What do you learn at university? 1. The difference between considering an idea for purposes of evaluation and advocating it. 2. The distinction between evaluating an idea and evaluating the person who proposes it. 3. The tension between ‘big picture’ and ‘fine-grain’. Skills, not (only) facts

NEW from me today: ICYMI it earlier, I've written for @arguablymag.bsky.social about the quiet crisis destroying almost everything important about universities, and why no-one's talking about it. Take a look: www.arguably.uk/p/the-quiet-...

This Wednesday 27 May is our final Spring meeting, where we will discuss Chloë Kennedy's paper "Procuring ‘Gross Indecency’: Labouchère’s Overlooked Offence". Join us at 3pm UK time, hope to see you then!

I didn’t have “refuse to stop using my own cognitive skills as an academic” in my life bingo card, but here we are… Seems like a nice club 🤓

Next Wednesday 13 May, we will be hosting Professor Ekow Yankah (University of Michigan) to discuss his paper "Taking Victims Seriously: Abolitionism, Minimalism and Punishment as Equality Affirming", at 3pm UK time. The draft paper has been circulated to our mailing list - we hope to see you then!

This is excellent from @samfr.bsky.social Why saving universities is far more than academic observer.co.uk/news/columni...

Our CfA for the Autumn seminar series is open! If you’re interested, please email an abstract (maximum 500 words) to [email protected] by Friday 8 May. We welcome submissions across topics related to criminal law theory and practice, criminal procedure, and criminal justice, broadly construed.

I'd like to thank the creators of GenAI for making me so paranoid about students using it in their essays, that I am now forced into the "is it AI or just shitty writing" game every time I'm marking... What progress! What a great tool!

The deadline for these posts is tomorrow, so if you were thinking of applying, now is the time! Any questions, let me know and I'll be happy to chat.

🔊 “adversaries have recognised the cheapest way to destabilise democracies is now not to breach our borders with tanks... the cheapest way is... through these wedge issues" Dr Kate Ferguson at this week's event on the perceptions, drivers & consequences of the UK's culture wars 🧵⬇️ Full video below

Looking forward to hosting the VCLG hybrid at Aberdeen next week. You can contact me if you're intending to come in person, and if not I look forward to seeing you online!

I wouldn’t put it past our political class to draw the conclusion that, in the absence of an economy that creates graduate jobs, we will just have to cut back on graduates.

2 lecturer posts have been advertised today, at the University of Aberdeen, for criminal law and criminal justice. Come and join a great law school, and a subject area that seeks to be a strong part of the school's profile! Happy to discuss with anyone interested! www.abdn.ac.uk/jobs/vacanci...

Join us tomorrow for a discussion of Gülce Ecem Uçar's paper, "The Digital Unperson: The Materiality of Nothingness and the Myth of Innocence in the New Oceania", at 3pm UK time. We hope to see you online!

Our 5th seminar is coming 🔜 🗣️ Federico La Vattiata: ‘Comparative Approaches to Normative Causation and the Limits of the But-For Test: Between Objective Attribution and Proximate Causation’. 🗓️ Wed 25 Feb, 15-16:30 📍Online & @universityofleeds.bsky.social ®️To join us: sites.google.com/view/yclf/

New VCLG series coming up! Looking forward to the online discussions, and hope to see lots of you there!

Missing from the coverage of redundancies at Edinburgh: this was done in such a haphazard, uncoordinated way, there are now core teams who have gone from 5 people to 1 with no change in workload or pressure and huge loss in knowledge of institutional process. www.heraldscotland.com/news/2576321...

Please re-share this - there aren't many permanent law jobs available in the UK right now! #academicjobfairy

The only positive thing that’s come out of this horrifying “review” is that the responses feel like old academic Twitter, which I am happy to now see on BlueSky. Like James, I couldn’t get past the first footnote, and every snapshot I’ve seen makes this one of the worst things I’ve ever read.

This is today! Come and join us at 3pm, we look forward to discussing!

Next week, Wednesday 10 December, we will discuss the recent Scots Law decisions - Daly v HM Advocate and Keir v HM Advocate - which change the position on the admissibility of sexual history and character evidence. We hope to see you then!

🔴 NEW: The University of Edinburgh has quietly paid more than £750,000 to a controversial consulting firm amid job cuts - staff say bosses ignored "repeated" questions about its role. Read more about 'Nousferatu' 👉 www.theferret.scot/p...

Join us thus Wednesday at 3pm, to discuss Ellens Nowell’s paper “Narratives of Criminal Justice and Sexual History Evidence Rules”. Link for seminar has been sent out this morning to our mailing list. We hope to see you then!

