Susan Edwards

The University of Buckingham | UB

Edwards, S., “The strangulation of female partners”, Criminal Law Review Crim.L.R. 2015, 12, 949-966 In England and Wales, strangulation is one of the principal methods men use to kill women in intimate relationships. Over the past three decades, this method of killing accounts for up to 37 per cent of deaths of women by male partners. Strangulati...

In recent years it is estimated that at least 700 men and 50–60 women have travelled to Syria from the UK alone to join IS/Daesh. This chapter focuses on young women and schoolgirls who have left their families to join IS. It explores the role of cyberspace in their recruitment and examines their likely motivation for involvement in terrorist activ...

Abstract: Strangulation, asphyxiation, grabbing another by the neck and choking is a significant feature of coercion and control, assault, rape, and the killing of women. Whilst it is a form of violence perpetrated against adults and children regardless of the relationship of victim to perpetrator, it is common in relationships where there is intim...

Drawing upon law, politics, sociology, and gender studies, this volume explores the ways in which the Muslim body is stereotyped, interrogated, appropriated and demonized in Western societies and subject to counter-terror legislation and the suspension of human rights. The author examines the intense scrutiny of Muslim women’s dress and appearance,...

This article considers the recent developments in the prosecution of perpetrators and victims of domestic violence, and focuses on domestic and European Court of Human Rights' jurisdiction. Particular consideration is given to hearsay and bad character provisions (Criminal Justice Act 2003) in bolstering the prosecution of perpetrators. The article...

In October 2010, section 55(3) of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 came into force, and ‘fear of serious violence’ was expressly included in the statute as a qualifying trigger for ‘loss of self-control’ voluntary manslaughter, a partial defence to murder. This development (albeit that it is a gender-neutral provision) was anticipated to be an imp...

"Kicked, Beaten, Jumped On until They are Crushed" All under a man's wing and protection ..." explores the extent of violence against women and the states failure to protect, the inadequacy of law, few prosecutions and derisory sentencing and society's failure to protect.The substantive law, charging practices,women's fear of reporting and recantin...

This chapter documents the domestic “War on Terror” in Western Europe and its targeted regulation of Muslim women’s bodies in retribution for 9/11. Here, the law is appropriated to discipline and punish, and “secular fundamentalism”, in some countries (France), through legal regulation claims securitisation as justification, demanding to uncover un...

This chapter documents the decimation of Muslim women’s bodies through laws that enforce covering where Islamic fundamentalism both Sunni and Shia, for example, in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, exact a particular misogyny. The political activism and discursive critique of the feminist network “Women Against Fundamentalism” and transnational f...

This chapter documents US counter-terror law demonstrating how torture has come to symbolise American “exceptionalism” where executive power is out of control. The dangerous fusing of patriotism with vengeance and the contumacious disregard of the “Rule of Law” in the US’s rewriting of torture enables the perpetration of wanton sadism against Musli...

In this chapter, the historical struggle to establish the “Rule of Law’s” due process, human rights and governance, nationally and internationally is documented. After 9/11, Western interests in furthering territorial objectives especially the “War on Terror”, appropriated the “Rule of Law” as justification for its purpose demonstrating its protean...

This chapter examines Edward Said’s “Orientalism” thesis where the West’s historical representation of Muslim men and women, he argues, constitutes a racist ideology of Eastern people which has enabled Empire, a discourse which today feeds counter-terror law, foreign policy and political and public discourse. Said’s gender omissions are infilled th...

This chapter documents the UK’s response to terrorism, post 9/11, in the domestic “War on Terror” and creeping governmentalisation and hegemony of executive power, the creation of new crimes and the development of security measures and surveillance that disproportionally impacts on Muslim communities, whilst undermining human rights for all. New co...

This chapter documents the extent and nature of contemporary “orientalist” imagery redolent in anti-Muslim speech, political discourse and media representation, exacerbated by Brexit, political leaders and far-right nationalism. Orientalist tropes provide the justificatory rationale for “speech acts” and conduct, including foreign policy, territori...

The issues considered in New Zealand’s Kempson v R echo calls for urgent law reform in England and Wales through the Domestic Abuse Bill and a standalone strangulation offence, say Susan Edwards and Kris Gledhill

“This is a serious and important book. We only have to review the human rights abuses domestically and globally to see that Muslims are facing targeted crimes, cruel discrimination and vicious ill-treatment on an alarming scale. In some places it is amounting to genocide. My tribute to Susan Edwards. A great lawyer and champion of human rights.” He...

