Join the Law Pod team as we discuss a range of cases decided at all levels in the courts in 2025 with important implications for the future.

Jim Duffy is joined by David D. Cole, Professor of Law and Public Policy at Georgetown University and former National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. They discuss the US President's invocation of emergency powers to deport, to attack vessels on the high seas, and to impose sweeping international trade tariffs.

Is our society obsessed with youth? Nena Georgantzi, expert on the human rights of older persons at AGE Platform Europe, joins Equality Commissioner Alasdair Henderson to consider what stronger domestic and international legal frameworks could look like if society is serious about valuing people at a later stage of life.

Rosalind English is joined by a panel of environmental law experts, Emma Montlake, Richard Wald KC and Carol Day to discuss the resources and help offered by the Enviromental Law Foundation to those who want to take environmental claims in the courts without suffering punitive cost consequences.

https://elflaw.org

In this episode, Lucy McCann is joined by Zelda Perkins, CEO of Can’t Buy My Silence UK and former PA to Harvey Weinstein, who broke her NDA and has since campaigned against the use of NDAs to silence workers speaking out against abuse, and Emma Darlow Stearn, a barrister practising from Cloisters Chambers, who specialises in employment and discrimination law and, in her previous role as Senior Legal Adviser for whistleblowing charity Protect, collaborated with Zelda to make the law on NDAs more accessible.

Zelda shares her personal story about the signing and breaking of her NDA, which had prevented her speaking up about Harvey Weinstein’s behaviour, and about her campaign Can’t Buy My Silence UK which has in large part led to amendments to the Employment Rights Bill (under Clause 22A) that will ban employers from using NDAs in cases of harassment and discrimination. Zelda and Emma discuss the nature and possible impact of those amendments which, since the time of recording, have been approved by the House of Commons and are due to become law in Autumn 2025 as s.202A Employment Rights Act 1996.

Rosalind English revisits enlightening moments from our pre-summer catalogue.

In this episode, Lucy McCann is joined by Professor Steven Gunn, historian at Merton College, Oxford to discuss his recent book, An Accidental History of Tudor England (co-authored with Tomasz Gromelski). They explore the world of the sixteenth century Coroners’ Court, examine what records of inquest reveal, and consider about how people died and what this can tell us about everyday life at the time, to draw comparisons with modern day inquest proceedings and coronial statistics.

Death, deceit and the lawyer who busted big Asbestos. Rosalind English talks to author David Kinley and lawyer Richard Meeran about an international legal drama involving a UK mining company and its South African employees, tackling questions of corporate veil, forum and causation in a huge class action.

Rain of Dust is available here.

Ahead of the city’s Pride celebrations next month, Jim Duffy is joined by Clare Ciborowska and Pauline Troy of 1COR Brighton.  They take us through the legal, social and political history behind the concept of parenthood in the UK today. Drawing from their experience as seasoned advocates in the family courts, Clare and Pauline describe how the evolution of equality and human rights laws around sexual orientation have helped lead us to where we are today in terms of parenthood. They examine legal developments in relation to surrogacy, and the recent shelving of proposals by the Law Commission in England and Wales for significant reform in that area.

Poppy Mulligan and Monty Fynn tell Jim Duffy all about their time as Judicial Assistants at the UK Supreme Court and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Counsel.

Poppy is JA to the Court’s Deputy President, Lord Hodge, while Monty has spent the year working for former ‘Treasury Devil’ Lord Sales.

They describe what they have learned about advocacy and about themselves that they will take into their nascent careers at the Bar, while Jim recounts some of his own experience as Judicial Assistant to Lord Reed and Lord Hodge some 12 years ago.

Poppy and Monty recently travelled to America to visit the US Supreme Court and America’s federal political institutions, giving them the chance to compare and contrast their own roles with those opposite numbers in Washington – clerks to the likes of Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Clarence Thomas.