Leslie Sebba – An appreciation
| Author | Joanna Shapland,David Miers,Edna Erez,Tinneke Van Camp,Jo-Anne Wemmers |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02697580221145060 |
| Published date | 01 January 2023 |
| Date | 01 January 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Obituary |
https://doi.org/10.1177/02697580221145060
International Review of Victimology
2023, Vol. 29(1) 150 –152
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/02697580221145060
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Leslie Sebba – An appreciation
Joanna Shapland
The University of Sheffield, UK
David Miers
Cardiff University, UK
Edna Erez
University of Illinois at Chicago, USA
Tinneke Van Camp
California State University, Fresno, USA
Jo-Anne Wemmers
Université de Montréal, Canada
The past and present Editors of the Review were saddened to hear of the death of one of its found-
ing Editors this past summer. Leslie Sebba’s energy and vision were crucial to its inception and
subsequent recognition within the victimological literature. More is said later concerning his con-
tribution to the Review’s development, but it should also be noted that Leslie enjoyed a wider repu-
tation as a leading scholar of children’s rights, and of criminal law and justice at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, where he held the Lawrence D. Biele Chair of Law, was Professor at the
Institute of Criminology and was twice its Director.
His co-edited book Children’s Rights and Traditional Values (Douglas and Sebba, 1998) exam-
ined the extent to which the recognition of the concept of children’s rights is affected by adherence
to religious, cultural and ethnic traditions. One important lesson which that book emphasised is
that there will always be tensions between the expectations of those who act within these traditions,
whether they are officials responsible for formulating and enforcing those rights, or those who seek
to rely on them.
The same tension is a central theme of his most significant work, Third Parties: Victims and the
Criminal Justice System, published in Sebba (1996). Leslie anticipated much of what we now take
as read as being the primary and recurring matters concerning the criminal justice system’s
responses to victimisation. He questioned the assumptions underlying the victim’s traditional role
Corresponding author:
Joanna Shapland, School of Law, The University of Sheffield, Bartolome House, Winter Street, Sheffield S3 7ND, UK.
Email: j.m.shapland@sheffield.ac.uk
1145060IRV0010.1177/02697580221145060International Review of VictimologyShapland et al.
other2022
Obituary
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