Events Calendar by Lawbore™

Webinar

• “The UK Budget 2024 – How Will This Impact Your Financial Planning?”
• Wednesday 13th November

Speakers:

• Mark Quaye APFS
• Director, Marque Wealth Management
• Simon Martin FPFS
• Technical Connections

Hosted on MS Teams

6pm with the meeting open from 5.30pm

Attendance at the seminar is free for everyone but to attend you must register beforehand due to limited spaces.

To register or if you have any queries please email events@bacfi.org or call 07507237218

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Join us on the afternoon of Wednesday 13 November for a Legal Cheek virtual student event in partnership with Pinsent Masons.

The theme is pro bono. We’ll be hearing how global law firms use their expertise and resources to help those unable to pay for legal advice.

At Pinsent Masons, lawyers are encouraged to spend 25 hours a year on pro bono or corporate social responsibility (CSR) related matters. Speakers, including London-based technology disputes solicitor Meghan Higgins, will discuss some of the recent pro bono matters they have worked on and explain how they balance such commitments with advising commercial clients.

We’ll also hear about the way in which students, trainees and junior lawyers can use pro bono to help develop their legal skills and give an extra dimension to their professional lives, while providing a valuable service to those in need.

After short talks and a panel discussion there will be virtual networking with the speakers, Pinsent Masons trainees and members of the firm’s graduate recruitment team.

Apply to attend. You’ll be asked to submit two questions for the firm.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Deka Chambers is a common law (mixed practice) set with strengths in advocacy and advisory work.

Join us at this virtual event to hear from a number of speakers about Pupillage at Deka Chambers and get the chance to have your questions answered.

A range of barristers, both new and established, will provide an overview of pupillage at Deka, discuss the application process, what it's like to be a pupil and a new tenant and what it's like further into your tenancy. You'll also get to hear from one of our clerks and get their perspective on life in chambers.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Hamlyn Lectures 2024: Routes to proper professionalism?

Lucidity, morality and accountabilities. 13th November, UCL, Faculty of Laws, London, 6pm

Richard Moorhead, Professor of Law and Professional Ethics, University of Exeter

This lecture will suggest routes to re-invigorating lawyers’ ethics. It will suggest reframing professional thinking so that lucid, practical, meaningful instantiations of integrity and independence match client loyalty. It will ask, does good judgment (and indeed the law) demand a place for morality in professional decision-making? And if so, what kind of morality? And how should uncertainty and risk be managed proportionately and without paternalism? An agenda for professional rule changes, regulatory practice, education, the courts, professional privilege and corporate governance is suggested by the orthodoxies the Post Office Scandal reveals; its victims demand our attention, and this lecture will propose ideas for action.

Chair

James Arbuthnot, Baron Arbuthnot of Edrom, PC was Member of Parliament (MP) from 1987 to 2015 and is now a life peer. He has been a leading campaigner on the Post Office Scandal for many years and sits on the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Are you considering a career at the bar and interested in applying for a pupillage at No5 Chambers?

Join No 5 at their pupillage evening and gain valuable insights into life at the bar.

Come along and meet barristers and clerks from the following  practice groups:

• Business and Property
• Personal Injury and Clinical Negligence
• Crime
• Public Law
• Immigration

This is a fantastic opportunity to connect with the team, gain firsthand knowledge about the pupillage process, and discover what it’s really like to pursue a career at the bar. Go to the chambers website to register (link below), but you can view their pupillage brochure online.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Join Donna for one hour and discover the Six Fundamental Principles on how to Burn Bright (not out!) in your legal career.

This Burn Bright Masterclass is for you if you are wondering:

• How to deal with the feeling of having too much to do and not enough time to do it!
• How to take back control of your day, your week, your life before it is too late and you burn out!

Learn all about the fundamental principles with Donna Smith, a former lawyer and burnout survivor herself. Donna will share with you her Burnout story and how her recovery led to the creation of the BURN BRIGHT PROGRAMME.

Zoom link below to register!

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Hear from a panel of Commercial, Chancery and Construction barristers discussing their journeys to the Bar and the day-to-day practice of commercial, chancery and construction law.

What makes the Commercial and Chancery bar different from other areas? Why is practice at a specialist set different? How can you find out more and gain relevant experience?

Michael Walsh – Serle Court Chambers (Chair)

Panellists:

David Hopkins – 39 Essex Chambers

Akash Sonecha – Essex Court Chambers

Olivia Anderson – Atkin Chambers

Tomos Rees – 5 Stone Buildings

This online event will start at 6pm.

The event will run for one hour until 7pm with a Q&A chat function enabling questions to be taken by the panellists.

A ZOOM link will be circulated to participants on the day.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Talk, Crazy Golf & Networking with GSK Stockmann

Networking can be daunting, but it is a vital part of your career. Events like this aim to make it a little less scary!

Kick off the evening with a welcome drink and the chance to meet and greet. Enjoy an engaging presentation about GSK Stockmann. Learn about our operations, policies, and corporate culture, and get to know what makes us unique, followed by a round of crazy golf to continue networking in a laid-back atmosphere.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Join us on the afternoon of Thursday 14 November for a virtual student event with Shoosmiths.

The theme is understanding corporate law firms. A panel of Shoosmiths lawyers from across a range of different practice areas and locations will take students on a journey through the ecosystem of finance and business, explaining law firms’ role advising companies on everything from mergers to disputes.

