into the Keynes library being handed a glass of wine (or a soft drink) there was an air of sophistication the book launch for the new Cambridge Companion to Human Rights Law book. Edited by Conor Gearty from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and Costas Douzinas from Birkbeck College, with each chapter written by a different author this book will be destined to pack a punch.  

After some time of mingling with other people and catching up with those who you see every now and then, the launch was kicked off with some inspiring short talks. Speakers included Baroness Helen Kennedy QC, Michael Mansfield QC, Costas Douzinas, and Conor Gearty.  Each talk drew on some of the same arguments, which is that Human Rights both here in the United Kingdom and worldwide has gone from a small microcosm of law which was often referred to by the judge as “persuasive but not binding” to a phenomenon that is considered in every part of life; starting with arguments of abortion to end of life issues.

However, from each of the speakers there was a note of caution, that with the influx of human rights in both the legal profession and political parties, there are those who have different levels to which human rights should be considered. Two groups are instantly apparent; there are those who fall into the group of human rights in a “pure” form who consider every aspect of a person’s rights. Whereas the other group jump onto the more fashionable articles of Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights. Those who spoke last night and those who attended, the majority were in the former. In that human rights should not be forced upon after invading a country nor should a confession be made after some “coercive treatment.”

The book sparks intellectual discussion from the cover, with the picture chosen; the fall of Icarus. A landscape used in the bankruptcy court in Holland. It was argued and agreed upon by the book editors that this had a meaning when it comes to human rights. This is the fact that the notion of human rights has become devalued. The media, the general public, the Government all throw about the line “what about our human rights?” However, these same people want to be selective about who gets human rights and who doesn’t. There are often news stories in both left and right wing press that elude a hierarchy of who deserves human rights. This is where human rights become vulnerable to being used as a form of deception.

This book launch allowed for motivational and intellectual stimulus, something that is continued throughout the book itself. It is through this that I feel privileged to have been amongst something fantastic last night. On behalf of the Birkbeck Law Review team, I’d like to say thank you to all the speakers last night, the authors and editors of this book and to Cambridge University Press for giving such a memorable evening.

N.B

If you are interested in purchasing this book, it is available at this link:

http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item6939523/?site_locale=en_GB

Assignment time

Happy New Year to all returning and new students .As most of us are in the throes of writing assignments, here are some reminders of essential elements to put in your work. Please note that some of these will seem obvious but are quite often forgotten.

1.       Planning your work.

It is always best to plan your work, rather than jumping straight into writing, usually the actual writing is one of the final things you should do. Ensure that you have a plan that can be used as a logical guide of your argument from introduction to conclusion. At this stage is it also best to have done all your research, so that you can pick the relevant parts out straight away and have them ready when you start to write.

2.       Proof reading.

This is always good practice, as you can give a more of a “polished” feel to your work, and will stop being marked down on the basis of presentation. This can be done in a number of ways, a couple of examples are to get a friend to read your essay to ensure they think it makes sense, and they will be more likely to point out mistakes such as spelling and/or grammar. The second is to read your essay allowed yourself and when reading if it doesn’t make sense then you will know that it needs to be changed.

3.       Bibliography

This is where all your references go, even if they have not been cited in a footnote. Note that your bibliography must be in the same reference style as those cited in your essay.

4.       Referencing.

Referencing is essential to your work, lack of referencing can lose marks. In addition a lack of referencing can mean that you will be up on a plagiarism charge with in the school of law, if found guilty this will go on your academic record. As far as I am aware the school of law does not have a preferred reference style, different styles can be found at the link at the bottom of this blog. If your lecturer as asked for a specific reference style than please use it.

Reference link:

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/mybirkbeck/services/facilities/support/bibliography

All the best with your assignments.