Episode Notes

This week's, we talk to activist lawyer, Maria McCloskey, former director of Public Interest Litigation Support in Belfast, NI about how she worked with grassroots climate justice activists - the Stop Whitehead Oil Terminal (SWOT) campaign - to bring a successful legal challenge to plans to develop a major fossil fuel terminal in a quiet seaside town near Belfast.

Learn more:

• The Stop Whitehead Oil Terminal campaign: https://stopwhiteheadoilterminal.org/
• Public Interest Litigation Support (PILS): BLOG: Whitehead, the oil terminal and what happens next - The PILS Project
• The PILS Toolkit also covers some legal concepts that Maria mentions in her interview (judicial review, public interest litigation) and explains them in an NI context: pilsni.org/toolkit/
• Also check out the PILS glossary of legal terms
• And finally, here is the full ITV clip (30 June 2025) featured in the episode: https://www.itv.com/watch/news/climate-time-bomb/3203hv8

Find out more at https://lawmanity.pinecast.co

Episode Notes

This week, we’re  speaking to Andy Sirel, Legal Director at JustRight Scotland, about a legal challenge that secured access to further and higher education for potentially thousands of young people in Scotland.  Tune in to hear how an aspiring doctor, and a student-led campaign successfully established a right to education in human rights law for migrant young people in Scotland and expanded access to further education for everyone who follows in their footsteps.  

Further resources:

• STV interview: 'Talent is being wasted' by tuition fee residency rules in Scotland | STV News 
• JustRight Scotland blog post: Access to Higher Education for migrant students is now a real right 
• JustRight Scotland factsheet: Access to Education Factsheet July 2023
• Migrant Women Press article: Education for all: The right for asylum seekers to access education in Scotland. - Migrant Women Press

Find out more at https://lawmanity.pinecast.co

Episode Notes

This week, we’re talking to feminist lawyer and activist, Harriet Wistrich, about her decades-long commitment to seeking justice for women who kill their abusive partners, and her determined fight for justice for women, in a system designed for men.

Harriet talks about her journey to becoming an activist lawyer, why she founded the charity Centre for Women’s Justice in 2016, and many of her high-profile cases from over 25 years’ at the frontline of legal practice - also covered in her stunning 2024 debut book: “Sister in Law”.

Buy the book here:

• Sister in Law (paperback):

https://housmans.com/product/sister-in-law-fighting-for-justice-in-a-system-designed-by-men/?noamp=mobile

• Sister In Law (hardback):

https://lighthousebookshop.com/book/9781911709268

Learn more about these organisations::

• The Centre for Women's Justice: https://www.centreforwomensjustice.org.uk
• The Justice for Women Campaign: https://www.justiceforwomen.org.uk
• Read the CWJ’s Women who Kill: How the state criminalises women we might otherwise be burying report here: https://www.centreforwomensjustice.org.uk/women-who-kill

This episode contains an audio clip from an ITN news story following the release of Kiranjit Ahluwalia, from custody at the Old Bailey (BBC creative archive licence)

• Watch the video clip here:

https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/video/freed-after-being-jailed-for-killing-violent-husband-news-footage/816069584?adppopup=true

Episode Notes

This week, we sit down with legendary LBGT+ activist Tim Hopkins, to explore how campaigners used the law to achieve equality for LGBT+ people in Scotland, from the 1980s to the present. Tim shares his insights and wisdom from over thirty years of campaigning - against the notorious Section 28 law in the 1980s, to organising the first Pride March in Scotland in the 1990s, to leading the Equality Network for 14+ years, and finishing with the modern day struggles of trans and non-binary people to achieve equal dignity under the law. 

Additional resources for this episode are linked below:

Legislation

Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1980, Section 80(1) Equality Act 2010 Gender Recognition Act 2004 Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill  Historic Sexual Offences (Pardons and Disregards)(Scotland) Act 2018 Local Government Act 1988

Legal Cases

For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers [2025] UKSC 16 For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers [2023] CSIH 37 For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers [2022] CSIH 4

Ghaidan v Godin-Mendoza [2004] UKHL 30 Goodwin v United Kingdom (Application no. 28957/95) P v S and Cornwall County Council, Case C-13/94 [1996] Smith and Grady v United Kingdom (Application nos. 33985/96 and 33986/96) Sutherland v United Kingdom  (Application no. 25186/94) Wilde, Greenhalgh, Parry v United Kingdon (Application no. 22382/93)

Media Clips Margaret Thatcher, Conservative Party Speech, 9 October 1987 Rishi Sunak, Speech, 5 October 2023

Other Resources

Equality Network  LGBT Youth Scotland Scottish Trans Time for Inclusive Education (TIE) TransActual - Critiques of the Cass Review

Find out more at https://lawmanity.pinecast.co

Episode Notes

We’re here today to help listeners understand how the law can be used to achieve really significant change by looking at how Alison Pickup and colleagues led a successful campaign to challenge the UK Government's Rwanda policy, her role as a lawyer and activist in that campaign and your reflections now … a year on from that significant legal change, as the current UK Government prepares to repeal the Safety of Rwanda Act in the Border Security Asylum and Immigration Bill currently before Parliament. The legal win that her team secured after taking a case all the way to the UK Supreme Court that resulted in the court confirming that Rwanda was not a safe place to send refugees. Alison describes what the UK Government responded to that judgement, and how her team stepped in, again, to protect asylum seekers. We end the episode with some reflections from Alison on what more needs to be done to secure justice for refugees, and also her very wise advice for aspiring human rights lawyers and activists.

Resources:

• Rwanda – all is not lost: Asylum Aid's arguments on why the Home Office must still consider the real risk of people being sent into danger from Rwanda - Free Movement
• Rwanda: procedural fairness and extensions of time - Free Movement Fairness in safe third country removals: the Court of Appeal’s judgment in Asylum Aid’s case - Free Movement
• Press release: Home Secretary informs Asylum Aid about her intentions to repeal the Safety of Rwanda Act 2024 in this Parliamentary session | Asylum Aid
• Rwanda – all is not lost: Asylum Aid's arguments on why the Home Office must still consider the real risk of people being sent into danger from Rwanda - Free Movement
• Rwanda: procedural fairness and extensions of time - Free Movement
• Fairness in safe third country removals: the Court of Appeal’s judgment in Asylum Aid’s case - Free Movement
• Press release: Home Secretary informs Asylum Aid about her intentions to repeal the Safety of Rwanda Act 2024 in this Parliamentary session | Asylum Aid