They’ll explore the relationship between private practice lawyers at law firms and in-house lawyers in companies’ legal teams, considering how these two groups interact on the deals that power the economy. And they will share insights on how law firms win new clients, and maintain relationships with existing ones, while also discussing some of the key principles of how law firms charge for their services and develop themselves as businesses.

The speakers will reflect, too, on their career journeys to date and give advice to students hoping to follow a similar path.

After short talks and a panel discussion there will be virtual networking with the speakers, Shoosmiths trainees and members of the firm’s early talent team.

Apply to attend. You’ll be asked to submit two questions for the firm.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Whether you are looking to study abroad, participate in a short-term program, or engage in a Global Leadership Award, our events are designed to provide the information and support you need to make informed decisions and succeed in your global journey.

A week-long series of events held every November, featuring information sessions, workshops, and networking opportunities with programme coordinators, past participants, and global partners. Learn about the variety of global programs available, including exchanges, short-term opportunities, and scholarships.

Get involved with our events and take the first step toward an enriching global experience. Whether you are just starting to explore your options or are already preparing to go abroad, our events are designed to provide the support and resources you need to succeed.

To kick off on day one we have - 

Introduction to Global Opportunities at City St George’s, with student panel

• 12:00 - 12:50pm
• Birley Lecture Theatre  (HG01)

All undergraduate students at City not in their final year are welcome to attend this one hour briefing on the opportunities available to study and work abroad.

Global Opportunities Fair

• 13:00 - 16:00pm
• The Pavilion (University Building)

1st and 2nd year students are invited to attend the Global Opportunities Fair to learn about their exchange and summer abroad options.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Flora Page is a barrister at 23ES Chambers who prosecutes and defends serious crimes. She played a pivotal role in overturning Post Office convictions in Hamilton and others. Currently, she represents 16 former Post Office workers in the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, including Teju Adedayo, Lee Castleton, Tracy Felstead, Seema Misra, and Janet Skinner.Flora's diverse legal career began at Clifford Chance and has included significant positions at the Law Commission, the University of Law, and the Financial Conduct Authority. She is now a member of the Legal Services Board and has recently resumed her PhD research at University College London.

This lecture will delve into the intricate dynamics of power and trust in a world where trust is both a precious commodity and a daily necessity. Flora Page will explore how those without power navigate their realities and trust's crucial role in their lives.Don't miss this opportunity to gain insights from one of the leading voices in the legal field.

Tickets for students are: £11.55

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

A webinar presented by the IBA Wellbeing Commission, supported by the IBA Academic and Professional Development Committee.

In March 2024 the IBA Professional Wellbeing Commission published the Guidelines for Wellbeing in Legal Education to provide an evidence-based and sustainable approach to improving the wellbeing of law students and staff. This webinar is focused upon law teachers/faculty and others legal education providers who have an interest in student wellbeing. It will introduce the Guidelines, discuss approaches to implementation and provide practical tips for using the Guidelines.

The webinar is designed to equip legal education providers (including law school staff, continuing professional development (CPD) providers and those who provide other forms of learning and educational opportunities for lawyers) with valuable insights and practical guidance on enhancing the wellbeing of both staff and students.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Whether you are looking to study abroad, participate in a short-term program, or engage in a Global Leadership Award, our events are designed to provide the information and support you need to make informed decisions and succeed in your global journey.

Global Opportunities Week: 18 – 22 November 2024

A week-long series of events held every November, featuring information sessions, workshops, and networking opportunities with programme coordinators, past participants, and global partners. Learn about the variety of global programs available, including exchanges, short-term opportunities, and scholarships.

Get involved with our events and take the first step toward an enriching global experience. Whether you are just starting to explore your options or are already preparing to go abroad, our events are designed to provide the support and resources you need to succeed.

For day two we have:

Global Opportunities Drop-in Session

• 10:00 - 14:00pm
• A228 (College Building)

Drop-in meetings with global opportunities student ambassadors and staff.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

The Statute Law Society Renton Lecture 2024

'When Homer nods: how courts respond to mistakes in legislation'

Lecture to be given by The Right Hon Lady Rose of Colmworth

Chaired by The Hon Mr Justice Garnham

About the speaker

Lady Rose started practising as a barrister in London in 1984 specialising in domestic and European Union Competition Law . After ten years in private practice, she joined the Government Legal Service as an advisory lawyer in central Government. She worked for 5 years in HM Treasury on financial services regulation, then in the Ministry of Defence during the 2003 Iraq war and finally in the Office of Speaker to the House of Commons. She was appointed to a number of part time judicial roles and then in 2013 joined the High Court as a fulltime Judge in the Business and Property Courts. She was promoted to the Court of Appeal in 2019 and then to the Supreme Court where she sits today.

Ticket fees Ticket price: £8

Lectures are free of charge for members of the Statute Law Society (SLS) and UCL Staff and Students.

