Reading for Battle
Battle Readings is a regularly updated compilation of articles, essays, and opinion pieces relevant to the themes of the Battle of Ideas.
Choose a theme from the listing on the left to narrow your search, or view all readings.
Liberty & Law
Cocaturismo: How Cocaine in Colombia became a tourist attraction
An extract from Cocaina: A Book on Those Who Make It
Magnus Linton, Utne Reader, March 2014
An extract from Cocaina: A Book on Those Who Make It
Magnus Linton, Utne Reader, March 2014
An online Magna Carta: Berners-Lee calls for bill of rights for web
Web's inventor warns neutrality under sustained attack from governments and corporations
Jemima Kiss, Guardian, 12 March 2014
Web's inventor warns neutrality under sustained attack from governments and corporations
Jemima Kiss, Guardian, 12 March 2014
This is rape culture – and look at the damage it does
We live in a world where sexual assault can be dismissed with jokes or excuses, even used in a chatup line or plastered across a T-shirt. The UK rape statistics are shocking, and so are these harrowing reports to the Everyday Sexism Project
Laura Bates, Guardian, 14 February 2014
We live in a world where sexual assault can be dismissed with jokes or excuses, even used in a chatup line or plastered across a T-shirt. The UK rape statistics are shocking, and so are these harrowing reports to the Everyday Sexism Project
Laura Bates, Guardian, 14 February 2014
You can’t legislate against anti-social behaviour
The law disempowers the only people who can tackle anti-social behaviour: us.
Jon Holbrook, spiked, 29 January 2014
The law disempowers the only people who can tackle anti-social behaviour: us.
Jon Holbrook, spiked, 29 January 2014
The end of public space: one law to ban them all
Laws handing sweeping new powers to police and private security to restrict access to public space are extinguishing the diversity of civic life.
Josie Appleton, OpenDemocracy, 20 January 2014
Laws handing sweeping new powers to police and private security to restrict access to public space are extinguishing the diversity of civic life.
Josie Appleton, OpenDemocracy, 20 January 2014
The Lawyers Riding Roughshod over the Democracy
Lord Sumption is right: legal activism devalues the demos.
Jon Holbrook, spiked, 2 December 2013
Lord Sumption is right: legal activism devalues the demos.
Jon Holbrook, spiked, 2 December 2013
The Limits of the Law
What kinds of social tasks can properly be assigned to judges and courts, as opposed to these other agencies of social control?
Lord Sumption, Supreme Court UK, 20 November 2013
What kinds of social tasks can properly be assigned to judges and courts, as opposed to these other agencies of social control?
Lord Sumption, Supreme Court UK, 20 November 2013
Domestic violence is falling. Why aren't people celebrating?
A man with a hammer sees a world full of nails, Buckminster Fuller said. Keir Starmer sees a world full of domestic violence, because he is out to stop it.
James Heartfield, spiked, 11 July 2013
A man with a hammer sees a world full of nails, Buckminster Fuller said. Keir Starmer sees a world full of domestic violence, because he is out to stop it.
James Heartfield, spiked, 11 July 2013
Rape and the law: he said, she said?
"In few places does the free exchange of views take place on so wide a range of issues as at the Battle of Ideas. Whatever the headlines of 2011 prove to be, the Battle of Ideas is where they will be most robustly debated."
Andrew Copson, chief executive, British Humanist Association
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