Spot on. No one really thinks leaving the ECHR would make us equivalent to Russia. The point is that it sets a bad example for other states and undermines the authority of the ECHR. PEX is attacking a straw man and missing the real point.

I conjecture that philosophers are more comfortable separating the artist from their art because basically everyone we study was an asshole. If you refused to read any philosopher that had despicable opinions, you'd be left with like three of them.

Please help me get the word out about the new websites for Legal Theory Blog and the Legal Theory Lexicon. Reposting here and on other social media sites is great. It would be especially helpful if law school faculty members could send an email to their colleagues with the new addresses.

My new article on Climate Change Litigation under the ECHR is out in @echr-law-review.bsky.social. (Thanks to my colleagues @lancasterlaw.bsky.social and @cohelongo.bsky.social for comments.) brill.com/view/journal...

The amount of time it takes to mark an essay has easily doubled since AI as I am finding myself trawling through footnotes, Google, and my university library database to double-check that the articles and books cited actually exist. Thanks AI-- you've really increased my productivity.

20 bird species recorded from our house in Cumbria since Thursday. House martin, wren, robin, chaffinch, goldcrest, willow warbler, nuthatch, wood pigeon, jackdaw, blue tit, great tit, siskin, wagtail, blackbird, osprey, buzzard, tawny owl, greylag goose, pheasant, chiffchaff. Here's Crummock Water

The Guardian have a write up of some of the amazing work done by my Criminology colleagues, Camilla & Steph, on a national survey on police uniforms. It’s been a massive project. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

youtu.be/TjDEsGZLbio?... the funniest song of the genius Tom Lehrer

A very cool technology that allows students to interact with John Maynard Keynes’ ideas as he develops them is called a book

The Warwick 'rebrand' crystallises much of what is wrong with UK higher education today: namely (with honourable exceptions, of course) a fundamental disconnect between senior leaders and the reality of running academic departments and delivering teaching and research 'on the ground'.

Not the Vogue article 😩 don’t try to make higher ed a (bad) luxury brand… I guess that explains SOME things. Warwick, just love yourself for who you are or no one else will. You were good enough 💜😳

Thought provoking piece from my good friend Sanjit here

I’m seeing a lot of this

I'm increasingly worried about one second-order effect of students relying on AI so much: that it undermines their CONFIDENCE to be able to distinguish smart-sounding but mediocre sludge from actually persuasive writing.... 1/3

My case note on Tindall v CC of Thames Valley Police. Perhaps of interest to anyone who read the judgment and found the reasoning confused. We say the root of the confusion is a failure to “deconstruct” the elements of duty of care (in the words of Donal Nolan). www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Bluebells at Rannderdale

Fascinating reflections from Judge Eicke www.ejiltalk.org/human-rights...

This is still very clearly the climate story of the week, and possibly the year.

If you're not old enough to remember the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of communism, but sufficiently old to remember 9/11 and the Iraq War, things have basically been on a downward curve since your childhood.

Inclusive legal positivism out of control

"A European Court of Human Rights ruling against Italy over toxic waste marks the start of a new approach to European states' pollution responsibilities, according to legal experts."

Important new environmental judgment from the ECtHR. Noteworthy that the Court adopted a "precautionary approach" [391]. Also important that exceptional approach to standing of associations from KlimaSeniorinnen confined to climate change cases only [220-221]. hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng#{%22item...

The standard terrible NIMBY arguments all on display from Monbiot 1.. Build more affordable housing not more housing 2. More housing won't impact price much 3. There are lots of empty houses 4. Redistribute what we have www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... /1

I have taken the resources that were in the budget and which you were probably saving for higher education Forgive me they were needed to feed the AI bubble and to dismantle the humanities

Thank you all for following us. We wanted to introduce ourselves as some of you might not know who we are. We are an academic journal and here we will be informing you about new research that we publish and about other ECHR related news. We are independent from the @coe.int.

We are happy to announce that we moved from X to here and our X account will be discontinued. Please do follow us and spread the word. This change will not amend our mission to share the most up-to-date and insightful scholarship on the European Convention on Human Rights!

‘In Defense of Anarchism’ was one of the very best things I read as an undergraduate. Sad to learn that its author has died.

Double whammy of festive access news today with great new polling and advocacy from Slow Ways. More than 71% of Brits agree that we should be trusted to walk along farm edges - such a thing would be transformative in a number of ways. THREAD 🧵 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The facts in SIAC judgments are just amazing sometimes. Here, in essence, a Chinese spy is alleged to have formed a relationship with Prince Andrew which had a “covert and clandestine” element. It is straight out of a spy novel.

A wonderful evening marking the great work of our amazing academic and PS staff this year. Wishing everyone a joyful holiday season 🎄 Photo credit: Prof Easton

☺️The deadline for abstracts for the #SLSA2025 annual conference @liverpooluni.bsky.social is 18 December - don't miss out. Lots of lovely streams and current topics and people to discuss your socio-legal research with. Early bird registration, also open. See: www.liverpool.ac.uk/law/slsa-202...

This has got me thinking. The ‘echo chamber’ criticism assumes that social media is only about politics. But it’s also about literature, art, science, nature, ecology etc and we’re all learning from each other here all the time (if we engage that way).

Since he’s not here my colleague David Torrance has just published a paper that’s the result of a year long exercise of trying to ‘map’ or rather identify and summarise all the various sources of the UK constitution. He’s asked for feedback on any omissions/errors etc t.co/dl1BC68Pc0

Successful academic writing: That’s goodness that’s finished. Oh no, peer review comments. Phew, done. Oh no, copy editors comments. Phew done. Oh no proof reading. Phew done. Published!! (Reads it again. Thinks to self: Who wrote this rubbish?)