Professor Jon Yorke
Jon Yorke is the Professor of Human Rights and the Director of the Centre for Human Rights (CHR). His qualifications include LL.B. (Hons) (BCU), LL.M. and Ph.D. (Warwick). He currently teaches human rights modules on the LL.B. and LL.M. programmes and is a PhD supervisor for both BCU Graduate Teaching Assistants and the award holders of the AHRC’s Midlands4Cities Consortium.
Professor Yorke is an expert in international human rights law. He has advised the United Nations and the European Union, and numerous governments including, Gambia, Myanmar, Spain and the United Kingdom. He has acted in human rights cases in the United States, Sudan, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and has submitted amicus curiae briefs in death penalty cases.
He has been awarded multiple Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) grants for projects to protect human rights in Sudan, and has worked on EU funded projects for the representation of capital defendants in foreign jurisdictions. His work for the UPR Project at BCU was shortlisted for the Times Higher Education (THE) Award 2021 for International Collaboration of the Year, and his co-leadership of the BCU American Internship Programme was shortlisted for the Queen’s Anniversary Prize in 2012. He has won the Dean’s Award (2020), the BCU Researcher of the Year Award (2015) and the BCU Extra Innovative and Creative Teacher Award (2013) which are known as the BCU Extra Mile Awards.
His current major research focus is on the theory of ‘utopia’ in international law and his external work now focuses upon the UN’s Universal Periodic Review and the filing of Stakeholder Reports in the Human Rights Council in Geneva. This is organised under the internationally recognised ‘The UPR Project at BCU’.
Areas of Expertise
- International Human Rights
- The Death Penalty
- Medical Law
- Comparative Constitutional Law
- Comparative Legal Traditions
- Legal Theory
- The Temporality of Law
Qualifications
- PhD ‘The Council of Europe and the Death Penalty: A Relationship of State Sovereignty and Human Rights,’ School of Law, University of Warwick
- PGCert in Education, Birmingham City University
- LLM in Law in Development, School of Law, University of Warwick
- LLB (Hons) the University of Central England in Birmingham (now Birmingham City University)
Memberships
Government
- Member, The Pro-Bono Lawyers Human Rights Panel, Consular Assistance Department, Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO), 2014-present
- Member, The Death Penalty Expert Group (a sub-group of the Foreign Secretary’s Advisory Group on Human Rights), Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), 2011-2016
Nongovernmental Organisations
- Founding Member, REPECAP: International Academic Network for the Abolition of the Death Penalty and Cruel Punishment, Madrid, Spain, 2009-present
- Consultant, Sudanese Human Rights Initiative, Khartoum, Sudan, 2015-present
- Trustee, Amicus, UK Death Penalty Charity, London, 2014
- Teaching Team Member: International Law and the Death Penalty, Amicus, 2006-present
- Journal Editor, Amicus Journal, 2004-7
- Editorial Committee, Amicus Journal, 2007-present
Academic
- Member, Society of Legal Scholars, 2018-present
- Fellow, Higher Education Academy, 2011-present
- Fellow, Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford, March 2019
- Honorary Research Fellow in Law, Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham, June-September, 2008.
- External Member, Surrey European Law Unit, School of Law, University of Surrey, 2008-2015
- Founding Member and the Director, Centre for Human Rights, Birmingham City University,
- Founding Member, Centre for American Legal Studies, School of Law, Birmingham City University
- Founding Member, Centre for Brexit Studies, Birmingham City University
Teaching
- LLB module: Global Perspectives on Human Rights (LAW4030)
- LLB module: United Nations: Law and Practice (LAW6075)
- LLM module: Human Rights in the Wider World (LAW7138)
Research
Professor Yorke’s research and scholarship has been used to inform human rights regions, governments and nongovernmental organisations. He was a founding member of REPECAP (Network for the Abolition of the Death Penalty and Cruel Punishment https://www.academicsforabolition.net/en/), and his scholarship was translated into Spanish for the use of the team of advisors for the Spanish government’s death penalty abolitionist policies during the presidency of the European Union and in the government’s statements in the UN General Assembly in 2008 and in the Human Rights Council in 2010.
During the early formation of the policies for the European External Action Service (EEAS) and the mandate on the abolition of the death penalty for the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Vice President of the European Commission, Professor Yorke was identified as an expert in European law and the death penalty and he was appointed as a member of the panel which drafted the policies to strengthen the EU instruments against the death penalty. Following this in 2013, Professor Yorke and Dr. Christian Behrmann, Policy Officer for Global and Multilateral Issues of the EEAS, co-authored a leading article on the EU and the abolition of the death penalty.
In 2017, Professor Yorke’s scholarship on international law was recognised during his advice to the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission and his work on lethal injection in Oklahoma has been included in the Death Penalty Information Center’s resources on execution methods.
Since 2019 his research has informed the numerous Stakeholder Reports that the UPR Project at BCU has filed in different member state’s review in the UN Human Rights Council. His forthcoming research outputs will focus on how the theory of utopia can inform the modalities of the UPR.