Can't come in-person?
Book your online ticket at: https://ucl.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_9B8DGktqTiCQp8YBGB_7hw

Join the Statute Law Society

The Statute Law Society is a charity which aims to promote knowledge and understanding about legislation and the legislative process. Join via www.statutelawsociety.co.uk

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Annual General Meeting

• Wednesday 20th November 2024
• The meeting will be preceded by a talk by
• Barbara Mills KC, Chair Elect of the Bar for 2025
• To be held on Microsoft Teams at 6pm

Non- members welcome
The event is free to all. If you wish to attend you MUST register in advance by email: events@bacfi.org or call 07507237218 and the Teams invitation will be sent to you.

www.bacfi.org

Nearly 60 years of Representation, Education and Support for Employed Barristers

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

The development of EU space policy and the establishment of the EU Space Programme have long rested on a decoupling between the civilian aspects of space management, where the EU would play a leading role, and the use of space for defence purposes, which would remain exclusively in the hands of the Member States. Recent practice calls into question the rigidity of this separation.

On the one hand, security and defence considerations are increasingly incorporated in EU space policy and in the operation of the EU Space Programme.

On the other hand, the reaction to space threats is a major concern for the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). This dual dynamic gives rise to a peculiar model of coordination between CSDP and sectoral EU policies.

About the speaker

Alberto Miglio is associate professor of European Union Law at the University of Turin and Faculty Member of the Center for Transnational Legal Studies (Georgetown University) in London for the Fall Semester 2024.

His main research areas are differentiated integration, the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy, and EU private international law.

Since 2022 Alberto has been lecturing on Common Security and Defence Policy at the Centre for Higher Defense Studies of the Italian Ministry of Defence.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

The Garden Court Chambers Children’s Rights Team, in collaboration with UCL, invites you to a half-day in-person conference on Universal Children’s Day.

Programme:

2.00pm – 2.30pm: Registration, Teas & Coffee

2.30pm – 2.35pm: Welcome – Kate Aubrey Johnson, Garden Court Chambers Children’s Rights Team Convenor

2.35pm -3.10pm: Keynote Speech – Charlie Taylor, Chief Inspector of Prisons

3.15pm – 4.30pm: Workshop 1 (Choose One Session)

Challenging Discriminatory Behavioural Policies in Schools: Direct Discrimination, Children on Free School Meals & Neurodivergence

• Dr. Karen Graham, UCL
• Agness Agyepong, Black Child SEND
• Dan Rosenburg, Simpson Millar
• Ollie Persey, Garden Court Chambers

Religious Freedom, Cultural Identity, Political Expression, and School Exclusions

• Raheel Mohammed, Maslaha
• Dr. Layla Aitlhadj, Prevent Watch
• Florence Cole, Harrow Law Centre
• Grace Preston, Traveller Movement
• Amanda Weston KC, Garden Court Chambers

Understanding the School-to-Prison Pipeline: School Exclusion, Care Experience, Pupil Referral Units & Over-Criminalisation

• Alex Temple, Garden Court Chambers
• Denika Swack, GT Stewart
• Sabrina Simpson, Coram

4.30pm – 5pm: Refreshment Break

5pm – 6.15pm: Workshop 2 (Choose One Session)

Police in Schools – ‘Safer Schools’ or Criminalising Children including Criminal Records

• Florence Cole, Harrow Law Centre
• Victoria Hodgson, Specialist SENCO Teacher, London South East Academies Trust Outreach
• Ollie Persey, Garden Court Chambers
• Dr. Shabna Begum, CEO Runnymede Trust

Caring for Kids – Understanding Local Authority Duties & Protecting the Rights of Care-Experienced Children To Children in the CJS, Including The Care Needs of Children Who Are Unaccompanied Minors

• Dr. Laura Janes
• Jennifer Twite, Garden Court Chambers

Achieving a Fair Trial – Ensuring the Criminal Trial Process Meets a Child’s Needs

• Professor Helen Stalford, University of Liverpool
• Joanne Cecil KC, Garden Court Chambers

6.15pm – 6.45pm: Feedback Session 

6.45pm – 7.30pm: Plenary – How is Practice Changing Post ZA? – Mrs Justice May, Judge of the High Court of England and Wales

7.30pm – 9.00pm: Drinks & Networking

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

On 22 November 1974, the IRA planted bombs in two Birmingham pubs, killing 21 people and injuring almost 200 others.  Six men convicted of the bombings were later found to be innocent.  Fifty years on, Chris Mullin describes how he tracked down the real bombers and the implications for the British justice. Chris will speak about why miscarriages of justice are still happening despite the major changes in police process and the judicial system. After the event, he will be signing copies of his recently republished book, Error of Judgement.

‘Whoever planted the bombs in Birmingham…also planted a bomb under the British legal establishment’.   Robert Harris, The Sunday Times

‘One of the greatest feats ever achieved by an investigative reporter.’  Sebastian Faulks

‘Every so often a journalist starts an avalanche with a single gunshot’.   The Observer

‘The role of Mr Chris Mullin in this sorry affair leaves a nasty odour that will not go away’.  The Sun

Chris Mullin was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sunderland South from 1987 until 2010. In Parliament, he served as Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee and as Minister in the Department for Environment, Transport and the Regions, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and in the Department for International Development.

Before being elected as an MP, Mullin was a journalist, training with the Daily Mirror. In this period, Mullin travelled to Russia and China. From there, his first main activity as a journalist came in the Vietnam War. He has been highly critical of the American strategy in Vietnam and has stated that he believes that the war, intended to stop the advance of Communism, instead only delayed the coming of market forces in the country. Mullin also reported from Cambodia in 1973 and 1980.

