Public Perceptions on the Self-Defence Claims of Domestic Abuse Victim-Survivors, Vanessa Bettinson, Northumbria University, Nicola Wake, Northumbria University and Thomas Crofts, University of Hong Kong
This article explores public understandings of self-defence claims in fatal and non-fatal domestic abuse cases. The topic is of contemporary interest following the government’s rejection of proposals to introduce a bespoke defence for domestic abuse victims who use force against their abusers based on the inaccurate claim that the defence of self-defence is adequately accessible to them. Evidence shows that the application of self-defence is highly gendered, and access to it is limited in these cases. We present findings of a study which asks the public whether self-defence would and should be available in domestic abuse-based vignettes. Revealed is support for greater access to self-defence claims by domestic abuse victim-defendants than currently exists and a need for public education about the dynamics of coercive and controlling behaviour. We highlight the significance of contextual factors arising in focus group discussions and their alignment with the theory of social entrapment.
Reimagining notions of public governance through the commons: the role and boundaries of prefigurative legality, Margherita Pieraccini, University of Bristol
This article contributes to the emerging scholarship on prefigurative legality by prompting critical questions on the boundaries of prefigurative legality itself. The article does so by reviewing two selected experiments for creating urban commons in Italy. Both experiments have engaged creatively with the law, developing two different legal models. However, it is not clear whether such models can be considered examples of prefigurative legality. The uncertainty is due to the fact that the assessment depends on which features we, as analyst, emphasise when discussing prefigurative legality. This brings us to investigate how different features of prefigurative legality might connect with strands of existing socio-legal scholarship, prompting more general reflections on prefigurative legality’s place within the field of socio-legal studies.
The Medico-Legal Autopsy: (Medical) Science, Expertise and Death Investigation, Imogen Jones, University of Leeds School of Law
This article sheds important new light on the hybrid space between medicine and law in which medico-legal autopsies are situated. By examining original empirical data obtained during interviews with pathologists, I reveal a web of authority claims both within the profession and in its relationship to law. Drawing on the sociology of medicine, I note the importance of ‘expert’ status to both the pathologist’s identity and their contribution to law. This is constituted via a combination of trained technical skills and tacit knowledge. However, I note the way that these pathologists framed their conclusions as ‘opinion’. This, I argue, reflects both the ambiguity inherent in clinical judgement and is a device to limit credibility damaging challenges, especially during legal adjudications. It may therefore be that a gap exists between law’s desire for facts and the contribution that these professionals can, and are willing, to contribute toward achieving that end.
The Pre-Dispute Phase Up Close: Experiences from Visitors of Dutch Legal Aid Centres, Anne A.A.Janssen, Sonja Bekker and Bos Kees van den, Utrecht University, Department of Law
Given indications of rising challenges for marginalized citizens in the pre-dispute phase of civil procedures, we studied this phase up close at Dutch legal aid centres using the framework of Felstiner et al. on naming, blaming and claiming. Interviews were conducted with 116 visitors of Dutch legal aid centres. We asked them when and why they came to the legal aid centre. Respondents shared questions related to naming their justiciable issue and blaming the opponent. Interestingly, respondents who needed help with blaming the opponent were not necessarily able to name their justiciable issue in legal terms. Our findings highlight (a) the iterative character of the naming and blaming stages and that respondents in both naming and blaming stages were able to legally articulate their issue in only very general terms. Furthermore, (b) our findings show the multifaceted role of legal aid centres in supporting marginalized citizens in effectuating their rights.
Is there a ‘right’ to use Welsh in prison?, Gregory Davies, University of Liverpool and Robert Jones, Cardiff University
The use of the Welsh language is generally understood as a ‘right’ in contemporary Wales. While this right is often lauded as one of Welsh devolution’s defining achievements, the sufficiency of current protections is contested. This article contributes to the debate by focusing on the prison context, where the question of Welsh language rights is particularly complex. Drawing upon interviews with Welsh-speaking former prisoners, stakeholders with experience of monitoring Welsh language provision in prison, and documentary analysis, we subject the ‘rights’ label to empirical scrutiny. We find implementation gaps in official policy across the Welsh prison estate, scepticism among former prisoners towards existing protections, and limited oversight. The article concludes that while Welsh-speaking prisoners may have ‘rights’ in a broad sense, these rights guarantee little in practice. Entirely contingent on the goodwill of prison authorities, and weakened by constitutional complexity, they are a stark reminder of Welsh devolution’s limited progress.
A Corporate turn? Insights from Colombia, the World’s Contemporary Laboratory for Transitional Justice, Line Jespersgaard Jakobsen, University of Copenhagen
Corporate accountability remains marginal in transitional justice, despite growing evidence of economic actors’ complicity in armed conflicts. This article examines Colombia’s transitional justice system to explain the persistent exclusion of corporate responsibility. Drawing on Robert Cover’s concepts of nomos, narrative, and polynomia, it shows how state‑centric transitional justice scripts legitimize the omission of economic dimensions. Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) provides a revealing case: although it leads globally in judicial actions involving businesses, most complicit corporations remain untouched. Linking local practices to the global transitional justice script, the article argues that an internationally standardized nomos narrows transitional justice into jurispathic, state‑centred practices that confine knowledge, privilege law over politics, and cast economic actors as neutral. These entrenched normative structures hinder the practical translation of the emerging scholarly ‘corporate turn.’ Colombia’s experience thus exposes both the potential and the structural limits of integrating corporate accountability into post‑conflict justice.
Do impartial tax law experts exist? Legal academics’ restricted autonomy in a crowded field of experts, Helle Dyrendahl Staven, Oslo Metropolitan University and Marte Mangset, University of Oslo
In tax policy, expert advice abounds, often aligned with either state or market interests. But can there be impartial experts in tax law, and can academics play that role? Drawing on the sociology of expertise and domination, we examine the practices, valuation, and institutional autonomy of Norwegian tax law academics. We find no clear distinction between academics and other professionals in knowledge production or arenas of influence and limited institutional support for autonomy. However, an analysis of expert statements in the exit tax reform reveals diverse academic arguments, no systematic alignment with one type of interests, which indicate that they are not uniformly dominated by either the state or the market. We propose that boundary blurring and maintenance by actors across state, market, and academia legitimize an expert discourse that serves academics and state and market actors alike.
Forging Legal Communitas: Physicians’ Resistance in Media Discourses in Sweden’s ‘Snitch Law’ Debate, Josephine Greenbrook, University of Edinburgh
In October 2022, the Swedish government announced a series of reforms in the field of migration policy, including a proposed legal obligation requiring all public employees, among them healthcare professionals, to report undocumented migrants to the authorities. This paper examines the intense public debate that followed, focusing on the interventions of physicians and their collectives. In their responses, physicians protested by invoking their primary duty to provide care, the heightened vulnerability of undocumented patients, and the erosion of trust that such legislation would entail. In so doing, they rejected the intrusion of bureaucratic law, and what the movement termed Angiverilag (Snitch Law), into clinical spaces, and instead oriented themselves toward the perceived moral compass of their profession. Through their collective resistance to the proposed legislation, we argue, physicians came to articulate an alternative normative order grounded in professional ethics—a legal communitas.