Research themes

Health 

Contemporary understandings of social justice recognise health as an essential component of well-being and flourishing. Renewed focus is now placed on health justice and health equity at a global scale with considerations of the social, commercial and legal determinants of health. Scholars working in the Centre address health and access to services within the wider context of equality and justice using a blend of socio-legal, theoretical and comparative methods. Members are concerned with the place of health and the body within political and social theory (Jones, Thomson, Travis and Tongue). Others interrogate medical decision-making (Travis, Jones and Frankland) and governance  (Jacob, Jones, Saksena) and autonomy (Frankland) as well as access to specific services, such as trans (Travis), reproductive services (Tongue), maternal and child health (Patton) and investigation of death (Jones). At the same time, a number are concerned with what can be considered the excesses of medical intervention, particularly in the context of children's rights (Thomson and Travis), mental health (Clements, Lawson, Keeling and Orchard), understanding cause of death (Jones) and pathologisation of life decisions (Jacob). 

Integrated in these projects is a theoretical concern with the institutional regulation and cultural production of material bodies. Members engage approaches that are attentive to the ways in which bodies are both institutionally understood, framed, and structured, and put to analytical use to understand legal institutions (Jacob and Keeling). This further allows for the development of analytical frameworks that recognise the constitutive effects of the legal discourses and practices in constructing and regulating health, embodied choices, gendered, raced, sexed, disabled bodies, and so forth (Jones, Thomson, Travis, Pearl and Tongue). The Centre’s research also considers the changing relations between these institutions, concentrating on moments of tension, resistance, and co-option in order to find new solutions to questions of contemporary and future social justice. Such research agendas address real-world issues, and have led to Centre members working with a number of NGOs, charities, governmental departments  and supranational organisations with a view to effecting change, challenging inequalities, and promoting positive health outcomes. 

Defining, Accessing and Enacting Justice 

A core strand of research within the Centre, this theme seeks to reveal and engage critically with the diverse contexts and ways in which individuals and groups struggle to define, access and attempt to enact justice. Problems with the unevenness of access to justice are longstanding and occur across the globe. In the UK, many such inequalities have increased in recent times because of cuts to legal aid funding, increased court and tribunal fees, and (proposed) reductions in the number of courts. Such concerns around access to justice have animated research into access to justice and disability, including mental health (Clements,  Keeling, Lawson, Lewis and Orchard), death investigations (Jones), family court decision-making (Thomson), immigration law and human rights (Spalding, Yaqub), legal aid, access to justice, and the family courts (Sommerlad), prisoners’ families and social justice (Abass), strategic litigation against public participation (SLAPPs) (Moosavian), strategic litigation in the labour law context (Meakin), and procedural hybrids (Hendry). This research also considers justice in different legal cultures (Fox, Hendry, Jacob and Yaqub) and through the lens of legal pluralism (Hendry, Jameel and Yaqub). 

For some individuals and groups, access to justice is not synonymous with traditional modes of legal representation, and a number of Centre members respond to limitations in traditional legal processes by exploring alternative forms of justice such as indigenous justice (Hendry), vulnerability approaches (Hendry,  Keeling,  Lewis,  Travis  and  Thomson), and legal mobilisation (Meakin) as strategies to achieve justice in ways that challenge and exceed formal legal representation. Moreover, work in the centre has moved from defining ‘what’ justice is to ‘when’ justice will occur (Travis, Jones). This has facilitated a shift towards thinking through future conceptions of justice, their representations and their enactment (Travis, Thomson,  Tongue, Fox and Yaqub).  

Communities, Environments and Systems 

This research theme coheres around the ways in which communities are anchored within and dependent upon systems and environments. This dependency necessitates a focus on the precarity of these systems and potential threats to them. Research on environments takes place at both the local and global level. Our research on environmental law has considered forests (Bendel), fracking (Hawkins), climate (Moranduzzo), and waste (Bradshaw). At a more local level, our research has focussed on creating inclusive spatial environments for different communities including disabled people (Lawson, Orchard), homeless people (Keeling) and travellers (Patchett). 

Our focus on systems has also revealed important elements about the nature of social justice. Our work has highlighted legal responses to the precarity of the food system (Bradshaw, James) and the effects of antimicrobial resistance (James). It has also assessed such diverse systems as social care (Clements, Aiello, Keeling, Pearl), migration (Spalding, Yaqub), corporations (Bradshaw, Leader, James), work relations (Meakin, Dickinson), education (Cartwright, Spalding, Lewis), and the impact of soft law on laypeople (Sandro). 