Postgraduate Supervision
Completed PhDs
- Amna Nazir, ‘Islamic Member State Justification for the Use of the Death Penalty within the Universal Periodic Review,’ completed 2019, funded by the Midlands4Cities Consortium
- Alice Storey, ‘Facilitating the Abolition of the Death Penalty in the United States: The Effectiveness of the UN Universal Periodic Review,’ completed 2018, funded by the Midalnds4Cities Consortium
Current Supervision
- Michael Lane, ‘The Universal Periodic Review and the United Kingdom,’ funded by the Midalnds4Cities Consortium (co-supervision with Professor Liz Wicks, School of Law, University of Leicester)
- Jyoti Wood, ‘Shakespeare and the Articulation of Human Rights in the United Nations,’ funded as a part-time Collaborative Doctoral Award (CDA), Midlands4Cities (https://www.midlands4cities.ac.uk/) (Joint supervision with The Rev Dr Paul Edmondson, Head of Research, The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust)
- Paul Malyon, ‘Lethal Autonomous Weapons and Artificial Intelligence,’ funded as a Graduate Teaching Assistant, BCU School of Law
- Ethan Reed, ‘SOGI Rights and the Universal Periodic Review: A Case-Study of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates,’ funded as a Graduate Teaching Assistant, BCU School of Law
- Lamin Daffeh, ‘The Right to Education in Ghana: The Implications of Poverty and Culture,’ part-time, current member of staff at BCU School of Law
External Examiner
- Laura Ford, ‘Exempting the Severely Mentally Ill from the Death Penalty in the United States of America: The Concept of Human Dignity,’ Birmingham Law School, College of Arts and Law, University of Birmingham, 2020
Publications
Monograph
- Utopia and the Abolition of the Death Penalty (current research project)
Edited Collections
- The Right to Life and the Value of Life: Orientations in Law, Politics and Ethics, (Oxford: Routledge, 2010)
- Against the Death Penalty: International Initiatives and Implications, (Oxford: Routledge, 2008)
Chapters in Edited Collections
- (with Alice Storey), Towards a World Without the Death Penalty, in Peter N. Stears, (ed) The Modern History of Death, (Oxford: Routledge, 2020)
- (with Amna Nazir), Imagining Utopia: The Global Abolition of the Death Penalty, in Carol Steiker and Jordan Steiker (eds), Comparative Capital Punishment (Edward Elgar Publishing 2019)
- (with Amna Nazir), Monotheism and the Death Penalty: Towards a Homogenous Exegesis for Abolition, in Russell Sandberg and others (eds), Research Handbook on Interdisciplinary Approaches to Law and Religion (Edward Elgar Publishing 2019)
- Deconstructing a Sovereign Right: The Hybridisation of the Anti-Death Penalty Discourse in Europe, in Nicholas Lemay-Hérbert and Rosa Freedman (eds) Hybridity: Law, Culture and Development, (Oxford: Routledge, 2017)
- Introduction: Criminal Justice, in Richard Martin, Sehum Areef and Victoria Miyandazi (eds) Global Perspectives on Human Rights, 3rd ed. (Oxford Human Rights Hub Blog, 2016)
- Capital Punishment, in Joel Krieger, Margaret E. Crahan, Craig N. Murphy, and Ayse Kaya, (eds) The Oxford Companion to Comparative Politics, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)
- The Right to Life and Abolition of the Death Penalty in the Council of Europe, in Peter Hodgkinson, (ed) The International Library of Essays on Capital Punishment, (Oxford: Routledge, 2013)
- Trato Inhumano y Abolición de la Pena de Muerte en el Consejo de Europa, Luis Arroyo, Paloma Biglino and William Schabas, (ed) Contra el Espanto: Por la Abolición de la Pena de Muerte, (Tirant lo Blanch, Valencia, 2012)
- Sovereignty and the Unnecessary Penalty of Death: European and United States Perspectives, in Austin Sarat and Jurgen Martschukat (ed) Is the Death Penalty Dying? European and American Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 236-268.
- Inhuman Punishment and the Abolition of the Death Penalty in the Council of Europe, in Luis Arroyo, Paloma Biglino and William Schabas (ed) Towards Universal Abolition of the Death Penalty, (Valencia: Tirant lo Blanch, 2010)
- The Council of Europe, the Right to Life and the Abolition of the Death Penalty, in The Right to Life and the Value of Life: Orientations in Law, Politics and Ethics, (Oxford: Routledge, 2009)
- The Evolving Human Rights Discourse of the Council of Europe: Renouncing the Sovereign Right of the Death Penalty, in Against the Death Penalty: International Initiatives and Implications, (Oxford: Routledge, 2008).
- [Spanish translation] La evolución del discourse de los derechos humanos del Consejo de Europa: la renuncia al derecho del soberano a imponer la pena de muerete, Luis Arroyo, Paloma Biglino and William Schabas, (ed) Hacia la Abolición Universal de la Pena Capital, (Tirant lo Blanch, Valencia, 2010)
- The European Union Strategy Against the Death Penalty: From Internal Renunciation to a Global Ideology, in V. Raghuram (ed), Capital Punishment: Concept and Context, (Icfai University Press, 2008).
