This chapter discusses the challenges of practising family law and the reforms enacted to address the crisis in the family justice system since the beginning of the twenty-first century. These reforms included the streamlining of the family courts into one unified single Family Court, the considerable reduction in available funding, and the introduction of protocols before issuing court proceedings. This chapter examines the Family Procedure Rules and the Family Law Protocol and what is required to comply with them. Legal aid, and the types of cases now eligible for it after the reforms and the legal aid statutory charge are discussed. It then considers the subsequent increase and consequences in the numbers of litigants in person and McKenzie Friends, examines the different types of non court dispute resolution, particularly mediation, and looks at the effects of Covid-19 on the judiciary and court staff.
Chapter
14. Family Law in Practice
George Patrick Nicholls
Chapter
6. International Human Rights Law
Human rights are a matter of international law, as the rights of humans do not depend on an individual’s nationality and so the protection of these rights cannot be limited to the jurisdiction of any one State. This chapter introduces the principal ideas, issues and framework of international human rights law. It discusses human rights theories; the global nature of human rights ; international protection of human rights in treaties and procedures; the core elements of regional human rights protections; limitations on the human rights treaty obligations of States, such as reservations and derogations; and the right of self-determination. It raises some of the key applications of international human rights, including protections of refugees and persons with disabilities, the position of non-stateactors, such as corporations, and the interaction between international human rights law and international humanitarian law. It also considers how the Covid-19 pandemic had impacts on human rights globally.
Chapter
1. Introduction
This introductory chapter traces the development of the European Union. Since its inception in 1952, the EU has matured and developed from a Community of like-minded states into a Union of a greater diversity of states, with a comprehensive legal system which is increasingly penetrating the national legal systems of Member States. From the six original members, the EU now counts 27 Member States. Eleven of the thirteen newer Member States are in Central and Eastern Europe, and have discarded their old Communist regimes, turning into democracies with the qualifications to join the Union. The latest developments and changes, including Brexit and the effects of Covid-19, are also discussed.
Chapter
7. Public Health
A. M. Farrell and E. S. Dove
This chapter covers the efforts undertaken by the UK’s four nations to address aspects of public health, including both communicable (or infectious) and non-communicable disease, through law and policy. We consider the Covid-19 pandemic and its demonstration of the limitations and strengths of the existing organisations, infrastructure, laws, and regulations to address matters of public health. This in turn has generated a good amount of public disquiet about the role of the state in interfering with individual liberties and the appropriate balance to be struck between protection of the population’s health—what is considered the state’s most important responsibility—and individual choice and liberty—something often seen as a matter of primary value in our society and a component of our fundamental rights. As we come to see, more than most other areas of medicine and law, public health is fundamentally a political endeavour.
Chapter
3. The law of treaties
This chapter examines the principles and rules of the international law of treaties as reflected in the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT). It discusses the treaty as a legal concept and provides an overview of the regulation of who can conclude treaties, how consent to be bound by a treaty is expressed, the rules on entry into force, treaty reservations, the interpretation of treaties, amendments and modifications, the invalidity of treaties and the termination of and withdrawal from treaties. The VCLT is meant to be applied to all types of written treaties and it therefore governs treaties as diverse as a bilateral agreement to construct infrastructure as well as a multilateral document such as the UN Charter. In practice, however, the concrete application of the Convention may differ depending on the type of treaties.
Chapter
14. Detention
Gina Clayton, Georgina Firth, Caroline Sawyer, and Rowena Moffatt
This chapter focuses on the issue of immigration detention. The deprivation of liberty is one of the most serious infringements of fundamental human rights. In immigration law, individuals lose their liberty through the exercise of a statutory discretion by the Home Office or immigration officers. The chapter considers the statutory powers and executive guidelines, together with human rights and common law rules. The use of detention is an increasingly common phenomenon in the asylum process, and the key role of immigration bail is examined. The former use of indefinite detention for foreign terrorist suspects is discussed at the end of the chapter.
Book
Martin Dixon, Robert McCorquodale, and Sarah Williams
Cases and Materials on International Law, a topical companion for study placing international law directly in the context of contemporary debate, offers broad coverage of international law, and is suitable for use alongside a range of course structures and teaching styles. The book provides readers with a comprehensive selection of case law and other relevant extracts for their studies. Extracts have been chosen from a wide range of historical and contemporary cases, treaties, legislation and commentary to show how international legal principles are developed. The book contains the essential cases and materials needed in order to understand and analyse the international legal order, providing notes on selected extracts to explain the complexities of legal developments. The seventh edition expands its coverage of core areas of international law, such as state responsibility, jurisdiction and international legal personality, and consequently reduces areas which now tend to be dealt with in separate courses, such as international criminal law and international economic law. It provides expanded coverage of topical areas such as: the use of force in Ukraine ; Covid-19 pandemic; Brexit; new Advisory Opinions by the International Court of Justice; climate change issues and developments in human rights and international environmental law. The new edition continues to include the perspectives of non-western and feminist scholars.