Mullin, working for the Granada current affairs programme World in Action, was pivotal in securing the release of the Birmingham Six, a long-standing miscarriage of justice. In 1985, the first of several World in Action programmes casting doubt on the men's convictions was broadcast. In 1986, Mullin's book, Error of Judgment: The Truth About the Birmingham Pub Bombings, set out a detailed case supporting the men's claims that they were innocent. It included his claim to have met some of those who were actually responsible for the bombings.

His interviewer will be Sarah Kavanagh, Head of Media and Communications at the Bar Council since 2021. Previously, she was Senior Campaigns and Communications Officer at the National Union of Journalists (NUJ). She has been the force behind the campaign to support Barry McCaffrey and Trevor Birney, the two NI journalists who were arrested by the PSNI under the OSA over their documentary No Stone Unturned, which investigates the collusion over the Loughinisland massacre.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Serle Court is delighted to announce details of our Prospective Pupillage evening, hosted in chambers virtually on Wednesday, 20th November and in-person on Thursday, 21st November. 

The evening will provide information about what to expect during the application process, life as a pupil at Serle Court and insights into careers at the Commercial Chancery Bar. You will be able to meet barristers of different seniorities over refreshments and hear talks from members of chambers.

Serle Court particularly encourages members of groups who are under-represented at the Bar to come and meet us.

Date: Wednesday, 20th November & Thursday, 21st November

Time: From 18:30 

Location: Serle Court Chambers, 6 New Square Lincoln’s Inn, London WC2A 3QS

To indicate your interest in both our online and in-person open evenings, please fill out the form on their website.

To learn more about pupillage at Serle Court, click here. 

We hope to see many of you on the 20th  & 21st!

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This workshop will look at how to express your ideas clearly to create a well-structured piece of work.  We will look at planning techniques, covering how to plan each paragraph, to create an overall coherent piece of work with a clear structure and argument. 

To get the most out of these workshops you may wish to bring along your own piece of work. 

Each workshop in this three workshop mini-series will focus on a particular aspect of academic writing to help you improve your assignments and have them ready to submit. 

You can sign up for all three workshops or just one or two. 

These workshops will consist of 50-minute teaching, followed by an optional half hour for your own independent study where you can apply the principles to your own work, with an academic skills tutor on hand to answer your questions. 

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Finances stressing you out? You're not alone, don't worry!

Join us in welcoming Ashton from the Student Union, for this working on Financial Literacy. There will also be a chance to here about a project he's hoping to run with the law school. Don't miss out - watch this space for times.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Whether you are looking to study abroad, participate in a short-term program, or engage in a Global Leadership Award, our events are designed to provide the information and support you need to make informed decisions and succeed in your global journey.

A week-long series of events held every November, featuring information sessions, workshops, and networking opportunities with programme coordinators, past participants, and global partners. Learn about the variety of global programs available, including exchanges, short-term opportunities, and scholarships.

Wednesday 20th November 2024

For day three we have:

Introduction to Global Opportunities at City St George’s, with student panel

• 13:30-14:20pm
• AG21 (College Building)

All undergraduate students at City not in their final year are welcome to attend this one hour briefing on the opportunities available to study and work abroad.

How to Fund your Exchange or Summer Abroad Programme, with student panel

• 14:30 -15:20pm
• AG21 (College Building)

Learn about the funding options available for City's exchange and summer abroad programmes, as well as the costs of studying abroad and approaches to budgeting.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This lecture will be delivered by Professor Ben McFarlane, as part of the Current Legal Problems Lecture Series 2024-25

About the lecture

In his seminal Yale Law Journal articles, Hohfeld presented his general analysis of legal relations as a means to shed light on the much-discussed question of "the essential nature of trusts and other equitable interests". Over one hundred years later, that question is still fiercely debated, not least because its resolution has important practical effects, as shown by decisions such as Akers v Samba and Byers v Saudi National Bank in the UK Supreme Court and Carter Holt Harvey v Commonwealth of Australia in the High Court of Australia. In this lecture, it will be argued that, whilst significant progress has recently been made, our efforts to understand equitable property have been limited by a focus on three-party examples (as where A holds on trust for B and then transfers the trust property to C) which present a misleadingly simple picture. As Hohfeld noted, the search should be for "the right kind of simplicity" and understanding the power of equitable property requires us to look beyond such examples.

About the speaker

Professor Ben McFarlane has written widely in the law of equity, the law of property, and the law of obligations. He is Professor of English Law at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of St John's College, Oxford. He was a Professor of Law at University College London from 2012-2019. His 2008 book, 'The Structure of Property Law', set out a distinctive model for understanding equitable property and he will develop that model in this lecture.

About Current Legal Problems

The Current Legal Problems (CLP) lecture series and annual volume was established over fifty five years ago at the Faculty of Laws, University College London and is recognised as a major reference point for legal scholarship. Sign up for the mailing list to receive emails about Current Legal Problems lectures

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Serle Court is delighted to announce details of our Prospective Pupillage evening, hosted in chambers virtually on Wednesday, 20th November and in-person on Thursday, 21st November. 

The evening will provide information about what to expect during the application process, life as a pupil at Serle Court and insights into careers at the Commercial Chancery Bar. You will be able to meet barristers of different seniorities over refreshments and hear talks from members of chambers.

Serle Court particularly encourages members of groups who are under-represented at the Bar to come and meet us.

Date: Wednesday, 20th November & Thursday, 21st November

Time: From 18:30 

Location: Serle Court Chambers, 6 New Square Lincoln’s Inn, London WC2A 3QS

To indicate your interest in both our online and in-person open evenings, please fill out the form on their website.

