Dr Janina Dill introduces her book 'Legitimate Targets? Social Construction, International Law and US Bombing', recently published by Cambridge University Press. Her talk is followed by comments by Dr Adam Bower and Dr Thomas Simpson.
2015 marks the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, and the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee of the House of Commons is holding a consultation called 'A New Magna Carta?' asking whether the UK should be moving toward a codified constitution.
At this event on 6 Nov 2014 Martyn Atkins, the committee's clerk, talked about the consultation and the ways that students can participate, including by making submissions and by participating in the contest to draft a preamble for a new constitution.
Convened by Professor Stephen Whitefield (University of Oxford, DPIR), Dr. Elisabeth Kendall (University of Oxford), and Mazen Hassan (Cairo University), this seminar brought together academics and practitioners to discuss a range of issues around democracy in contemporary Egypt at Pembroke College, University of Oxford.
The seminar has been made possible by generous funding from the following sources:
'Support for Democracy in Egypt: A Crucial Point for the Country, A Crucial Test Case for Comparative Politics’ (ESRC Urgent Grant Support, 2013-1)
Based on an innovative theory of international law, Janina Dill's book investigates the effectiveness of international humanitarian law (IHL) in regulating the conduct of warfare. Through a comprehensive examination of the IHL defining a legitimate target of attack, Dill reveals a controversy among legal and military professionals about the 'logic' according to which belligerents ought to balance humanitarian and military imperatives: the logics of sufficiency or efficiency.
The Fixed-term Parliaments Act is one of the very few constitutional changes included in the coalition's Programme for Government that has managed to see the light of day. Yet it is little discussed and its potential effects seemingly inadequately understood. In this lecture, Professor John Curtice (University of Strathclyde) discusses its apparent effects on UK politics to date and its potential effects in future, focusing in particular on its implications for Prime Ministerial power, government formation, and the parliamentary and devolved electoral cycles.
For most of his long reign (1953-1999) Hussein of Jordan was one of the dominant figures in Middle Eastern politics, its most continuous presence, and one of the most consistent proponents of peace with Israel. This is the first major account of his life and reign, written with access to many of his surviving papers, with the co-operation (but not approval) of his family and staff, and extensive interviews with policy-makers of many different nationalities.
