Legal Studies at the School of Advanced Study

Title: Brexit and labour rights under trade agreements: Neoliberal populism at work?

Speaker: Professor Joo-Cheong Tham, Melbourne Law School; Director of the Electoral Regulation Research Network.

Chair: Professor Diamond Ashiagbor, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies.

Might populism provide a counter to neo-liberalism when it comes to labour rights under trade agreements?

Going by official statements, there is good cause for believing that post-Brexit trade agreements will promote the rights of workers. The UK Prime Minister Therese May has identified the protection of workers’ rights as one of the key negotiating objectives for Brexit. The Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, David Davis, has said that Brexit provides the opportunity for the UK to ‘lead a global race to the top’ including on labour standards. The UK government’s, Preparing for our future UK trade policy, states that ‘trade agreements with single countries or groups of countries can promote and support labour protections’.

This presentation explores the question whether post-Brexit trade agreements will advance the rights of workers with a focus on the ‘Labour’ chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) (now named the Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement), an agreement that the UK government is considering joining. This chapter is of particular significance to global protection of workers’ rights and has been characterized by the US government as setting a ‘high-water mark for labor protections in a trade agreement’.

Yet, rather than being a foe to neo-liberalism, the presentation will argue that the TPP’s ‘Labour’ chapter shows how populism can be its ally. Specifically, it will be argued that the TPP’s ‘Labour’ chapter has strong elements of neo-liberal populism: flexible standards; standards of flexibility; a focus on legality; and a general orientation to non-application by State signatories.

Speaker: Dr Natasa Mavronica

Title: Reading Human Rights Morally: (Un)Certainty and Restlessness at the European Court of Human Rights

Speaker: Damian Clifford, KU Leuven Centre for IT and IP Law

Panel Discussants: Dr Edina Harbinja, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Hertfordshire, Hamed Haddadi, Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor,

Chair: Dr Nora Ni Loideain, Director and Lecturer in Law, Information Law and Policy Centre, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

Emotions play a key role in decision making. Technological advancements are now rendering emotions detectable in real-time. Building on the granular insights provided by big data, such technological developments allow commercial entities to move beyond the targeting of behaviour in advertisements to the personalisation of services, interfaces and the other consumer-facing interactions, based on personal preferences, biases and emotion insights gleaned from the tracking of online activity and profiling and the emergence of ‘emphathic media’.

Although emotion measurement is far from a new phenomenon, technological developments are increasing the capacity to monetise emotions. From the analysis of inter alia facial expressions, voice/sound patterns, to text and data mining, and the use of smart devices to detect emotions, such techniques are becoming mainstream.

Despite the fact there are many applications of such technologies which appear morally above reproach (i.e. at least in terms of their goals (e.g. healthcare or road safety) as opposed to the risks associated with their implementation, deployment and their potential effects), their use for advertising and marketing purposes raises clear concerns in terms of the rationality-based paradigm inherent to citizen-consumer protections and thus the autonomous decision-making capacity of individuals.

In this ILPC seminar, Visiting Scholar Damian Clifford will examine the emergence of such technologies in an online context vis-à-vis their use for commercial advertising and marketing purposes (construed broadly) and the challenges they present for EU data protection and consumer protection law. The analysis will rely on a descriptive and evaluative analysis of the relevant frameworks and aims to provide normative insights into the potential legal challenges presented by emotion commercialization online.

Chair: Professor Diamond Ashiagbor, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

Speakers:

Professor Fiona Cownie, Professor of Law and Pro Vice Chancellor, Keele University

Professor Valsamis Mitsilegas, Professor of European Criminal Law and Head of the Department of Law, Queen Mary, University of London

Professor Hilary Sommerlad, Professor of Law and Social Justice, University of Leeds

The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies was one of the first institutions to host academic legal conferences as we know them - the WG Hart Workshops, and the predecessor workshops funded by the Ford Foundation. The Institute pioneered other initiatives within legal academia in the UK, in establishing one of the earliest doctoral programmes in law and specialist research methods training for legal researchers. This panel discussion explores and celebrates the role the Institute has played in changing the way legal academics engage with research and scholarship, in providing a neutral space to promote and facilitate research which develops the discipline and also engages with practitioners and with the wider world.

Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

Speaker: Rachael Bishop

Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

Speaker: Lisa Atkinson

Lisa Atkinson, Group Manager on Policy Engagement, Information Commissioner's Office

Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

Information Law and Policy Centre's Annual Conference 2017

Children and Digital Rights: Regulating Freedoms and Safeguards

Keynote address Anna Morgan

Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

Information Law and Policy Centre's Annual Conference 2017

Children and Digital Rights: Regulating Freedoms and Safeguards

Keynote address

Chair: Dr Nora Ni Loideain

Baroness Bedban Kidron OBE

Speakers: Professor Diamond Ashiagbor; Professor Graham Greenleaf AM (video); Professor Catharine MacMillan; Professor Jane Winters; Ronan, Cormacain; David Gee; Steven Whittle.

Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

Telling stories about law and development

Inaugural Lecture

Chair: Rick Rylance (Dean, SAS)

Professor Diamond Ashaigbor (IALS)