To learn more about pupillage at Serle Court, click here. 

We hope to see many of you on the 20th  & 21st!

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Join us for the ALT's prestigious annual Lord Upjohn Lecture, bringing together legal academics and legal professionals to discuss key issues in law.

About The Event

What lies at the heart of poor lawyer wellbeing and how can we support a healthier, better performing profession? James Pereira KC will explore this question through a systemic lens, from the intimate realm of the individual through to the health of the wider system, and asking of each of us: what is our part and what can we do?

James Pereira KC is a practising barrister and certified coach. He read law at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and King’s College, London, where he was a Visiting Professor teaching masters’ students for several years. He was called to the Bar in 1996, and specialises in planning, environmental and compulsory purchase law ever since. Took silk in 2014. That same year he also suffered burn out through work and personal pressures. With coaching and therapy he found his way back to the top of the profession again, and was so impressed with the help he received he trained in it himself. He now provides coaching and training to the legal profession while continuing with practice at the Bar. He has a particular focus on the interaction between personal dynamics and professional performance, and the systemic influences that impact individual and group health. He is a contributing author to “Lawyer Health and Wellbeing” (ARK group, 2020), and has published in The Lawyer (co-writing the regular column “Loving Legal Life” for several years), Counsel Magazine, The Middle Temple Magazine and Dipika - the Journal of Iyengar Yoga, London.

This will be followed by a panel discussion of the implications for legal education featuring Elizabeth Rimmer (LawCare), Richard Collier (Newcastle University) and Aysha Mazhar (Keele University)

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

About

The Chair and Trustees of the British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII) are delighted to invite you to the Sir Henry Brooke Lecture 2024.

This year's lecture on 'The State of The World' will be given by Baroness Helena Kennedy of The Shaws LT KC FRSE FRSA.

Thursday 21 November 2024

Hybrid Event - In-Person 5.30-8.30pm/Online 5.30-7.30pm

A&O Shearman, One Bishops Square, London E1 6AD

A founding member of Doughty Street Chambers, Baroness Kennedy is one of the country’s most distinguished lawyers and accomplished legal and social reformers. Born and brought up in Glasgow, she is a member of the Bar, a King’s Counsel, a Bencher of Gray’s Inn, an Honorary Writer to the Signet, and the recipient of 42 Honorary Degrees and Fellowships from many universities (including those of St Andrews, Glasgow, London and Edinburgh) in recognition of her groundbreaking work on women and the law, and on widening participation in higher education. She has also been honoured by the Governments of France and Italy for her considerable work on women’s rights and education. She was created a life peer in 1997 and has been a strong advocate for social justice and the rule of law in the House of Lords. In March 2024, Baroness Kennedy was appointed to The Order of the Thistle, the greatest order of chivalry in Scotland, in recognition of the importance of her public service, and pioneering work in advancing human rights and social justice, both domestically and internationally.

This is a hybrid event. Registration for all attendees will close on Sunday 17 November at 11.59pm, or when bookings reach capacity, whichever is the sooner. Registrants will receive reminder e-mails, which for online attendees will contain the access link.

On 21 November, both the online waiting room and the in-person registration desk will open at 5.30pm, and the lecture will begin at 6.00pm. A Q&A session will follow, with a reception afterwards for in-person attendees.

BAILII is very grateful to A&O Shearman for generously hosting this event. BAILII also thanks the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and the University of London for their support.

Thursday 21 November 2024, 5.30-8.30pm (in-person)/Thursday 21 November 2024, 5.30-7.30pm (online)

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

What's that? Another pizza event in the Atrium? Go in then!

If you've been paying attention so far, you've probably noticed we like pizza here at City Law School.

Call it our way of picking you up towards the end of term...not long to go!

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This workshop will focus on ensuring that you are being critical in your work. We will look at how to critically analyse the sources that you read, and how to apply this in your writing. We will cover critical analysis in relation to critique of sources as well as critical reflection. 

To get the most out of these workshops you may wish to bring along your own piece of work. 

Each workshop in this three workshop mini-series will focus on a particular aspect of academic writing to help you improve your assignments and have them ready to submit. 

You can sign up for all three workshops or just one or two. 

These workshops will consist of 50-minute teaching, followed by an optional half hour for your own independent study where you can apply the principles to your own work, with an academic skills tutor on hand to answer your questions. 

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Whether you are looking to study abroad, participate in a short-term program, or engage in a Global Leadership Award, our events are designed to provide the information and support you need to make informed decisions and succeed in your global journey.

A week-long series of events held every November, featuring information sessions, workshops, and networking opportunities with programme coordinators, past participants, and global partners. Learn about the variety of global programs available, including exchanges, short-term opportunities, and scholarships.

Thursday 21st November 2024

For day four we have:

Global Opportunities Drop-in Session

• 10:00 - 14:00pm
• A228 (College Building)

Drop-in meetings with global opportunities student ambassadors and staff.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Speaker: David Vitale (University of Warwick)

Commentators: Prof Colm O’Cinneide (UCL Laws) and Prof Virginia Mantouvalou (UCL Laws)
Chair: Prof Jeff King (UCL Laws)

Abstract: In this edition of the Public Law Seminar Series, hosted by the Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism at UCL Laws, David Vitale will present on his new book, Trust, Courts and Social Rights: A Trust-Based Framework for Social Rights Enforcement. Following his presentation, Colm O’Cinneide and Virginia Mantouvalou will offer their remarks, leading into further discussions. The event will be chaired by Jeff King.