The role of fear and its absence in defences including women who kill violent abusive coercive partners, and also in the defence of duress, householder defence and self defence and the need to challenge existing legal defences that privilege and permit male anger.

When women die at the hands of men, a not infrequent defence is that she consented to, or initiated, the beating, strangulation and penetration which contributed to her death. Whilst strangulation has been a typical method of killing in male on female intimate partner homicide for many decades (‘thou little recognised), what has changed is men’s ex...

When women die at the hands of men, a not infrequent defence is that she consented to, or initiated, the beating, strangulation and penetration which contributed to her death. While strangulation has been a typical method of killing in male on female intimate partner homicide ¹ for many decades (‘thou little recognised), what has changed is men’s e...

Anger, its part in human conduct and in crime commission has been much discussed and accorded a privileged status within the law, while the role of fear has been less considered. Notwithstanding, fear and related emotional states have received some recognition as intrinsic elements of the perpetrator’s object integral to the actus reus of certain o...

Susan Edwards “Policing ‘Domestic’ Violence” article ( please note same title as my book of 1989 Sage). This article examines law, criminal /civil ,rules of evidence etc, explores the empirical study conducted by the author on policing and is the first in depth study of policing conducted in the UK in London which changed police practice. The autho...

Explores response of the law in England and Wales, theories of prostitution, feminist critique, victimisation and vulnerability, of women, unjust law, the policing of prostitution drawing on the authors two empirical and funded studies in Wolverhampton and London. Focusing on unjust laws and policing practice, poverty exploitation .

A consideration of the legal issues and a plea for a landmark shift in law away from criminalising streetwalking and especially the criminalisation of young girls. A plea for recognition of the fact that law wrongly concentrated on streetwalkers when law should have been concentrating on the coercive controlling elements. A plea for greater protect...

Explores developments in the criminal prosecution of domestic violence including amongst others the use of several offences within the criminal law, including the Protection from harassment act; examines policing and prosecution policy,the evidential developments including use of hearsay evidence especially fear provision for hearsay. Cites case la...

Examines civil law remedies to protect women and children from domestic violence. Including use of injunctions- exclusion orders etc Provides statistical evidence and case law. Examines child contact orders and the growing evidence on dangers of contact with violent fathers for mothers and the approach of the family court.

Examines the pornographisation of the child in history particularly since the 19th century in works of art, in literature , in photograph and film. It explores the discourse and theorisation and also examine the law through statute and legal cases and judicial opinion..

Examines history of child custody within law In UK focusing on patriarchy, paternalism and on considerations of culture, ethnicity, religion and the evolving accommodation of these aspects in child custody arrangements through a study of the law and decided cases.

This was a study conducted in 1989-90 to examine the national and regional variations in financial provision awarded to spouses upon divorce. Debunking the notion that former wives benefitted from a 'meal ticket for life' in post divorce maintenance settlements the study found that women were considerably disadvantaged . The study explored national...

This chapter reviews the current domestic and international law and conventions eg CEDAW with regard to prostitution including the 1949 Convention, examining the question of sexual exploitation with reference to women's reality within prostitution in the UK and also for example the exploitation by the American military of women in the Phillipines a...

The chapter explores theories of sexuality including Foucault and psychoanalytical theories from Kraft Ebing to Irigaray etc., focusing on the power relationship between women who sell sexual services and the client through feminist critique. Through 50 interviews conducted in London and Birmingham and observations in Hamburg these ethnographies sh...

This chapter examines shows how the criminal law in the UK has historically focused on criminalising the woman streetwalker whilst the men who importune her are allowed to do so without legal consequence.The chapter examines the introduction of legislation which criminalises the seeking of sexual services on the streets and demonstrates the underen...

"Street soliciting by women continues to be an offense in some states in the US,UK and Australis and parts of Europe... penal sanctions are draconian...prostitute women fined and imprisoned.By contrast men are seldom prosecuted ... the law penalizes the streetwalker the most vulnerable..." ( as at 1989 ).This chapter examines the statistics on unev...

This paper examines the role played by modus operandi - method of killing in the construction of intention in constructing homicide as murder or manslaughter. Those who kill with weapons are more likely than those who kill with body force to have intended the result. The focus of the study is on intimate partner male female and female male methods...

This chapter charts the several perspectives and approaches to the problem of violence against women in all its forms including rape, sexual abuse, pornography, prostitution and spousal and partner abuse. It is agued that the law and the legal system as with the criminological enterprise itself is male dominated paying little regard to, and having...

