When legal rights are not a reality: Do individuals know their rights and how can we tell?

Public knowledge of rights has been the subject of a number of empirical enquiries over the last decade. In England and Wales, knowledge of rights and its relationship with an individual's capacity to 'self-help' and 'self-represent' when faced with a civil justice problem has become the subject of renewed attention following changes to legal aid which, from March 2013, will see the availability of legal advice and representation dramatically reduced. Previous studies focusing on public knowledge of rights in this (and other) jurisdictions have illustrated a lack of knowledge amongst the general population and more specifically, a widespread tendency of individuals to assume that the law aligns with their own moral, ethical or social attitudes. However, many of these studies have also suffered from methodological shortcomings. In attempting to address some of these shortcomings this study uses an open-ended format to ask individuals with one or one or more civil or social justice problems to describe their rights/legal position. We find that whilst an open-ended question approach to exploring knowledge of rights yields insight not acquired by other formats, its utility is constrained by difficulty reconciling articulation and actual knowledge of rights. We discuss the implications of these findings as they relate to the development of future research in the field of family and social welfare law, Public Legal Education (PLE) and access to justice post-March 2013. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

Navigating the Legal Advice Maze – Knowledge, Expectations and the Reality of Advice Seeking

As law has become increasingly ubiquitous in modern life, the sources of help to deal with an increasing range of legal issues have become more fragmented and complex. Yet, despite the ubiquity of law and scale of the (broadly defined) legal services sector, there is evidence in England and Wales that public awareness of even the most prominent services is limited. How is it that people navigate the legal advice maze? What does this mean for the development of the law, legal services and access to justice? In this paper we build on the existing literature, using data from both waves of the English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Panel Survey (CSJPS) to explore public awareness of legal services, the characteristics associated with greater/lesser knowledge of advice services, as well as what it is that consumers of legal services want from their advisors. In confirming that levels of awareness of legal services are relatively low, and that the accuracy of the public’s understanding of the types of issue that different services can help with is wanting, our findings point to the need for legal services to convey more effectively the support they can offer. Even those services that figure prominently in the public’s consciousness have work to do in more accurately targeting their services and more effectively promoting access to justice

Unmanageable Debt and Financial Difficulty in the English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey: Report for the Money Advice Trust

The following report uses three years of data from the English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey (CSJS), a face-to-face household survey of people’s experience of and response to rights problems, to examine respondents who reported problems associated with unmanageable debt and financial difficulty. The research was commissioned by the Money Advice Trust with the aim of enriching and supporting existing research regarding people in debt, with reference to adviceseeking strategies, impact of debt problems, and the interrelationship between debt and other problems

Civil Justice in England and Wales, 2009: Report of the 2006-2009 English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey

People’s ability to use the law to protect their rights and hold others to their responsibilities is crucial to ensuring fairness before the law, bringing about social justice and addressing social exclusion. The ‘Continuous’ English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey (CSJS), conducted between 2006 and 2009, examines this in detail. This report describes the main findings from the Continuous English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey

The ethical identity of law students

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this recordThis paper uses measures of values, moral outlook and professional identity to explore the ethical and professional identity of law students. We do so in two jurisdictions, surveying 441 students studying in England and Wales and 569 students studying in the US. The survey covers the first and final years of an undergraduate law degree and the postgraduate vocational stage in England and Wales, as well as students in all years of the JD programme in the US. We explore whether law students towards the end of their legal education have ethical identities predictive of less ethical conduct than those at the beginning of their legal education; whether law students intending careers in business law have values and profiles consistent with less ethical conduct than those intending to work for government or individuals; and what factors might explain these differences in ethical outlook. Our findings suggest that ethical identity is strongly associated with gender and career intentions. They also suggest weaker moral identities for students intending to practise business law. Ultimately, our findings support a conclusion that is more nuanced than the predominant theses about the impact of legal education on student ethicality which tend to suggest legal education diminishes ethicality

Building Our Savings: Reduced infrastructure costs from improving building energy efficiency

Meeting Australia's energy needs sustainably will be a major challenge for the next decade. Electricity consumption is forecast to increase by over 20 percent in the next 10 years, while peak electrical demand is increasing even more rapidly, with almost 30 percent growth forecast from 2010 to 2020. Natural gas consumption is forecast to rise by almost 50 percent and gas peak demand is set to increase by around 40 percent by 2020. An unprecedented level of energy sector capital expenditure has been proposed to meet this growth in total and peak demand. Over $46 billion in electricity network infrastructure alone is planned over just the next five years. Electricity generation and gas infrastructure will add significantly to this figure. This unprecedented expenditure is resulting in dramatic increases in consumer energy tariff

