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Law in Focus is a collection of short videos featuring academics from the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, addressing legal issues in current affairs and the news. These issues are examples of the many which challenge researchers and students studying undergraduate and postgraduate law at the Faculty. 

Law In Focus

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Today's bookshops are helpfully categorised - crime, biography and memoir, fiction - and we rarely venture into unknown territory. Some writers are breaking down the barriers, but are publishers increasingly pushing their writers to write books with the same 'DNA' and will the digital revolution make any difference? Panel discussion with authors MJ Hyland and Trevor Byrne, digital publisher Daniel Franklin and literary agent Rachel Calder. 

Opening up literature: pushing the boundaries between genres

How far do conspiracy theories undermine trust in government and shape history? From 9/11 to the rise of Holocaust denial, three leading academics will explore and reveal some surprising answers. Sir Richard John Evans is an academic and historian, best known for his research on the history of Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly the Third Reich. Professor John Naughton is an academic, journalist and author. He is a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at Cambridge, Vice President of Wolfson College, Cambridge, Emeritus Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology at the British Open University, Adjunct Professor at University College, Cork, and the Technology columnist of the London Observer newspaper. Professor David Runciman is a political scientist who teaches political theory at Cambridge University. He specialises in the development of the theory of the modern state and on aspects of contemporary politics.

Conspiracy theories: the impact on world history

Times have never been better for single women. Then why is it still so hard? Four women, experts on relationships and sex, share their insight and suggestions.

The s word- spinster - has been virtually outlawed, and ladies of all ages are encouraged to seek out the sex and relationships that suit them online or in person. Being single is all about being free, having fun, doing things your way or the highway...or is it?

This event brings together four experts on relationships and sex to discuss their own unique take on single womanhood at all ages - it's pitfalls, freedoms and the pressures. If it's as great as we think it should be in 2013, why do so many women, particularly those over 30, still find being single such a trial? How can they get the most out of it? Join in the discussion with Rowan Pelling, broadcaster, writer and founder of The Erotic Review; Cecilia d'Felice, award-winning clinical psychologist, author and relationships expert; Susan Quilliam, sex and relationships educator and author of the revised Joy of Sex and panel head Zoe Strimpel, internet dating and gender scholar and author of The Man Diet: One Woman's Quest to End Bad Romance (Avon).

How to be a single woman in 2013, whether you're 25 or 60

The Government's welfare reforms are starting to bite, but are they radical enough, given projected demographic changes, or do we need a complete rethink of our social values? With Rory Meakin, Professor Simon Szreter, Bill Davies, Jeff Miley and chaired by Gaby Hinsliff.

Rory Meakin is Head of Tax Policy at the TaxPayers' Alliance. He has contributed to projects on a variety of subjects from local government spending to an influential paper on simplifying taxes on income called Abolish National Insurance. Simon Szreter is Professor in History and Public Policy at Cambridge. He teaches modern British economic and social history since 1700. His main fields of research are demographic and social history, the history of empirical social science and the relationship between history and contemporary public policy issues. Jeff Miley is Lecturer of Political Sociology in the Department of Sociology at Cambridge. His research interests include nationalism, language politics, identity politics, immigration, religion and politics, regime types, and democratic theory.

Is Britain's welfare system ready for the 21st century?

In eurosceptic circles it is widely stated that European criminal justice threatens to undermine the basic values of the common law, and this is put forward as a reason why the UK should 'withdraw from the Europe'. This argument was recently put forward by Nigel Farage, of the UK Independence Party, in an article he wrote for The Independent. In this presentation Professor John Spencer subjects the argument to analysis.

Professor Spencer is Professor of Law, Co-Director of the Centre for European Legal Studies, and Honorary President of the European Criminal Law Association. He has written extensively on criminal justice matters and has been involved in a number of law reform projects.

For more information about Professor Spencer, please refer to his profile at http://www.law.cam.ac.uk/people/academic/jr-spencer/79

Law in Focus is a collection of short videos featuring academics from the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, addressing legal issues in current affairs and the news. These issues are examples of the many which challenge researchers and students studying undergraduate and postgraduate law at the Faculty.