Examines criminological and feminist theory and looks at theorisation of women and crime and women's motive for offending and the way in which these notions impact on the processing of women in the courts and their explanatory accounts for offending and the impact on mitigation. Examples are selected from defences to homicide for battered women who...

This chapter explores the control, vilification and condemnation of an entire community through the outlawing and targeting of Muslim women’s dress. This condemnation is affected by privileging the observer’s one dimensional meaning of these dress forms rather than the multi-faceted meaning which dress holds for Muslim women. These conflicting mean...

This chapter examines the treatment of 'black' women at the hands of police and the criminal justice system. Whilst the experience of black men has been the subject of scrutiny that has not been so for black women. The chapter examines how black men are overcriminalised and medicalised examining too the experience of African, Afro Caribbean and Sou...

Examines male violence against women including the historical condonation of male violence habitually excused in society in the law and in the courts. The historical framing of male violence against spouses as lawful chastisement .Examining the struggle to recognise male violence in both the civil and criminal law. Focusing on the policing and pros...

This article reports in detail for the first time the case of Duffy [1949] which is considered to be the bedrock of the common law on provocation and under the Homicide Act 1957 in relation to the subjective test. The direction to the jury, affirmed by the Court of Appeal and handed down to courts ever since, is of such importance that it is surpri...

This chapter explores the control, vilification and condemnation of an entire community through the outlawing and targeting of Muslim women’s dress. This condemnation is affected by privileging the observer’s one dimensional meaning of these dress forms rather than the multi-faceted meaning which dress holds for Muslim women. These conflicting mean...

Shamima Begum was a child of 15 when she left the UK to travel to Syria and to marry an ISIS volunteer. She is at 24/02/2019 living in a refugee camp, now nineteen years of age has lost two of her children to disease and malnutrition and on February 17th gave birth to her third child. She wants to return to the UK. She was interviewed by a reporter...

http://ubplj.org/index.php/dlj/article/view/318 THE DENNING LAW JOURNAL OPEN JOURNAL SYSTEMS Home > Vol 18, No 1 (2006) > Edwards MORE PROTECTION FOR VICTIMS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE? (THE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, CRIME AND VICTIMS ACT 2004) Susan Edwards ABSTRACT In 2004, the government introduced the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act (DVCVA). Ba...

The growing effluvium of violent pornography in our midst, the inability of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 to effectively curb this incoming tide, the unwillingness of the Director of Public Prosecutions to prosecute the publishers of the books American Psycho and Juliette on the grounds that there is no reasonable prospect of conviction and the...

INTRODUCTIONI am delighted to have been invited to present the 2002 Churchill Society Lecture as this year Churchill was voted the 'Greatest of Britons' in the Great Briton's series broadcast by the BBC. It is also a special honor for me to given this opportunity to contribute to the wider project of the Churchill Society inter alias, the promotion...

When considering the welfare of the child in determining children matters both in private and public law disputes the family courts are increasingly presented with diverse and complex factual circumstances where welfare has to be masticated through the mesh of faith, culture, custom, gender and sexual identity. Judges are increasingly presented wit...

May 18 2017, 12:01am, The TimeS Considers the case( first appearance) of Rizlaine Boular, Mina Dich and Khawla Barghouthi appeared before Westminster magistrates’ court in London in connection with charges of conspiracy and preparing terrorist acts. Listed for later in the year where the judge considered their request to appear wearing their face...

COERCION AND COMPULSION – RE-IMAGINING CRIMES AND DEFENCES 876-899. The language of coercion and compulsion entered the criminal law in 2015, with a new offence of “controlling and coercive behaviour” (a concept which will be familiar to listeners of The Archers) and a new defence of “compulsion”. Section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 (SCA), int...

Susan S. M. Edwards expounds upon the need to recognise that the habituated vilification of ‘the Muslim’ in the media, the public monolithic discourse that essentialises and demonises them, the refusal to recognise verbal attacks on Muslims as race hatred and the condonation of insult as satire in the context of rising xenophobia, all demonstrate t...

This article explains the historical and legal background to the current position where accusations of witchcraft are made throughout the world. Professor Edwards argues that "beliefs in witchcraft are manufactured and promulgated to control and suppress many ethnic and powerless groups and exonerate the powerful". In the UK, genuine belief in witc...

