Professor Jon Yorke

Professor of Human Rights and Director of the Centre for Human Rights

School of Law

Email:: jon.yorke@bcu.ac.uk
Phone:: +44 (0)121 331 6704

Jon Yorke is the Professor of Human Rights in the School of Law and is the Director of the Centre for Human Rights. His qualifications include LL.B. (Hons) (BCU), LL.M. and Ph.D. (Warwick). He currently teaches LL.B. International Human Rights and LL.M. Human Rights in the Wider World.

Jon’s main interests include the United Nations, European Human Rights, English and European Medical Law, Capital Punishment, Legal Theory and the Temporality of Law. He welcomes applications for doctoral research in these areas.

Jon’s professional interests include:

Member, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Death Penalty Expert Group and the FCO Pro Bono Lawyer’s Panel
Consultant, the United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, the European Union and the Council of Europe
Member, the International Academic Network for the Abolition of the Death Penalty
Teaching Team Member, the internship training programme, Amicus

Areas of Expertise

Publications

Edited Collections

The Right to Life and the Value of Life: Orientations in Law, Politics and Ethics, (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2010)

Against the Death Penalty: International Initiatives and Implications, (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2008)

Chapters in Edited Collections

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, (Routledge, 2017)

Introduction: Criminal Justice, in Richard Martin, Sehum Areef and Victoria Miyandazi (eds) Global Perspectives on Human Rights, 3^rd 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, (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 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)

Yorke, Jon (2011) Sovereignty and the Unnecessary Penalty of Death: European and United States Perspectives. In: Is the Death Penalty Dying? European and American Perspectives. Cambridge University Press, pp. 236-268. ISBN 9781107634275

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, (Tirant lo Blanch, Valencia, 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, (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 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, (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 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

Comity, Finality and Oklahoma’s Lethal Injection Protocol, 69 Oklahoma Law Review (2017)

Christian Behrmann and Jon Yorke, The European Union and Abolition of the Death Penalty, 4 Pace Int’l L. Rev. Online Companion 1 (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, 2010; 77-104

The Right to Life and Abolition of the Death Penalty in the Council of Europe, 34 European Law Review 2, 2009, 205-229

Frankenstein’s Monster: A Review of Recent Literature on the Death Penalty in the United States, 54 International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 4, (2005) 1032

Europe’s Judicial Inquiry in Extradition Cases: Closing the Door on the Death Penalty, 29 European Law Review, 4, 2004, 546

Other Journals

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 (2012) 18; 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 (2006) 24; Part Two, 17 Amicus Journal (2007) 26

“Blanchot, Foucault, Levinas and Derrida: French Philosophy and the Deconstruction of the Death Penalty,” 13 Amicus Journal (2005) 28

“The Abolition of the Death Penalty for the Mentally Retarded: Is the United States Learning?” (2004) Law, Global Development and Social Justice, vol. 1

“The Death Penalty in Africa,” 8 Amicus Journal (2003) 12

“Book Review: Capitalist Punishment: Prison Privatization and Human Rights,” (2003) Law, Global Development and Social Justice, vol. 2