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Research Contributions Annual Research Report of Kent Law School 2017/18 2 Research Contributions Annual Research Report of Kent Law School 2017/18 Kent Law School (KLS) is an interdisciplinary centre of critical research and teaching in law, predominantly focused on social, economic, political and environmental justice. We have a strong international reputation for socio-legal, critical, and feminist research. Our teaching methods have led at least two generations of socially-aware legal pedagogy in the UK, putting law into its wider context for undergraduates and postgraduates alike. Our law clinic combines practice-led, experiential teaching with the provision of valuable legal services to the local Kent community. In this report we highlight our research contributions for 2017/18, providing some examples of how they have influenced others – academics, members of the public, non-academic professionals, artists, and government. A full record of our research activities for the year is available in the appendices. Research Contributions 3 Reflecting on 2017/18 I am very happy to introduce Kent Law School’s 2017-2018 research report. Kent Law School provides a warm, collegial environment in which academics from a range of legal backgrounds can study law’s effects in the wider world. Our approach is critical and innovative, with many of us working across traditional academic boundaries and forging research links with people and organisations outside of academia. It is a difficult job to represent the diversity of our research and impact collaborations in a short publication like this, but this report gives you an indication of our reflexive approach and the kind of work we do. I would like to thank Professor Amanda Perry-Kessaris for pulling the report together and Cathy Norman for her excellent on-going research support to the department. I hope you enjoy reading about our work. Professor Emily Grabham Co-director of Research Kent Law School 4 Research Contributions Annual Research Report of Kent Law School 2017/18 How we change society A spotlight on Dr Gavin Sullivan’s research on Contemporary Security Law and Practice In 2010 I was working as a human rights how collective security is changing to We have long taken seriously the lawyer for the European Centre for fight new threats, and I ended up doing need for sustained, reciprocal Constitutional and Human Rights in a PhD on the topic at the University of research relationships with people Berlin, co-ordinating the Counter- Amsterdam, which in turn led me to do and organisations outside of terrorism and Human Rights further empirical research in this area, to academia. We benefit greatly from programme. We were looking at the most engage with a whole range of different working closely with domestic and egregious abuses of human rights after actors in the security council, to publish international collaborators who 9/11 and trying to provide redress to a series of articles on the issue and to inspire, support, shape and, some victims. I was asked to write a work on a book – The Law of the List – sometimes, directly commission, report on what was a controversial but to be published in 2020 with Cambridge our research, as well as benefiting little-known aspect of the global war on University Press. from it in a range of ways. Our terror: the changing nature of the UN In 2013-2014, tens of thousands of so- collaborative approach has Security Council and their use of security called ‘foreign terrorist fighters’ from all substantially enhanced the lists to target individual terrorism suspects on the basis of secret over the world were travelling to Syria relevance, significance and reach intelligence without access to due and Iraq to fight with groups like ISIL and of our work, ensuring that it process. This was an issue that hadn’t Al-Nusra Front. They were identified as a influences law and policy-makers, been given much attention in the global new security threat to which the judges and other legal war on terror – a lot of people were international community did not know practitioners, activists and NGOs, talking about Guantanamo Bay and how to respond, and the Security Council international organisations and torture in Abu Ghraib, but the use of passed a resolution introducing far- higher education practitioners. administrative procedures by UN reaching measures for all states in the institutions had not been given much world to change their legal systems to This year we choose to highlight attention at all. So Ben Hayes, then combat the threat of foreign terrorist the meaningful change produced working at State Watch, and I wrote fighters, but to do so in a way that was by Dr Gavin Sullivan’s research Blacklisted – a report exposing the compliant with fundamental rights. So I around contemporary security changing nature of the UN and the was asked to do some empirical law and practice. In the following human rights abuses that came with this research and to draft some best practice paragraphs Gavin reflects on his new terrorism listing regime. guidelines for states on how they could meet their human rights obligations whilst experiences of working with the As a result of that report, I was asked by countering this threat of foreign terrorist United Nations (UN) to address a number of individuals who were fighters. My existing research came to human rights abuses under the themselves targeted on this security the attention of an individual working post-9/11 terrorist listing regime – council terrorism list to help them come inside the Office for the High how and why did he begin to off this list. So I started acting for Commissioner of Human Rights in New engage with potential stakeholders/ terrorism suspects – individuals who had York who invited me to apply to work for beneficiaries; what were the been put on the list without access to them as a consultant to produce an rewards and what would he do due process or a fair trial. I’ve been empirically-grounded public report with differently next time? doing that work pro-bono as part of the recommendations to states on how to Transnational Listing Project since 2010. achieve that balance. This work caused me to become very From 2016 through to 2017 I was doing interested in the evolving practices of empirical research in at least three the United Nations Security Council – countries: Tunisia, England and France Research Contributions 5 on how laws to counter foreign terrorist kinds of legal texts about the impact of the Thirdly, document the impact of your fighters were impacting adversely on work you’re doing for those large work along the way. For example, I found human rights. I interviewed a number of organisations. In particular, researchers that those who brought me into the UN people in Tunisia in particular, who had should be clear from the beginning that as were not in a position to provide been subjected to secret house arrest a researcher you need the impact that your verification when I needed it because procedures, tortured and arbitrarily work is generating to be verified. It can be they had left the relevant department or detained, on the basis that they were hard to advocate for yourself as an organisation. So don’t leave that to the suspected extremists. I interviewed academic, especially early career, but it is end– ask people to send an email to members of governments who were reasonable to negotiate these issues up acknowledge how your work came to setting up databases and got to see front, even when you’re doing work for their attention, and the importance of some of what the global war against large organisations like the United Nations. your research to their work. All of that violent extremism looked like in practice, helps to build up your evidence base and and some of the human rights problems Secondly, don’t be naïve: do your due to show how your work is having an that were associated with that. I think diligence research about the political impact in the world. perhaps that was the most rewarding environment in which you’re working. What experience of the work undertaken to became clear for me is that I really had date – to engage with some of those under-researched the complex diplomatic individuals, to hear their concerns, and environment in which this research would to give them the opportunity to give be carried out. As academics we are used those concerns a global voice through to doing our research in a fairly un-fettered the work that I was doing for the UN. My way. We may deal with revise and resubmit research, after extensive editing by more recommendations from academic journals than thirteen UN agencies, resulted in and so on, but in general independence is the publication in June 2018 of a UN integral to our academic integrity, and that’s report – The Guidance to States on part of the research that we do. But when Human Rights Compliance Responses you are working as a consultant for a large to the Threat Posed by Foreign Fighters – international organisation, the rules of the which acts as a stand-alone guidance game slightly change. There are a whole document for all states in the world, range of political actors who weigh in and shaping how states develop their shape the findings of your research, and responses to the problem of foreign that is certainly what has happened in terrorist fighters. relation to my research. Some really substantial changes were made to my work There are a few lessons to be learnt from that I would have individually objected to, my story, particularly for anyone had I been brought into that editing considering impact-related work with process.

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