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Durham Law School

Staff Profiles

Professor Erika Rackley, LLB, PhD

Professor in Durham Law School
Telephone: +44 (0) 191 33 42835
Fax: +44 (0) 191 33 42801
Room number: PCL123

Contact Professor Erika Rackley (email at erika.rackley@durham.ac.uk)

Biography

Erika Rackley is a professor in law with particular expertise in judicial diversity and appointments. She joined the Law School in April 2006, having previously taught at the Universities of Leicester and Kent. She is co-convenor and co-founder of Gender & Law at Durham (GLAD), a research group based in the Law School which acts as a focus for gender-related research and teaching.

Erika has written widely on judicial diversity, particularly in relation to the representation of women and the importance of difference-based arguments in the context of judicial diversity. Her pioneering work on the jurisprudence of Baroness Hale has been extracted and reproduced in key reference and student texts. Her monograph, Women, Judging and the Judiciary, argues that the key reason for judicial diversity is that the introduction of a wider variety of backgrounds, perspectives and experiences into the judiciary will inform and lead to better judgments and judging. Erika regularly comments in the media on matters relating to judicial diversity, most recently in relation to the appointments to the UK Supreme Court. She has also spoken on BBC Newcastle and Radio 4's Woman's Hour on the impact of gender on judicial decision-making, and in 2009 she contributed to Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival.

In addition to her sole-authored research, Erika is also involved in collaborations with other scholars in the fields of judicial diversity, through her involvement as a member of the executive committee of the Equal Justices Initiative and as co-organiser of the Feminist Judgments Project. The ESRC-funded Feminist Judgments Project involved a large number of academics, activists and members of the legal profession and judiciary putting 'theory into practice' by writing the 'missing' feminist judgments in key cases. The judgments, published in Feminist Judgments: from theory to practice, powerfully demonstrate how cases could and should have been decided differently. The Feminist Judgments Project has garnered considerable media attention, including articles in the Law Society Gazette, The Guardian, and The Lawyer, and the collection has been reviewed in the Law Society Gazette and the Times Higher Education. The Project was also cited by Supreme Court Justice, Lady Hale, in her oral evidence to the House of Lords Constitution Committee inquiry into the Judicial Appointment Process, as a good illustration of the way that cases might be decided differently. The Project has inspired a number of similar projects overseas, including the Australian Feminist Judgments Project as well as a collection of UKCLE-funded teaching materials.

Erika's research with Clare McGlynn on research on the legal regulation of extreme pornography has helped to shape and inform public debate. In 2007, she co-organised a seminar on extreme pornography which was reported in The Times and the Times Higher Education. Their work has been discussed in the Scottish Parliament, The Guardian and in the 2010 Home Office review of the Sexualisation of Young People.

Erika is also co-author of Tort Law, a critical and popular tort law textbook, which is now in its second edition. She is also co-editor of Feminist Perspectives on Tort Law, an international collection which brings together acknowledged experts in feminist theory and tort law, published by Routledge as part of the ground-breaking Feminist Perspectives series in early 2012.

Research Interests

  • Judicial diversity
  • Feminist Judgments
  • Women and the Legal Profession
  • Legal Regulation of Pornography
  • Tort Law
  • Law and Literature

Teaching Areas

Tort
Law, Gender and Society

Grants Awarded

  • 2008-2010: Feminist Judgments Project (with Hunter and McGlynn) (£69,000 from the ESRC)
  • 2009: From Difference to Diversity: A UK Perspective on Women, Judging and the Judiciary (£16,689 from Arts and Humanities Research Council)
  • 2008: Feminist Judgments - The First Steps (with Hunter and McGlynn) (£500 from Social and Legal Studies)
  • 2007: International Seminar on Women in the Legal Profession (£700 from the British Academy)
  • 2007: Women in the Legal Professions (£306 from The Society of Legal Scholars)
  • 2007: Positions on the Politics of Porn (with McGlynn and Westmarland) (£1097 from the SLSA)
  • 2007: Positions on the Politics of Porn (with McGlynn and Westmarland) (£1138 from Social and Legal Studies)

Publications

Articles: newspaper

Books: authored

Books: edited

Books: sections

Journal papers: academic

Journal papers: professional

Supervises