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Should Judges Be Allowed To Use Foreign Precedents?

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 The principle of stare decisis has only been a relatively recent legal development, with its core roots being formed in the 18th century . Courts now bind themselves to the judgements of the past in order to adjudicate in the future. Assuming that a reason why precedent is followed is that it provides the reasoning necessary to pass judgement in current cases , it must follow that courts are able to look beyond their national borders and adopt the judgements (and the reasoning it contains) in order to decide cases. Nevertheless, this essay will argue that the use of foreign precedents will give judges too much power and disrupt the ability of an individual to obey the law. Firstly, judges will have too much power should they be allowed to use foreign precedents. Currently, the only room judges have to manoeuvre around a precedent set by previous judgements is through proving that those precedents have no relevance to the case on trial . They would otherwise be bound to make decisi...
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The Relationship Between the Perception of Law and Its Effectiveness and Validity

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Effectiveness and validity are two distinct metrics by which to evaluate law; while they seem to be part and parcel of each other, one asks how successful it would be in shaping the conduct of individuals while the other asks whether it is legally binding. However, for the sake of efficiency, this essay will assume that the perception of a legal system as unjust or illegitimate will mean the same thing: that the legal system is “wrong”. This essay will approach validity and effectiveness individually, and concluding that while the perception of a legal system being unjust or illegitimate is unlikely to influence the validity of the laws it produces, those perceptions are likely to render the law ineffective.  On validity The first view to evaluate is the positivist one. This sees a philosophy of law that emphasises how law is socially constructed; formal criteria of law’s origin, law enforcement and legal effectiveness are all sufficient for social norms to be considered law. I...
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Ownership of Social Media Data

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Should users of social media be allowed to own the personal data they produce through expressing their preferences on social media?  It is important to define what it means for users to be viewed as property owners. Firstly, it means recognising that they have property rights or interests in the data that they produce. This can happen through existing structures like the “bundle of rights” formulation (Jeremy Waldron, ‘What is Private Property?’). Secondly, it is important to note that this bundle of rights is malleable, and the state has the ability to shift the extent of these rights by either limiting the ability to sell or exclude others from use (Radin, ‘Property and Personhood; Mosk J in Moore).  This essay will deal with the presumption of the value of these datasets before forwarding three arguments in support of the recognition of property rights.  Firstly, the essay presumes that data is a valuable asset. However, the caveat to this claim is that it is d...
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Commodification of Organs and Other Useful Body Parts

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 Should the law allow for the ownership and the commodification of organs and other useful body parts?           This essay will tackle the issues of ownership and commodification simultaneously, as these two concepts tend to be part and parcel of each other. Ownership is the premise on which commodification can exist, as commodification can only exist under the presumption that people have property rights in their organs and other useful body parts. This is because legal recognition of ownership creates liabilities and obligations (Honoré, ‘Ownership’), which would also allow for claims in courts. Therefore, the justifications for commodification must also justify ownership. With that clarified, this essay will answer the question in two ways. Firstly, it will deal with the practical concerns of organ commodification, according to Kate Greasley’s ‘A legal market in organs: the problem of exploitation’, by answering that the alternative to the lega...
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Is the UK political system truly representative of its people?

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               The UK political system has evolved over the last few decades to achieve milestones in increasing its representation. The rapid restructuring of the system can be evidenced by the tenures of Tiny Blair and David Cameron who were responsible for introducing major changes in the UK Constitution. Yet there is an argument that the UK political system is no longer truly representative. This firstly implies that the political system had a higher degree of representation preceding this era of radical changes, and that the system had deteriorated since or as a result of these changes. Secondly, if the system is not truly representative, it would mean that the aspects where representation has been improved have been a result of misdirection as it would not reach the desired impact of accurate representation.               Therefore, it is important that this essay look at the s...
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#2: Counter-movements

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In this week's episode, I asked Ian and Sam a question on whether it was possible for someone to disagree with an aspect of a social movement but not be assumed to be against that said movement. I gave the example of Black Lives Matter and its use of civil disobedience in order to achieve their goal of social justice. I was not very sure on how I feel with certain levels of civil disobedience, especially the kinds of actions that saw the burning of police stations, riots and the lootings of shops. I personally thought there may be a problem with the proportionality of this havoc brought about by a movement, that some shop owners or policemen may not be complicit in the structural racism that BLM opposes but they are targeted by street justice. Yet, I also saw how the violence was a result of decades of oppression and the lack of response to the cries of a systematically oppressed race. However, I also had no problem with the pulling down of statues of racist historical figures. Ess...
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#1: 3rd wave feminism in a 3rd world country

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I'm going to follow what Ian did in the podcast by starting off with a YouTube reference. While researching for this episode, I came across a video by the channel "Autumn On Venus", in which a woman claims not to identify as a feminist and that she hates Third Wave feminism due to how they "do not fight for equality". I could not sympathise with her thoughts because we disagreed on what this Third Wave actually stood for. I should have noted that this was a danger of constraining the discussion of feminism through the use of waves.  A discussion on a broad political ideology constrained within the 30 to 45 minute range is bound to be comparatively shallow, even if the topic we discussed was set within the parameters of a Third World country. It is important that we challenge the foundational assumption of the episode, that it is acceptable or in any way productive to frame the struggles and fights of the feminist movement through its different waves. We aim to e...
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