Is EU criminal law a threat to British justice?

The case of Vinter v UK was recently decided by the European Court of Human Rights, and has raised a good deal of controversy regarding the right of the United Kingdom to sentence a prisoner to a life sentence (the Whole Life Tariff) without the chance of review.

Mrs Nicola Padfield discusses the judgement of the European Court, and the corresponding reaction from members of the UK Government and others.

Mrs Padfield is Reader in Criminal and Penal Justice at the University of Cambridge. She is a barrister by training, and a Bencher of the Middle Temple. Mrs Padfield has also been elected as the next Master of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and will take office on 1 October 2013. For more information about Mrs Padfield, please refer to her profile at http://www.law.cam.ac.uk/people/academic/nm-padfield/65

Law in Focus is a collection of short videos featuring academics from the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, addressing legal issues in current affairs and the news. These issues are examples of the many which challenge researchers and students studying undergraduate and postgraduate law at the Faculty.

Vinter v UK - The Right to Hope and the Whole Life Tariff

In the light of the discharge of the jury in the trial of Vicky Pryce, questions have been asked about the value of the jury system. Professor John Spencer discusses the pitfalls of the system over the years, and suggests ways in which the delivery of justice might be improved.

Professor Spencer is Professor of Law, Co-Director of the Centre for European Legal Studies, and Honorary President of the European Criminal Law Association. He has written extensively on criminal justice matters and has been involved in a number of law reform projects.

For more information about Professor Spencer, please refer to his profile at http://www.law.cam.ac.uk/people/academic/jr-spencer/79

Law in Focus is a collection of short videos featuring academics from the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, addressing legal issues in current affairs and the news. These issues are examples of the many which challenge researchers and students studying undergraduate and postgraduate law at the Faculty.

The Defects of Jury Trials

Dr Findlay Stark examines the defence of marital coercion, which recently hit the headlines with the trials of Vicky Pryce and former Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Chris Huhne for perverting the course of justice over an attempt to transfer penalty points for a speeding offence.

Findlay Stark is the Yates Glazebrook Fellow in Law at Jesus College, Cambridge. His interests lie in the Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure and Evidence, and Legal Theory. For more information about Dr Stark, please refer to his staff profile: http://www.law.cam.ac.uk/people/academic/fgf-stark/4759

Law in Focus is a collection of short videos featuring academics from the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, addressing legal issues in current affairs and the news. These issues are examples of the many which challenge researchers and students studying undergraduate and postgraduate law at the Faculty.

The Criminal Defence of Marital Coercion

Decisions of the European Court of Human Rights holding that the UK’s blanket ban on voting by convicted prisoners violates Article 3 of Protocol 1 to the European Convention on Human Rights have caused controversy in the UK.

Professor David Feldman discusses the judgements of the European Court, and considers the principles behind allowing prisoners to vote.

Professor Feldman is Rouse Ball Professor of English Law, Honorary Bencher of Lincoln's Inn, and Fellow of the British Academy. He has acted as advisor to a number of Government Joint Select Committees, and was Judge of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina 2002-10. For more information about Professor Feldman, please refer to his profile at http://www.law.cam.ac.uk/people/academic/dj-feldman/723

Law in Focus is a collection of short videos featuring academics from the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, addressing legal issues in current affairs and the news. These issues are examples of the many which challenge researchers and students studying undergraduate and postgraduate law at the Faculty.

Votes for Prisoners? Democracy and the European Convention on Human Rights

Dr Brian Sloan examines the case of Re J (Children) [2013] UKSC 9, in which the Supreme Court considered a child protection case involving a mother who had previously been suspected of causing significant harm to her child, and was now looking after different children in a new relationship. Brian discusses the implications of the case and analyses the Court's attempts to balance non-intervention into family life with child protection.

Brian Sloan is Fellow and Director of Studies in Law at Robinson College, Cambridge. He teaches Equity, Family Law and Land Law. Brian's research covers a wide range of topics in Family and Property Law, including Child Law. For more information about Dr Sloan, please refer to his staff profile.