Of all the things we could copy from Denmark, we choose this????????? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

📣Join us today for the first #YCLF 2025-26 Seminar, we'll discuss @drfassnidge.bsky.social's paper 'The Deliberative Stage of Criminalisation and Political Turn: Theories of Criminalisation' 📅 Today, 3-4:30 pm online & @sheffielduni.bsky.social To attend, visit sites.google.com/view/yclf/

We’re delighted to share the details of this Workshop in Legal Epistemology, co-organised by Tsampika Taralli (UoE) and Alex Houghton (Stirling). The event will take place at the University of Stirling on Oct 27th, 2-7 pm. Further info & a registration link at: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/workshop-o....

Yay. Priceless. The right column at the right time. And a gleefully English two fingers to the haters.

Just when one thinks things can’t get much worse and something’s got to give, we get things like this…

Very much looking forward to this, and to getting a chance to discuss with colleagues in the YCLF. Should be a blast!

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.

Migrants already "earn the right to settlement" through extortionate visa costs, which can run into tens of thousands of pounds. They prop up key services, including through the Immigration Health Surcharge. Pushing the hostile environment on steroids helps no-one. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The quickest way to finish an article is to start it. It also helps if you can stay away from social media, tv and the internet. And your cell phone. And other people. You should also fight urges to clean and organise spaces, and to cook big meals. In other words, it’s difficult to finish articles.

An in memoriam piece by @fionaleverick.bsky.social and me for the incomparable Sir Gerald Gordon, who died last week at the age of 96: www.uofgschooloflaw.co.uk/blog/2025/9/...

More hiring at Surrey Law School! Open-area Lecturer position (Research & Teaching) - deadline Thu 2 October 2025. THE POSITION IS GENUINELY OPEN re: research focus, so all interested parties should apply. Please circulate to anyone you think might be interested! jobs.surrey.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx...

This is a great piece (and if you are staff or a student at a British university, you might find you can log in to the FT through shibboleth etc…)

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

With Matt Dyson (Oxford), Rachel Tolley (Cambridge), & Paul Jarvis (Criminal Bar Association), I will host the next Assize Seminar in Criminal Law at UCL Laws on 7 Nov. Speakers include: @jonathanherring.bsky.social, Jessica Corsi, Findlay Stark. Info + (free) tickets: www.ucl.ac.uk/laws/events/...

Textbook Launch Event🚀 Join us for this in-person event @edinburghnapier.bsky.social on 7 Oct 3-5pm where we bring together a range of voices to reflect on where Scottish criminal justice is and where it's going. Register your place now 👇 bit.ly/criminal-jus...

NEW: An Oxford report warns that misleading media coverage is shaping public debate on immigration and human rights. The study finds the ECHR is frequently misreported in deportation cases, fueling misconceptions that erode trust in the legal system. 🧵 [1/8]

Ooh we've opened our call for small research grants. £10k for any humanities or social sciences research. Open to independent scholars. We use partial randomisation to allocate the funding: random allocation between all that meet the quality threshold www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/ba-l...

A new CfA from the VCLG for Spring 2026! If you fancy an engaging discussion of your work with a constructive group (if I do say so myself), please do join us. Looking forward to seeing your work! 🤓

After a month and a half as a visiting fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Freiburg, I leave with great memories, renewed friendships, and an almost complete manuscript draft for my book. Thanks to @phirsch.bsky.social and everyone in the Criminal Law Theory Research Group for a wonderful time!

I considered writing a long carefully constructed argument laying out the harms and limitations of AI, but instead I wrote about being a hater. Only humans can be haters.

We exist on social media now! We look forward to keeping you posted on our events, our calls for abstracts, and general research news from members of our group. Follow us and we hope to see you online at our events!

Do you have demonstrated ability to make decisions and capacity to absorb information with a common-sense approach? Join the CQAS to uphold professional standards and develop your skills and professional insight of criminal legal assistance. 🔗https://bit.ly/SolQCAS

Congrats to the Dons, great effort! Maybe the Hibs will do better next season, but I’m also happy to see the Dons doing well. Well done!

Show us your writing process in a gif

Completely flabbergasted 🫠

Great first day in York at the first @clphjournal.bsky.social conference. Lively discussions, an amazing crowd of criminal law theory scholars, and so many opportunities to learn about everyone’s thought-provoking work. More this afternoon and tomorrow! 🥳🤓

This is a horrifying ruling, but in practical terms, where they think they're injecting clarity, they're creating additional confusion. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...