About the Book: Trust, Courts and Social Rights proposes an innovative legal framework for judicially enforcing social rights that is rooted in public trust in government or 'political trust'. Interdisciplinary in nature, the book draws on theoretical and empirical scholarship on the concept of trust across disciplines, including philosophy, sociology, psychology and political theory. It integrates that scholarship with the relevant public law literature on social rights, fiduciary political theory and judicial review. In doing so, the book uses trust as an analytical lens for social rights law – importing ideas from the scholarship on trust into the social rights literature – and develops a normative argument that contributes to the controversial debate on how courts should enforce social rights. Also global in focus, the book uses cases from courts in Africa, Europe, Latin America and North America to illustrate how the trust-based framework operates in practice.

About the Speaker: David Vitale is Associate Professor at the University of Warwick, School of Law. He is also currently the UK Principal Investigator for an ESRC-funded, multi-institution Trans-Atlantic Platform project on ‘Open Constitutional Democracy’. His work has been published in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Legal Studies and Global Constitutionalism, among others. David holds law degrees from the UK (LSE), the US (NYU) and Canada (Osgoode Hall Law School), as well as a degree in psychology (University of Toronto). He has worked as a judicial clerk to the Justices of the Court of Appeal for Ontario and the Supreme Court of Israel, has held various research positions globally and has practised as a litigator in Canada.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

ILPC Annual Conference 2024

AI and Power: Regulating Risk and Rights

The ILPC’s 9th Annual Conference will explore the risk and rights-based approaches to the regulation of AI-based systems, including generative AI, that are increasingly used across society. Particularly the implications of these systems for the rights and responsibilities of individuals and organisations. All panels will address the development and future of these approaches for policymaking and governance within the United Kingdom, Europe, and internationally.

Keynote speakers include:

Audrey Plonk  Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation (OECD)
Mark Johnson  Head of Advocacy (Big Brother Watch)
Luca Belli  Professor of Digital Governance and Regulation (FGV, Rio de Janeiro)
Orla Lynskey  Professor of Law & Technology (UCL)
Christopher Millard  Professor of Privacy & Information Law (QMUL)
Martin Husovec  Associate Professor of Law (LSE)
Franco Gigana Gidena  Policy Analyst (Access Now)
Lawrence McNamara  Criminal Law Team (Law Commission of England & Wales)
Graham Smith  Of Counsel (Bird & Bird LLP)
Rosamund Powell  Centre for Emerging Technology & Security (Alan Turing Institute)
John Naughton  University of Cambridge; The Observer

The ILPC Annual Conference will include the ILPC Annual Lecture 2024, and we are delighted to announce that this will be delivered by world-leading scholar danah boyd entitled:

‘Interventions Not Solutions in an Era of AI Policymaking’

Danah boyd is a Partner Researcher at Microsoft Research(Opens in new window) and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Georgetown University. Her research focuses on the intersection of technology and society, with an eye to how structural inequities shape and are shaped by technologies. She is currently conducting a multi-year ethnographic study of the U.S. census to understand how data are made legitimate. Her previous studies have focused on media manipulation, algorithmic bias, privacy practices, social media, and teen culture. Her monograph "It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens"(Opens in new window) has received widespread praise. She founded the research institute Data & Society(Opens in new window), where she currently serves as an advisor. She is also a trustee of the Computer History Museum(Opens in new window), a member of the Council on Foreign Relations(Opens in new window), and on the advisory board of Electronic Privacy Information Center(Opens in new window).

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

How do people talk about and seek justice beyond formal the legal system? What does it mean to testify publicly? What role do music, sound and voice play in the articulation of injustices?

This workshop, sponsored by the Law in Societies Research Cluster at Wolfson College, Oxford, will address the role of music, testimony, sound, and voice in making justice claims beyond the courts. Bringing together artists and academics, we will consider how music and other vocal and auditory practices document experience and make demands for redress and restoration that the courts cannot or will not hear. For example, folk songs may serve as archives of women’s rights and complaints, while hip hop or poetry may put forward the claims of people marginalised by the law. Survivors of sexual abuse may also use creative forms of testimony when they feel they are silenced by formal institutions and actors. These examples highlight the often-fraught relationship between formal testimony and listening. They also showcase the ways in which artists and ordinary citizens find extra-legal means to tell their stories about injustices. Drawing attention to voice and sound in and around the courts, we will think together about what sound and listening mean for justice.

The workshop will culminate with an evening performance and conversation by renowned folk singer, writer, and activist, Sam Lee. Sam will perform and speak about his work as a song collector, in the UK and beyond, to bring life to stories contained within song.

Workshop Programme

1.30pm Welcome and introductory remarks: Nomi Dave and Linda Mulcahy, The Buttery

2-3 Session One: Hearing Justice Chair: Nomi Dave Showing of Palais de Justice Artist Carey Young: The sound of the Palais de Justice

3-3.20 Tea coffee and biscuits

3.20-4.00 Session Two: Unheard Voices Chair: Ellie Whittingdale Poet Damian Gorman: Will I be heard? Trauma, Stories and Healing

4.00-4.40 Session Three: Visualising Justice Chair: Linda Mulcahy Artist Rawz: Finding Justice through Art

4.40-5.00 Comfort break

5.00-5.40 Session Four: Thresholds of hearing Chair: Nomi Dave Naomi Waltham-Smith, Oxford University: Hearing outside hearings: Audibilities at the limits of judicial regimes

6-7.30 Performance by Sam Lee, The Leonard Wolfson Auditorium, Wolfson College Chair: Linda Mulcahy

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This workshop will look at editing and proofreading techniques so that you can refine your work to ensure it is submission ready. We will look at how to improve your work at sentence and paragraph level, as well as the overall structure and coherence. 