Law in Focus is a collection of short videos featuring academics from the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, addressing legal issues in current affairs and the news. These issues are examples of the many which challenge researchers and students studying undergraduate and postgraduate law at the Faculty.

Re J - Uncertain Perpetrators in Child Protection Cases

These lectures suggest a number of different ways in which to take Shakespeare's comedies seriously, and to appreciate how seriously he took them. They weren't meant to give the students a general introduction, but rather to support their other work on Shakespeare by suggesting some different angles from which to approach him.

Comedy And Contradiction

There has recently been a great deal of controversy surrounding judgments of the European Court of Human Rights in relation to the attempted deportation to Jordan of radical cleric Abu Qatada, and the decision to oblige the UK to give convicted prisoners the right to vote.

Professor David Feldman discusses the judgements of the European Court, and the corresponding actions by UK courts and the UK Government.

Professor Feldman is Rouse Ball Professor of English Law, Honorary Bencher of Lincoln's Inn, and Fellow of the British Academy. He has acted as advisor to a number of Government Joint Select Committees, and was Judge of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina 2002-10. For more information about Professor Feldman, please refer to his profile at http://www.law.cam.ac.uk/people/academic/dj-feldman/723

Law in Focus is a collection of short videos featuring academics from the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, addressing legal issues in current affairs and the news. These issues are examples of the many which challenge researchers and students studying undergraduate and postgraduate law at the Faculty.

Deporting Abu Qatada: the European Court of Human Rights, and Governments

The House of Lords Reform Bill, which is currently before Parliament, is the latest of many attempts to reform the upper chamber of the UK Parliament. It is over a hundred years since the enactment of the Parliament Act 1911, which changed the balance of power between the Lords and the Commons, but which was intended only as a stopgap measure pending the transformation of the Lords into an elected chamber. In this video, Dr Mark Elliott assess the House of Lords Reform Bill, arguing that a commitment to democracy does not necessarily require an elected House of Lords – and that the debate about reforming the upper chamber must take due account of the wider institutional and constitutional framework.

Dr Mark Elliott is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St Catharine's College. His main research interests are in the fields of constitutional and administrative law. Dr Elliott's recent publications include Elliott and Thomas, Public Law (OUP 2011); Elliott, Beatson, Matthews and Elliott's Administrative Law: Text and Materials (OUP 2011, 4th edition); and Forsyth, Elliott, Jhaveri, Scully-Hill and Ramsden (eds), Effective Judicial Review: A Cornerstone of Good Governance (OUP 2010). Dr Elliott was the 2011 Legal Research Foundation Visiting Scholar at The University of Auckland, New Zealand. In 2010, he was awarded a University of Cambridge Pilkington Prize for excellence in University teaching. He writes a blog - http://applyingforlaw.org - for people applying, or thinking of applying, to study Law at university.

Law in Focus is a series of short videos featuring academics from the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, addressing legal issues in current affairs and the news. These issues are examples of the many which challenge researchers and students studying undergraduate and postgraduate law at the Faculty.

House of Lords Reform

At the 2012 Conservative Party conference, new Justice Secretary Chris Grayling announced plans to amend the criminal law to ensure that even householders who react in a way that may seem disproportionate in the cold light of day will be protected from prosecution. This reopened a long-running discussion about the balance of legal rights between the home owner and those trespassing onto the property for criminal purposes. The law received the most scrutiny in the case of Tony Martin, the Norfolk farmer who killed one burglar and wounded another who entered his home in 1999, and was subsequently convicted of murder (reduced to manslaughter on appeal).

Professor John Spencer discusses the new proposal, and considers it in the light of the current law and previous suggestions.

Professor Spencer is Professor of Law, Co-Director of the Centre for European Legal Studies, and Honorary President of the European Criminal Law Association. He has written extensively on criminal justice matters and has been involved in a number of law reform projects.

For more information about Professor Spencer, please refer to his profile at http://www.law.cam.ac.uk/people/academic/jr-spencer/79

Law in Focus is a collection of short videos featuring academics from the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, addressing legal issues in current affairs and the news. These issues are examples of the many which challenge researchers and students studying undergraduate and postgraduate law at the Faculty.

