CULSCAST: The CULS Podcast

CULSCAST is the podcast of the Cambridge University Law Society, and it makes the most sense as several programmes sharing one feed. Each has its own label in the episode titles. Each does a different job. 'Beyond Doctrine' is the academic strand. In it Janice, the host, talks with scholars about work they have recently published or ideas they have been pursuing. With Alistair Mills the subject is his book The Law and Practice of Human Rights, and the conversation moves to remedies: why the Strasbourg court sometimes treats a finding of breach as remedy enough, and why damages sit uneasily with English public law. With Poorna Mysoor, who once supervised Janice in tort law, it is her monograph Copyright as Personal Property and a pointed argument that protection should stop at what can be seen or heard. In her view fragrance and taste are perceived too subjectively to form a thing that can be enforced against everyone. The LPA 1925 centenary episode brings in four land law guests and traces how the trust for sale zigzagged between what its drafter intended, rigid readings in the courts, later judicial flexibility and a 1996 statute that finally fixed the problem. Nabil Khabirpour, a fellow and director of studies in law at Lucy Cavendish and founder of the pro bono service The Law Corner, connects access to justice to the rule of law, pointing to the asymmetry of a legal system that binds everyone without making sure everyone can reach it. 'Speakers Select' works differently. These are recordings of the Society's speaker events, one of them introduced by Max, one of its Speaker's Secretaries. Lord Richards of Camberwell, Justice of the Supreme Court, recalls acting in litigation that grew out of the collapse of BCCI, a case involving a ten-billion-dollar claim and a good deal of Middle Eastern politics. He overruns his slot, apologises, and still takes questions, keeping the right not to answer them. 'CULSCAST Conversations' is the Society talking about itself. A meet-the-committee episode covers roles within the Society, life as a Cambridge law student, and one member's experience of a varsity Roman law moot organised through the faculty rather than the Society. What links the strands is closeness. Some guests have supervised Janice, and the land law episode came from a remark made in a supervision. The tone stays warm and a little self-deprecating, and Janice opens one episode by admitting she is not quite back by popular demand. The doctrine stays intact, though, and the conversations keep the real arguments about remedies, property and legal accessibility. For a first listen, the Poorna Mysoor conversation is a good way into the academic strand, since its case about smell and taste is easy to follow and hard to forget. The Lord Richards talk shows what the speaker events offer.