To get the most out of these workshops you may wish to bring along your own piece of work. 

Each workshop in this three workshop mini-series will focus on a particular aspect of academic writing to help you improve your assignments and have them ready to submit. 

You can sign up for all three workshops or just one or two. 

These workshops will consist of 50-minute teaching, followed by an optional half hour for your own independent study where you can apply the principles to your own work, with an academic skills tutor on hand to answer your questions. 

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Whether you are looking to study abroad, participate in a short-term program, or engage in a Global Leadership Award, our events are designed to provide the information and support you need to make informed decisions and succeed in your global journey.

For day five (last day!) we have:

Choosing a Destination for your Exchange or Summer Abroad Programme

• 14:00-14:50pm
• AG08 (College Building)

Hear from staff and students about what to consider when choosing destinations for your Exchange or Summer Abroad Programme; learn about the benefits of each destination, the differences in learning and teaching styles, and the support available in each destination.

How to Prepare a Successful Global Opportunities Application

• 15:00-15:50pm
• AG08 (College Building)

Learn about the application process for the Exchange and Summer Abroad Programmes, and how to write an effective application to help you stand out from the crowd.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

A smaller pupillage fair & generally more commercial/civil sets in attendance. A must if you miss the Bar Council Pupillage fair.

Booking required (no entry unless you have booked a ticket).

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

The Open Day will include talks from members of chambers, including some tenants who undertook their pupillage here, on:

• Applying for pupillage
• Pupillage structure and support
• The tenancy decision
• Life as a junior tenant at Garden Court

The Open Day will take place in person at Garden Court Chambers.

Prospective pupils will have the opportunity to meet members of chambers and the support staff in an informal environment, and ask any questions they may have about pupillage and practice at Garden Court Chambers.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Join us for a discussion on how Muslim leaders can promote inclusivity and sustainability in today's challenging times!

We will be bringing together leaders, policymakers, academics, entrepreneurs, and innovators, from the UK and internationally, to discuss the challenges faced by Muslims globally and creating better working relations with other communities to resolve some of the most pressing issues of the day. The aims are to develop strategies for advancing sustainable development and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals with a focus on gender, youth, climate change and peacebuilding.

PANELS:

Conflict Resolution and the Roadmap to Regeneration

Art in the Formation of Cultural Identities

Female Stewardship in the Age of Disruption

Confirmed Speakers include:

• Naz Shah (Labour MP for Bradford West)
• Kristiane Backer (Art Consultant and former MTV presenter)
• Dr Saliha Mahmood Ahmed (Gastroenterologist & Masterchef Winner)
• Shaykh Haytham Tamim (Scholar and Founder of the Utrujj Foundation)
• Shavanah Taj (General Secretary, Wales Trades Union Congress)
• Shelina Janmohamed (Director of Consumer Equality, Ogilvy UK)
• Shana Mongwanga (Director, Producer & Democatic Republic of Congo Human Rights Campaigner)
• Dr Amineh Hoti (Global Program Director and International Peacebuilding Leader, University of Cambridge)
• Tasleema Alam (Artist and Founder of Traditional Ateliers) 
• Dr Sara Ibrahim Abdelgalil (Paediatric Consultant & Sudanese Human Rights Campaigner)
• Gulnaz Mahboob (Classically-trained Arabic & Islamic Calligrapher)
• Dr Althea-Maria Rivas, Senior Lecturer in Global Development, Peace & Conflict (SOAS)

More speakers to follow
Lunch is also included for ticket holders.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

If you have been to one of our Employability Induction Events, you may already have met Jake Schogger. Jake is a qualified lawyer, best-selling author, career coach, entrepreneur, copywriter and consultant. He is the founder and CEO of City Career Series, a publishing company that has sold ~50,000 handbooks designed to help students secure City careers, including the best-selling Training Contract Handbook and critically acclaimed Commercial Law Handbook. Definetely someone worth listening to!

At this online event, we will explore the following topics:

How to ace assessment centres and virtual interviews, including:

·       Overview of assessment centres

·       Setting yourself up for success

·       Psychometric tests

·       Group exercises

·       Negotiation exercises

·       Presentations and case study interviews

·       Asking questions

·       Virtual assessment centres: the platforms

·       Virtual assessment centres: professionalism

Sound interesting? Make sure you sign up today!

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

David Kennedy is considered one of the most influential international legal scholars of recent years. He is the Manley O. Hudson Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School, where he teaches international law, international economic policy, legal theory, law and development, and European law. He is the author of numerous articles and books on international law and global governance. His research draws on interdisciplinary materials from sociology and social theory, economics, and history to explore issues of global governance, development policy, and the nature of professional expertise. He is best known for his books The Dark Sides of Virtue: Reassessing International Humanitarianism (2004), Of War and Law (2006), A World of Struggle: How Power, Law, and Expertise Shape Global Political Economy (2016), and, more recently, Of Law and the World: Critical Conversations on Power, History, and Political Economy (with Martti Koskenniemi, 2023).