Householders Who Use Violence on Burglars

The legal aid system was created in 1949 as part of the development of the post-war Welfare State, alongside the National Health Service. It provides funding both for legal advice and out-of-court representation by lawyers, for example in negotiating the settlement of disputes, and – should it come to this – legal representation in court. However, this is set to change in April 2013, when the controversial Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 is due to come into force. The Act raises profound concerns about access to justice, largely removing legal aid from many of the areas of law where it has previously been available.

Ms Jo Miles discusses the potential effects of the new Act on access to justice, especially in relation to difficult family law cases.

Ms Miles is Fellow and Director of Studies at Trinity College, Cambridge, and a Senior Lecturer in Law, specialising in Family Law. She is also Academic door tenant at 1 Hare Court, Assistant editor of the Child and Family Law Quarterly. and an Elected member of the Executive Council of the International Society of Family Law. In 2005 Ms Miles was seconded for two years to the Law Commission for England and Wales to work on the financial consequences of relationship breakdown. For more information about Ms Miles, please refer to her profile at http://www.law.cam.ac.uk/people/academic/j-k-miles/57

Law in Focus is a collection of short videos featuring academics from the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, addressing legal issues in current affairs and the news. These issues are examples of the many which challenge researchers and students studying undergraduate and postgraduate law at the Faculty.

Legal Aid for Family Cases

Science fiction is often termed a literature of prediction, but is it really, and, if so, how does it accomplish that? Hugo Award-winning science-fiction novelist Robert J. Sawyer explores the speculative mindset, the role science fiction plays in the intellectual landscape, and how science-fictional thinking about the future can be applied to business and government. Along the way, he shows how 2001: A Space Odyssey inspired an entire generation of computer scientists, looks at why Star Trek sets so much of our research agenda, and examines the notion of the technological singularity. He points out some of science fiction’s greatest predictive successes, and he also spotlights where the science-fictional vision has come up short and explains the foresight lessons to be learned from those failures.

Biography

Robert J. Sawyer’s bestselling science-fiction novels are known for “marshaling a daunting quantity of fact and theory from across scientific disciplines” (National Post) to produce “page after page of bold scientific extrapolation” (The New York Times). New Scientist calls his work “scientifically plausible, fictionally intriguing, and ethically important,” and artificial-intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky says, “Lately, I’ve been inspired by the work of Robert J. Sawyer.” The TV series FlashForward was based on his novel of the same name.

Rob is one of only eight people in history to have won all three of the science-fiction field’s top awards for best novel of the year: the Hugo (which he won for Hominids), the Nebula (which he won for The Terminal Experiment), and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (which he won for Mindscan). According to the American science-fiction trade journal Locus, he is the #1 all-time worldwide leader in number of award wins as a science-fiction or fantasy novelist. His latest novel is Triggers (published by Orion/Victor Gollancz).

Rob has published in both of the world’s leading scientific journals, Science (guest editorial) and Nature (fiction), and he is a frequent guest on science topics on BBC Radio and Monocle 24. He has done consulting for Canada’s Department of Justice (on what laws Canada should adopt related to the privacy of genetic information) and for major corporations including Motorola, Lockheed Martin, Sanofi-Aventis, and CA (Computer Associates), and he’s previously spoken all over the world, including at the Library of Congress and the Googleplex (the international headquarters of Google). In 2007, he participated in the invitation-only workshop The Future of Intelligence in the Cosmos at the NASA Ames Research Center. In 2010 and again in 2012, he was the only science-fiction writer invited to speak at the SETI Institute’s first two SET Icon conferences on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. In 2011, he became an invited contributor to the 100 Year Starship initiative, sponsored by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Rob hosts the skeptical TV series Supernatural Investigator for Canada’s Vision TV. He is past president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, and he holds an honorary doctorate from Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario. He lives in Toronto. Visit his website at http://sfwriter.com.