Effective community-led governance and oversight is a crucial aspect of engaging with the injustices that are perpetuated at the environmental and systemic levels – especially as the effects of these inequalities are distributed and experienced differently. This requires sustained engagement with the formal and informal processes that support current and future generations to create fair, healthy, liveable, diverse, equitable, and inter-generationally sustainable communities.   Many of our academics in this theme work with NGOs and governmental departments to effect social change.  

Identities and Cultures 

Social justice is mediated through the experience of identity and culture. Our Centre considers identity as something that is simultaneously both structurally and institutionally produced whilst experienced individually. Our research has focussed on working within national, EU and international legal systems to achieve important outcomes and recognition for individuals through discrimination law. In addition, the Centre is also a home for accounts of social justice that go beyond the contemporary system to offer wider ranging structural reform. 

In the context of discrimination law our research has focussed on disability (Lawson, Orchard and Pearl), religion (Trispiotis), and LGBT+ rights (Trispiotis). Responding to the structural aspects of discrimination and inequality, our scholars have focussed on topics as diverse as race in Higher Education (Cartwright), drag performers and workers’ rights (Greenwood-Reeves, Fox), ‘conversion therapy’ (Trispiotis), migration (Spalding), homelessness (Keeling) and travellers (Patchett).  

This research stream also considers the limitations of approaches based in discrimination law (Travis , Orchard) and considers the potential for resistance through collective action organised through social movements based on identity, culture (Travis , Tongue, Greenwood-Reeves, Fox, Meakin, Orchard, Jameel, Azimiyan) and/or based on shared human conditions such as vulnerability and capabilities (Thomson, Travis, Keeling and Pearl). Our experts have worked with a number of third-sector organisations, governmental departments and supranational bodies in order to effect social change. 

Constitutionalism and Human Rights 

This research theme reflects ongoing interdisciplinary work produced across the Centre in public law, democratic theory, and human rights. Research on constitutionalism includes work from the perspectives of UK and comparative public law (Sandro, Wallace); jurisprudence, political philosophy and philosophy of language (Sandro); democratic theory (Sandro, Greenwood-Reeves); human rights and equality theory (James, Trispiotis, Wallace, Spalding, Yaqub); digital constitutionalism (Yilma); social rights constitutionalism (Meakin); and the constitutionalisation of labour rights (Meakin). 

Centre members have made academic and policy contributions across a wide range of substantive areas of human rights law, including the right to life (Wallace); the prohibition of torture, inhuman and degrading treatment (Trispiotis, Wallace); freedom of religion or belief (Trispiotis, Yaqub); privacy and freedom of expression (Moosavian); the right to (data) privacy (Yilma); non-discrimination (Trispiotis, Yaqub); the right to food (James); the rights of migrants and refugees (Spalding, Yaqub); abortion and reproductive rights (Tongue); children’s rights (Patton, Yaqub); rights to protest (Greenwood-Reeves); the right to strike (Meakin); and the relationship between human rights and humanitarian law (Wallace). 

Law in Global Context 

Many Centre members conduct inter-disciplinary research that looks beyond the confines of the nation state, to consider how law can enact – and indeed hinder – social justice at a global level.  We have members undertaking innovative research across various aspects of international and transnational law, including international human rights (Trispiotis, Tongue, Wallace, Yaqub, James), intellectual property law (Vanni), labour law (Meakin) and environmental law (Bendel, Bradshaw).  More specifically, our members’ research draws out the international legal dimensions of pressing social justice issues, including disability rights (Lawson, Keeling, Pearl and Orchard), children’s rights (Spalding, Yaqub), gender justice (Yaqub) and reproductive rights (Tongue), the right to food and food security (Bradshaw, James, Patton), the right to health and access to medicines and medical technologies (Vanni), global governance of new and emerging technologies such as AI (Yilma), labour rights in the global economy (Meakin), the law of armed conflict (Wallace) and International Humanitarian Law (Wallace). 

The Centre’s ‘Law in Global Context’ theme is reflected in our research strength in Islamic law and legal theory (Yaqub) and Islamophobia (Trispiotis), as well as the legal history of the British Empire and colonialism (Saksena), critical race theory and the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) (Vanni). Centre members also employ comparative research methods to offer unique insights into the diverse legal texts and cultures of jurisdictions from across the globe (Trispiotis, Hendry, Sandro, Moosavian). 

Closer to home, our UK law-based research also situates domestic issues in their wider context of global migration and movements, as illustrated by colleagues’ research into domestic and European immigration law (Spalding), migrant carers’ experiences in the UK (Saksena, Jacob) and transnational labour movements (Meakin).