Jason Lowther

Crushing a Walnut With a Sledge Hammer? Analysing the Penal Response to the Social Supply of Illicit Drugs

The evidence base relating to illicit drug markets, drug supply activities and drug seller characteristics increasingly presents a picture of diversity, whereby differing motivations for supplying suggest different levels of culpability and divergence from a homogenised image of the drug dealer. This paper seeks to explore one specific aspect of this divergence, that of social supply and how the Criminal Justice System currently deals with this in practice and principle. It is argued that social supply is qualitatively distinct from drug dealing ‘proper’ and although this distinction is increasingly acknowledged within the Criminal Justice System, current approaches neither conform to principles of proportionality nor sufficiently understand the nature of social supply to deal with it effectively under existing legislation. Following consideration of these issues, it is argued that social supply should become a distinct offence in law, analogous to how manslaughter is distinguished from the more serious offence of murder.

Embedding sustainability literacy in the legal curriculum: reflections on the Plymouth model

Plymouth Law School was an early adopter of the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) credo, and embarked on a series of measures designed to embed sustainability in its law curricula, which have since been refined and developed. This article is intended to supplement the theoretical ESD discourse by offering a reflective assessment of our practice and experiences in embedding sustainability by utilising the Foundation subjects of Legal Systems and Skills and European Union Law. In the case of the latter, sustainability is embedded as a delivery vehicle through which students are encouraged to critically explore the practical operation and efficacy of EU enforcement methods, principally from the perspective of EU water policy and law. This builds upon engagement and exposure at level 4 and prior learning in the level 5 EU Law module itself. Importantly it also serves to cement the association of sustainability with legal imperatives and allows us to apply a different lens to sometimes abstract judicial creations such as direct effect and state liability within a tangible setting. Developing autonomy is an additional significant learning outcome of the programme. The approach we have developed is based on combining these two imperatives.