Molly McLachlan McCall

Scotland is incorporating economic, social and cultural rights into devolved law, including the rights to housing, food, health and cultural life. The justice framework in Scotland is not yet equipped to deliver effective remedies for a violation of these rights; JustRight Scotland has therefore called for recognition of the right to an effective remedy. This sociolegal PhD project, a collaboration between the University of Strathclyde, the University of Glasgow and JustRight Scotland, uses emancipatory arts-based methodologies to situate the voices of Gypsy and Traveller communities in legal and policy reform. It asks what an effective remedy means in law and whether indigenous oral traditions provide new insights that counter dominant framings of justice in practice.

The objectives of the project are threefold: to understand the legal framework for effective remedies, using doctrinal legal research to examine best practice comparatively and internationally; to reconstruct power dynamics by centring the voices of Gypsies and Travellers in Scotland using an Arts-Based Engagement Ethnography (ABEE) method; and to analyses the empirical data generated in order to garner insight into indigenous perspectives on justice.