Why Do I Need a Will Anyway? Assessing the Impact of a Public Legal Education Intervention Embedded in a Longitudinal Survey

In England and Wales less than half of the adult population report that they have a will, with similarly low numbers found in other jurisdictions. Dying intestate can have profound implications on the family relationships, housing security, finances, employment, health and welfare of those who are left behind. Social policy initiatives designed to educate the public on the implications of intestacy offer a potential solution but remain difficult to evaluate. This article explores the results of a public legal education experiment embedded in a longitudinal panel survey. The experiment was designed to explore: (1) the impact of information provision on will creation; and, (2) how ‘opportunistic experiments’ embedded in longitudinal surveys might support public legal education (PLE) evaluation. Whilst the impact of the information intervention in this study was not found to be statistically significant, the methodology points to the possibility of testing more bespoke and substantial initiatives in the future

Palliative care needs in patients hospitalized with heart failure (PCHF) study: rationale and design

Abstract Aims The primary aim of this study is to provide data to inform the design of a randomized controlled clinical trial (RCT) of a palliative care (PC) intervention in heart failure (HF). We will identify an appropriate study population with a high prevalence of PC needs defined using quantifiable measures. We will also identify which components a specific and targeted PC intervention in HF should include and attempt to define the most relevant trial outcomes. Methods An unselected, prospective, near-consecutive, cohort of patients admitted to hospital with acute decompensated HF will be enrolled over a 2-year period. All potential participants will be screened using B-type natriuretic peptide and echocardiography, and all those enrolled will be extensively characterized in terms of their HF status, comorbidity, and PC needs. Quantitative assessment of PC needs will include evaluation of general and disease-specific quality of life, mood, symptom burden, caregiver burden, and end of life care. Inpatient assessments will be performed and after discharge outpatient assessments will be carried out every 4 months for up to 2.5 years. Participants will be followed up for a minimum of 1 year for hospital admissions, and place and cause of death. Methods for identifying patients with HF with PC needs will be evaluated, and estimates of healthcare utilisation performed. Conclusion By assessing the prevalence of these needs, describing how these needs change over time, and evaluating how best PC needs can be identified, we will provide the foundation for designing an RCT of a PC intervention in HF

Grainyhead-like 2 inhibits the coactivator p300, suppressing tubulogenesis and the epithelial–mesenchymal transition

Developmental morphogenesis and tumor progression require a transient or stable breakdown of epithelial junctional complexes to permit programmed migration, invasion, and anoikis resistance, characteristics endowed by the epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT). The epithelial master-regulatory transcription factor Grainyhead-like 2 (GRHL2) suppresses and reverses EMT, causing a mesenchymal–epithelial transition to the default epithelial phenotype. Here we investigated the role of GRHL2 in tubulogenesis of Madin–Darby canine kidney cells, a process requiring transient, partial EMT. GRHL2 was required for cystogenesis, but it suppressed tubulogenesis in response to hepatocyte growth factor. Surprisingly, GRHL2 suppressed this process by inhibiting the histone acetyltransferase coactivator p300, preventing the induction of matrix metalloproteases and other p300-dependent genes required for tubulogenesis. A 13–amino acid region of GRHL2 was necessary for inhibition of p300, suppression of tubulogenesis, and interference with EMT. The results demonstrate that p300 is required for partial or complete EMT occurring in tubulogenesis or tumor progression and that GRHL2 suppresses EMT in both contexts through inhibition of p300

Global governance approaches to addressing illegal logging: Uptake and lessons learned

One of the most challenging tasks facing development agencies, trade ministries, environmental groups, social activists and forest-focused business interests seeking to ameliorate illegal logging and related timber trade is to identify and nurture promising global governance interventions capable of helping improve compliance to governmental policies and laws at national, subnational and local levels. This question is especially acute for developing countries constrained by capacity challenges and “weak states” (Risse, 2011). This chapter seeks to shed light on this task by asking four related questions: How do we understand the emergence of illegal logging as a matter of global interest? What are the types of global interventions designed to improve domestic legal compliance? How have individual states responded to these global efforts? What are the prospects for future impacts and evolution? We proceed in the following steps. Following this introduction, step two reviews how the problem of “illegal logging” emerged on the international agenda. Step three reviews leading policy interventions that resulted from this policy framing. Step four reviews developments in selected countries/regions around the world according to their place on the global forest products supply chain: consumers (United States, Europe and Australia); middle of supply chain manufacturers (China and South Korea) and producers (Russia; Indonesia; Brazil and Peru; Ghana, Cameroon and the Republic of Congo). We conclude by reflecting on key trends that emerge from this review relevant for understanding the conditions through which legality might make a difference in addressing critical challenges