Gordon Goldberg, LLB, MA, Barrister, (1938-2015) former Reader in Law and Master of Moots at the University of Buckingham died on 13 June 2015. The University received many tributes from Alumni and former academic colleagues. We cannot print them all but we are sure our readers would wish to share in some of them.

Raising Freedom’s Banner is essential reading for students studying Constitutional and Administrative law, for those with an interest in human rights and also for those engaged in peaceful protests the world over. Paul Harris is a practising barrister in England and Wales and a Senior Counsel in Hong Kong. He founded the Bar Human Rights Committee...

In the 1970s in parts of the Middle East and in the Gulf, (United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar especially), the burqa or niqab when worn was worn by women from tribal regions only. Otherwise known as a ‘batoola’ this garment is a head and face covering with an area of mesh covering the eyes, another variation is provided by a mask covering the fac...

This article considers the application and interpretation of the principle of the “welfare of the child” as it is imagined and mediated by competing claims of culture, parentage, and international human rights law in the context of child custody disputes arising from relocation and asylum applications, especially across the frontiers of West to Eas...

One of the most remarkable aspects pertaining to the legal bans and societal debates on the face veil in Europe is that they rely on assumptions which lack any factual basis. To rectify this, Eva Brems researched the experiences of women who wear a face veil in Belgium and brought her research results together with those of colleagues who did the s...

Considers the human rights issues and the response of the criminal and civil law especially family law to the problem of witchcraft accusation and persecution in several jurisdictions and especially the growing problem in the UK.

This chapter explores the control, vilification, and condemnation of an entire community through the outlawing and targeting of Muslim women’s dress. This condemnation is affected by privileging the observer’s one dimensional meaning of these dress forms rather than the multi-faceted meaning which dress holds for Muslim women. These conflicting mea...

This article explores the human rights issues implicated especially where the wearer of the niqab is a defendant or victim and considers the competing claims of arts 9/10 as against 6 of the ECHR. Considering too the Canadian SC decision in NS.

Family Law enables students to develop a clear understanding of the law, providing an insight into the tensions that surround family life in all its forms. The complex personal relations between adults, their children, and the State, are all fully explored and the controversial issues which face family lawyers today are highlighted. This fourth edi...

THE CRIME OF RETRACTING A TRUTHFUL STATEMENTOn 13th March 2012, the Court of Appeal delivered its reserved judgement in R v A,1 an appeal against conviction for the offence of perverting the course of justice. The appellant had made allegations of multiple rape and domestic violence perpetrated against her by her husband, allegations she later with...

FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION – VIOLENCE AGAINST GIRLS AND WOMEN AS A PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPZainab Esther Fornah was fifteen years old when on 15th March 2003, as an unaccompanied minor, she arrived at UK’s Gatwick airport claiming asylum. As she was a child she was taken into the care of West Sussex Social Services Child Asylum Team. She had fled Sie...

HUMAN SACRIFICES AT THE ALTAR OF TERRORIST CONTROLJoseph K in Franz Kafka’s The Trial is arrested and put on trial, but the evidence against him is never disclosed and so he is suspended in a legal nightmare. On December 16th 2004, the House of Lords, in A and others v Secretary of State for the Home Department, ruled that indefinite detention of n...

Leslie Hall James was convicted, at Nottingham Crown Court on May 1 1979, of the murder of his wife, and sentenced to life imprisonment - a plea of provocation having failed. He had stabbed, punched and suffocated her following an argument. On the morning of the killing he had left work and gone to her home carrying a knife he borrowed from a colle...

David Brewer (Jordan Publishing 2006), Pp 2422 (Hardback and Cd rom), ISBN 1 84661 011 7, Price £140.00 For many years, criminal practitioners have relied on Archbold Criminal Pleading Evidence & Practice (Sweet and Maxwell, pp 3070, price £310 hardback and cd rom) as ‘the’ trusted aide and mentor to criminal practice in all courts. More recently,...

BATTERED WOMEN - IN FEAR OF LUC'S SHADOW

The rich evidential jewel of ‘frankness’ in civil courts in child protection proceedings is currently under siege. Its object, to discover causation rather than attribute blame, is being thwarted by self-incriminating statements made in care proceedings being disclosed to the police. Following the rulings authorising disclosure in Re L (Police Inve...

For her own good! Criming the Niqab’” International Family Law 2012 pp.203-209.

BACKGROUND On 13th March 2012, the Court of Appeal delivered its reserved judgement in R v A, 1 an appeal against conviction for the offence of perverting the course of justice. The appellant had made allegations of multiple rape and domestic violence perpetrated against her by her husband, allegations she later withdrew, thereby giving rise to the...

