Covid and Court! By Dr John McGarry and Chelsea Braithwaite

Centre for Crime, Justice and Security Public Seminar Series

Dr John McGarry: The Attorney General and Contempt of Court - A Gentle Polemic

The Attorney General for England and Wales is the Government’s Senior Law Officer who, inter alia, initiates certain kinds of legal proceedings. She is also a politician, appointed to Government by the Prime Minister. In this seminar, Dr McGarry considers the Attorney General’s role in initiating contempt proceedings against fellow politicians. He examines cases where politicians have been involved in potential contempt's by publication and argues that, in such cases, the Attorney General’s position may amount to an actual or perceived conflict of interest. He further argues that the Attorney General's role in contempt cases is symptomatic of the problematic nature of the office more generally, whereby a senior political operative takes quasi-judicial decisions.

Chelsea Braithwaite: Young, Deprived and Living Through a Global Pandemic: A Study of Lockdown Through a Social Harm Lens

Emerging adults, particularly those form disadvantaged backgrounds, have disproportionately suffered from the impact of lockdowns brought in as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic. This uneven impact on disadvantaged young people is largely due to the effect of neoliberal capitalism and measures of austerity present in the UK in the years leading up to the pandemic. During this seminar Chelsea Braithwaite will talk about her research examining the social, cultural and economic implications of the lockdowns on young people in Stoke-on-Trent. Additionally, Chelsea will raise further areas of pertinence by examining the impact of Covid-19 lockdowns through the wider theoretical lens of social harm.

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