A call for submissions for Kent Student Law Review’s fifth volume closes at 2pm on Friday 1 February 2019.
Kent Student Law Review (KSLR) is a student-led publication that aims to showcase the high-quality work produced by Kent Law School Students. Its focus is to publish critical legal scholarship that is the best representation of law in society.
The call for submissions is open to all students at Kent Law School, both undergraduate and postgraduate. The KSLR is seeking submissions between 3,000 and 10,000 words in length. Shorter submissions of high quality will also be considered as will case comments and book reviews (but these should not exceed 3,000 words). Articles based on essays and dissertations originally submitted for assessment are also accepted (but, in such cases, the submission’s original grade should be no lower than 65%). Even where articles satisfy these minimum requirements, revisions may be required at the discretion of the KSLR Editorial Board. All submissions are subject to double-blind review, meaning that both the reviewers and the authors are anonymous up to the point of publication.
Final decisions on publication will be made by the KSLR Editorial Board. These decisions will consider the quality of argument, research and writing that submissions demonstrate as well as their compatibility with the focus and philosophy of the KSLR.
Submissions must follow KSLR house style and be uploaded in Microsoft Word format to the KSLR website.
Further information is available via email from: KSLReditor@kent.ac.uk
Volume 4 of the Kent Student Law Review, published earlier this year, comprises the following articles:
‘Sharing is Caring – Care workers’ employment bargain and the National Minimum Wage’ by Kinga Stabryla
Abstract: It is undoubtingly noticeable that care workers’ employment rights are currently prominent in the news and raise important social, market and legal concerns of equality and fairness. They stimulate debates on the consequences of the legal position on the ‘wage-work bargain’ of care workers and the national minimum wage laws are central to this. It can be said that national minimum wage (NMW) underpayments stem from laws which define social structures and attitudes about care giving. As such, the core substance of NMW regulations will be analysed to define how and why this issue exists and what is the impact. Inevitably, socio-legal issues about the gendered workforce, multi-level control of the industry and economics (the ageing population, social capital and market logics) will serve as perspectives of criticism to the current position of law on care work and the NMW.
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‘A Humanless World: The Progressive Artificial Intelligence and its Impact on Intellectual Property’ by Kaloyan Dinkov Dinev
Abstract: With recent leaps in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence, the boundary between science fiction and reality is blurring constantly, with computers performing actions previously thought to be unique only to man. Though challenged by traversal of the physical realm, their capabilities to mimic human problem solving and creativity is growing exponentially. In discovering this potential lies the possibility of a cultural and scientific enrichment the likes of which will dwarf both the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution, respectively. Naturally this is accompanied by countless inventions and artistic expressions from which society will inevitably benefit. However, due to their originators likely being at least in part or wholly computers, the question will arise as to who will be their true owners or authors from a legal standpoint. This article will examine the extent to which human and machine intelligence can be compared and will attempt to ascertain the ways in which the latter could pose a threat to the system of Intellectual Property laws in place to protect the rights of inventors/creators. Where possible, the piece will also attempt to propose potential remedies and pre-emptive actions to alleviate the dangers such a synthetic revolution could cause to IP’s legal framework.
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‘An appraisal in rule of law terms of the use of policy agendas versus legal norms to protect populations at risk from the global freshwater crisis‘ by Mariana Simon Cartaya
This short paper takes an ‘international rule of law’ perspective in an attempt to weight out policy versus law to solve the normative question of how to best solve the world’s freshwater crisis. The issues touching the freshwater crisis have been identified as environmental concerns, human rights concerns, and most prominently, the equitable distribution of natural resources.
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‘Finding the balance: Proportionality, Google Spain, and the right to be forgotten under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation‘ by Andrew Hart Stoquert
With the EU’s trailblazing new data protection regulation (GDPR) coming into force in late 2018, the importance of data protection and privacy law has been amplified across the globe. Under the EU’s old data protection directive, however, a number of precedents, including the ‘right to be forgotten,’ will likely be impacted by the new regulation. While the European Court of Justice’s interpretation of this right under the old directive is particularly worrisome, the GDPR could facilitate the continuance of the right as it currently exists or alternatively, serve to narrow it. This article will demonstrate that while there is indeed a strong argument in favor of recognizing a legal ‘right to be forgotten,’ there is also a danger in striking an imbalance between an individual’s right to privacy on one hand, and the public’s right to information and freedom of expression on the other. While it is likely that the judgment will remain highly persuasive under the new GDPR, this paper will also examine additional protections built into the Regulation, as well as other practical limitations that could assist in keeping the right to be forgotten ‘in check’ moving forward.
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‘Acquisitive Liberations: A Critical Evaluation of the Use of Human Rights Discourse in Justifying Military Intervention‘ by Martin Paul George Williams
Military intervention into the affairs of other states is often justified by the United States of America with reference to human rights, and is therefore called humanitarian intervention. This article examines the operation of the human rights discourse in justifying such intervention, and argues that the conflation of national self-interest and collective self-defence, which is allowed for in jus ad bellum discourse and built into the UN legal and executive architecture, allows for intervening states to present military actions that afford them strategic gain and commercial opportunity as altruistic acts. Support, weak resistance or acquiescence to such action by the UN and by the press allows for such actions to acquire popular legitimacy, and this article examines how the human rights discourse provides an argumentative framework to articulate such legitimacy. In its critical analysis of arguments put forward by Simma and Cassese, the article concludes that the conduct of intervening states post bellum should attract as much legal scrutiny as the initial intervention, and that the use of human rights to justify interventions that are acquisitive in motive undermines the purpose and operations of human rights as a driver for positive change in the world.
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‘Trade Unions and their role in the contemporary society and economy‘ by Andreas Chiratos
This is an article about the role of trade unions in the contemporary society and their impact on the economy.
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‘The UK’s Prevent policy as a form of risk governance in the education sector and how it violates human rights and fundamental freedoms‘ by Beatrice Wambui Wainaina
The UK’s Prevent Program within the education sector and its referral initiative Channel, are counter-effective. The government claims that these initiatives are a means of safeguarding vulnerable students from extremism. Contrary to these claims is that the Prevent program is not well received within the education sector. In fact, most interactions that have involved police intervention have resulted in violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms of children under the care act. Consequently, a number of lawsuits have been levied against Prevent by parents and academicians which is highlighted in this paper. Furthermore, the statutory duty imposed under Prevent is a form of risk governance driven by pre-emption. British Muslim students are singled out as suspect communities because they ‘lack in Britishness’ and placed under surveillance. Moreover, the government claims that Prevent is a safeguarding initiative implemented to protect vulnerable students from extremism. This paper will show that the uncertainty level presented by the term extremism, renders Prevent’s risk assessment unreliable. Furthermore, the changing level of risk associated with risk governance renders the premise of Prevent political. This is the kind of governmentality that is constructed at the supranational level and implemented locally through domestic policies such as Prevent.