This commentary examines the decision of the House of Lords in R (Begum) v Headteacher and Governors of Denbigh High School in which the majority held that Shabina Begum’s right to and manifestation of religious belief was not infringed. I consider first whether the current case and the Strasbourg jurisprudence upon which the House of Lords relied...

Following the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, s. 56, the common law defence of provocation, which depended on a sudden and temporary loss of self-control (following R v Duffy 1), is now abolished, as is s. 3 of the Homicide Act 1957. In its place is substituted a statutory defence of loss of self-control, which relies on some of the principles that...

This current commentary considers the case of Al-Saadoon and Mufdhi v the United Kingdom (a recent decision of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR)) and the issues upon which it turns. It raises the question of whether an occupying force has an obligation to protect the human rights of those under occupation. The inherent tensions, conflicts,...

This article reports in detail for the first time the case of Duffy [1949] which is considered to be the bedrock of the common law on provocation and under the Homicide Act 1957 in relation to the subjective test. The direction to the jury, affirmed by the Court of Appeal and handed down to courts ever since, is of such importance that it is surpri...

This article considers the suspension of the self-incrimination privilege in care proceedings and the consequences for respondents and defendants implicated in civil and criminal trials relating to child abuse. This right against self-incrimination is differently applied in the civil and criminal forum. Where there are parallel civil and criminal p...

Abstract This article considers the suspension of the self-incrimination privilege in care proceedings and the consequences for respondents and defendants implicated in civil and criminal trials relating to child abuse. This right against self-incrimination is differently applied, in the civil and criminal forum. Where there are parallel civil and...

HUMAN SACRIFICES AT THE ALTAR OF TERRORIST CONTROL Joseph K in Franz Kafka’s The Trial1 is arrested and put on trial, but the evidence against him is never disclosed and so he is suspended in a legal nightmare.2 On December 16th 2004, the House of Lords, in A and others v Secretary of State for the Home Department, 3 ruled that indefinite detentio...

This article considers the ruling in Attorney-General for Jersey v Holley 1 and its impact on limiting the ambit of the defence of provocation by restoring to the reasonable person a normative capacity for self-control. In particular, the implications of this limitation on legal outcome in cases where women kill men who abuse them are explored. The...

Begum v Denbigh High School The Jilbab Controversy” Denning Law Journal [2006] pp.221- 232. Explores the case of Miss Begum who wished to wear a jilbab (long tunic dress) to school as she considered it befitted her right to manifest her religious belief.

The Jilbab ControversyOn March 22nd 2006, the House of Lords allowed an appeal by the defendant school, Denbigh High School in Luton and ruled that the school’s uniform policy which disallowed a particular variation of Islamic dress - the “jilbab” (a long sleeved floor length loose fitting tunic dress) - did not amount to an interference with the r...

In October 2003, the Law Commission ("LC") published a detailed Consultation Paper, Partial Defences to Murder, 1 reviewing the present law and proposing a series of possible options for reform. In responding to the LC's invitation, this article recommends that provocation be abolished and self-defence be reframed in order to take into account the...

On May 16, 2000, Hooper J. in dismissing an application for judicial review (in R. v. the Video Appeals Committee of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), ex p. BBFC),(1) held that in exercising their discretion, the members of the Video Appeals Committee (VAC) had correctly considered section 4A (1) of the Video Recordings Art 1984 (VRA...

This article examines the application of 'child pornography' law by police, prosecutors and the courts and presents the key findings from the first national study conducted into child pornography trials in the Crown Court in England and Wales against a wider statistical analysis of proceedings for possession of 'child pornography' in the Magistrate...

In this paper the author addresses the problem of pornography with particular reference to legal regulation in England and Wales against the wider context of the lack of adequate control of pornography world-wide. This is explored first by an examination of the nature and increasing availability of pornography. Second, is provided a consideration o...

This article examines the contemporary application of obscenity law by police, prosecutors and the courts and presents the key findings of the first national study ever conducted into pornography trials in the Crown Court in England and Wales. The findings demonstrate that only five cases in a six-month period studied were fully considered by a jur...

this is a book review of the book Sex and Gender in the legal process by Edwards

This work examines the evolution of law and legal method, and challenges the law's claim to neutrality by examining its role in creating and reproducing inequality between the sexes. It considers many of the current debates, and in each, the law is stated with reference to recent developments in statute and judicial decisions in the UK and other ju...