Law Journal Articles
- An Experience of Time in the Capital Judicial Process, 24 Texas Journal of Civil Liberties and Civil Rights 2, 189-221 (2018)
- Comity, Finality and Oklahoma’s Lethal Injection Protocol, 69 Oklahoma Law Review 4, 545-621 (2017)
- Christian Behrmann and Jon Yorke, The European Union and Abolition of the Death Penalty, 4 Pace International Law Review Online Companion 1-79 (2013) http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/pilronline/39/
- Inhuman Punishment and Abolition of the Death Penalty in the Council of Europe, 16 European Public Law, 1, 77-104 (2010)
- The Right to Life and Abolition of the Death Penalty in the Council of Europe, 34 European Law Review 2, 205-229 (2009)
- Frankenstein’s Monster: A Review of Recent Literature on the Death Penalty in the United States, 54 International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 4, 1032-1039 (2005)
- Europe’s Judicial Inquiry in Extradition Cases: Closing the Door on the Death Penalty, 29 European Law Review, 4, 546-557 (2004)
Other Publications
- Review, Courting Death: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment, by Carol S. Steiker and Jordan M. Steiker, Journal of Law and Society 44 3 (2017)
- The Unnecessary Punishment of Death, Part 1, 28 Amicus Journal 18 (2012); Part 2: 29 Amicus Journal (2013)
- Book Review: Marie Mulvey-Roberts (ed), Writing for Their Lives: Death Row USA, 19 Amicus Journal (2008)
- The Evolving European Union Strategy Against the Death Penalty: From Internal Renunciation to a Global Ideology, Part 1, 16 Amicus Journal 24 (2006); Part Two, 17 Amicus Journal 26 (2007)
- Blanchot, Foucault, Levinas and Derrida: French Philosophy and the Deconstruction of the Death Penalty, 13 Amicus Journal 28 (2005)
- The Abolition of the Death Penalty for the Mentally Retarded: Is the United States Learning? Law, Global Development and Social Justice, vol. 1 (2004)
- The Death Penalty in Africa, 8 Amicus Journal 12 (2003)
- Book Review: Capitalist Punishment: Prison Privatization and Human Rights, Law, Global Development and Social Justice, vol. 2 (2003)
Work With Industry
Professor Yorke has advised human rights regions, governments, civil society organisations, and filed amicus curiae briefs on behalf of defendants in human rights cases.
As a member of the Pro-Bono Lawyers Human Rights Panel, the British government instructed Professor Yorke to compile the drafting teams for submission of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland on behalf of the British National Linda Anita Carty, who was sentenced to death in Texas in 2002. He led the drafting of the UK government’s briefs in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (2014) and the Supreme Court of the United States (2017).
Within the Centre for Human Rights, numerous amicus curiae briefs have been filed in state and federal death penalty cases in the United States, and various constitutional issues have been engaged with including juvenile executions, methods of execution, fair trial standards, and the impact of Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder upon the moral culpability of a defendant. He was the international law advisor to the Sudanese Human Rights Initiative for the litigation in Sudanese courts and in the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in the defence of the capital charges against Meriam Ibrahim in 2014.
Professor Yorke has advised National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs). In 2017, he was invited by the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission and the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions to be the International Law Advisor and member of an Expert Group to draft a submission to the Myanmar government on the initiation of an official moratorium on the death penalty with a view to complete abolition. From 2020, Professor Yorke has been advising the Gambia Human Rights Commission on developing human rights initiatives for access to justice. This is a continuing project.
Within the BCU Centre for Human Rights, Professor Yorke has utilised Stakeholder Reports to provide continued assessment of human rights issues in the Universal Periodic Review. Selected examples include in 2016 and 2021 on Sudan’s application of the death penalty, access to justice, freedom of religion, and women’s rights, and in 2020 recommending Myanmar reinforce the initiatives that were put into place for the country to remove the death penalty. In 2021 a Stakeholder Report was filed in Papua New Guinea’s UPR focusing on the deficiencies of the state’s capital judicial process and the overall inhumanity of the punishment. This included those convicting of murdering people for the perception of witchcraft and the practice of sorcery. In 2022 the PNG government has announced that it intends to abolish the death penalty and this policy will be reviewed in the forthcoming UPR. For more information on The UPR Project at BCU please click here.
Professor Yorke has also utilised this expertise in the UN in the Human Rights Committee when in 2017 he submitted (with Dr Amna Nazir) an Expert Submission on the Draft General Comment on Article 6 on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, on the right to life. In 2021 he submitted an Expert Submission to Ms. Mama Fatima Singhateh, UN Special Rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children, for her Call for Input for the report to the Human Rights Council in 2022. The submission focused upon the development of domestic and international legal strategies for combatting the human rights violations associated with forced, early and child marriage (CEFM).