Foresight and Fiction

Images uncovered from splendid palaces at Nineveh and Nimrud, coupled with vivid accounts in the Bible where Assyria was reviled by the prophet Isaiah, give us something of the face Assyria presented to the outside world. A more behind the scenes look at the internal workings of this first of all empires, however, takes us to the systematic institutional implementation of foresight by Assyrian kings. State sponsored divination by the stars and by the liver of a sacrificial sheep were the techniques employed by kings to know the future and gauge their chances of success.

Ancient Assyrian kings were invested in the art of anticipating the future in the realms of politics and economics, much as we ourselves are invested in projecting and preparing for the future in our modern realms of business, government, and science. From cuneiform tablets produced by the diviners of the 7th century BC Assyrian court, we are afforded an intimate look at the Assyrian Empire, and gain insight into the context, practice, and purpose of Assyro-Babylonian divination and its role in the earliest and most fully documented cultivation of foresight.

Biography

Francesca Rochberg is Catherine and William L. Magistretti Distinguished Professor of Near Eastern Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies, the Office for the History of Science and Technology, and the Graduate Group in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of California, Berkeley. She was Research Professor at the Institut für Assyriologie und Hethitologie, Ludwig-Maximilian Universität, München in 2010, and is currently a Senior Fellow of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at NYU . She has also been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Visiting Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford, and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. In 1982 she was the recipient of a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship, and in 2008 was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society

She has published and lectured widely on Babylonian celestial sciences and produced editions of cuneiform texts that set Babylonian science in various contexts, from cultural to cognitive history. Her research on ancient Mesopotamian and Greco-Roman traditions in astronomy and astrology has introduced the evidence of ancient cuneiform science into the philosophy of science through investigations of empiricism, prediction, logic, and reasoning.

She is the author of Aspects of Babylonian Celestial Divination: The Lunar Eclipse Tablets of Enuma Anu Enlil, Archiv für Orientforschung Beiheft 22 (Ferdinand Berger und Söhne, 1988), Babylonian Horoscopes, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol.88, Pt.1 (American Philosophical Society, 1998), The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2004 and 2007), and In the Path of the Moon: Babylonian Celestial Divination and Its Legacy, Studies in Ancient Magic and Divination (E.J. Brill, 2010). Babylonian Horoscopes won the 1999 John Frederick Lewis Award from the American Philosophical Society.

Foresight In Ancient Mesopotamia

"The Bells" is taken from Lowell's debut album 'We Loved Her Dearly' (available now on Arts & Crafts).

“dream pop princess” - NYLON
www.nylonmag.com/articles/grrrl-talk-lowell

“no ordinary pop chanteuse” - New York Times T Magazine
tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/26/…-you-money/

Listen to more tracks from We Loved Her Dearly: http://soundcloud.com/artsandcrafts/sets/lowell

Purchase: http://smarturl.it/WeLovedHerDearly

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Lowell - The Bells

Why is the human female the only female animal to have curves and how do these curves influence not only sexual selection but also social hierarchy and self-image? 

Curvology: the origins and power of female body shape by Dr David Bainbridge at Hay Festival

Revd. Dr John Polkinghorne talks to Prof.Revd David Wilkinson about his latest book "When I Pray, What Does God Do?"

To find out more about David Wilkinson go to: http://bit.ly/1eDavW0
To find out more about John Polkinghorne go to: http://bit.ly/1eDaLEj
To find out more about The Faraday Institute go to:http://bit.ly/1ItNrjw

David Wilkinson - When I Pray, What Does God Do?

Ernest Lucas talks to Eleanor Puttock following his lecture "Science and the Bible: Genesis 2-3" at The Faraday Institute's summer course in 2015. 

To find out more about Ernest Lucas go to: http://bit.ly/1D1aHDR

To find out more about the Faraday Institute go to: http://bit.ly/1AAhTXq

Ernest Lucas: Science and the Bible, Genesis 2-3

Simon Blackburn, Professor of Philosophy, and Chris Blackhurst, editor of The Independent
Trust in British public life has now reached catastrophically low levels for parliament, the press, the banks, the police and the NHS. Just as the National Rifle Association in the USA claims that the solution to gun crime lies in more guns, our government (and, for instance, The Times) preaches that the cure for decline in trust lies in less public service and more profit motive. The conversation will reflect on this alarming state of affairs.