This event is part of the ‘Critical Legal Talks Series’, an international collaboration between the QMUL Law Department, the IHSS, CEILA, and the Group of Critical Studies in Politics, Law and Society (PoDeS) at the University of Buenos Aires.

The Series attempts to problematise the law and legal institutions from a critical and interdisciplinary perspective and provide a platform for discussion around global (in)justice for researchers aiming to bridge the Global North/South divide.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

About the lecture

This paper examines how criminal law assesses the reasons behind an offender's decision to act in violation of legal prohibitions. Adopting a cross-jurisdictional perspective that includes both German and common law traditions, it argues that Vorsatz (or mens rea) plays a crucial role in defining the wrongfulness of criminal actions, as criminal wrongdoing inherently involves wrongful intentionality by the offender. This wrongful intentionality is shaped by the interaction between an offender's motivating reasons and the normative reasons established by legal prohibitions. Rather than employing a simplistic binary approach that merely determines whether an offender’s actions align with or violate legal standards, this paper—drawing on Raz—demonstrates that different forms of mens rea or Vorsatz reflect qualitatively distinct ways in which offenders relate to what the law prohibits. Revisiting Antony Duff's distinction between "attacks" and "endangerments," the paper provides a new explanation of why these different forms of intentionality are significant at the level of wrongdoing, arguing that, due to the nomological structure of criminal law, intention (including oblique intention) and recklessness represent fundamentally different types of wrong, rather than merely different degrees of culpability.

About the speaker:

Philipp-Alexander Hirsch is a legal scholar and philosopher. He has led an independent research group on criminal-law theory at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law in Freiburg since 2022. His research focuses on criminal law and criminal procedure, legal philosophy and legal theory, and the history and philosophy of criminal law in the Age of Enlightenment.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Speaker is Michael Levenstein, barrister at Gatehouse Chambers

The Pupillage Advice Service at The City Law School presents a workshop on "How to Answer the Legal Problem Questions in Interviews" during the pupillage application process. 

This workshop will allow students to have a feel of how to approach a legal problem question and what a pupillage committee may be looking for. You will get the most out of the session if you attempt the scenario beforehand, but you will not be asked to contribute unless you wish to.  

The problem/scenario question will be added onto Lawbore Profession-Related Opportunities, which can be found on the City Hub part of the website from 4 PM on the 19th November. 

 Michael Levenstein, barrister at Gatehouse Chambers, will take students through a civil problem question.  

Refreshments will be provided in the Atrium thereafter. 

There will be printed copies available on the night.

Booking is not required - all students at City are welcome. 

About the lecture

The United Nations (UN) International Law Commission (ILC) was established by the UN General Assembly, in 1947, to undertake the mandate of the Assembly, under article 13 (1) (a) of the Charter of the United Nations to "initiate studies and make recommendations for the purpose of ... encouraging the progressive development of international law and its codification". Since then, the ILC has contributed in important ways to the development of public international law, both on foundational issues of sources, subjects, responsibility, and disputes, and within such particular specialist fields as law of the sea, diplomatic and consular law, international criminal law, and international environmental law.

Please join us to hear from a current ILC member about the role of the institution and its work in recent years.

About the speaker:

Professor Martins Paparinskis is Professor of Public International Law at UCL Laws. He is a member of the International Law Commission, Chairperson of its Drafting Committee (2023) and First Vice-Chair (2024).

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Global law firms are looking for sharp legal minds to solve complex problems and represent the needs of their diverse client base.

If you are a high performing undergraduate with a disability or long-term health condition who wants to pursue an exciting career in law, join us at our unique Explore the Law careers insight event on the 26th November 2024.

This is a unique opportunity to meet global law firms including A&O Shearman, Hogan Lovells, Kennedys, Latham & Watkins, Linklaters, and White & Case and gain a real insight into commercial law careers.

Attending will enable you to:

• Hear from our panellists how they manage their disability in the workplace
• Understand the importance of disability in the legal sector
• Learn what, when and how to disclose your disability to an employer
• Develop your confidence to request the support you require
• Expand your network with disability inclusive law firms

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

In 2023, the Law Commission of Canada re-emerged after a 17-year hibernation. The experience of discontinuity encourages broad and deep reflection on what a Law Commission can or should do, and how it justifies its existence. In particular, the relationship between legal education and law reform might be reimagined. Each can support and enrich the other in what might be surprising or unexpected ways that confront easy or usual assumptions. The vocation of a Law Commission can and should include supporting and enriching legal education; that of a Faculty of Law can and should include supporting and enriching law reform. I suggest that law students and legal scholars can be thought of as creators of law and active participants in its evolution, while jurists engaged in law reform can be understood to do so in classrooms, community organizations, and courts, as well as in law commission offices. All are at the same time plumbers, problem solvers, and poets. By challenging what we mean by “law reform” and “learning and researching law” along these lines, we may begin to see more clearly how both domains incorporate and indeed demand creativity, evolution, dreams and hope.

Speaker: Professor Shauna Van Praagh, President, Law Commission of Canada and Professor of Law, McGill University, Quebec

Chair: Professor Carl Stychin, IALS Director

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

The Rule of (Environmental) Law?: Some Reflections on the Aarhus Convention

presented by Áine Ryall, University College Cork

About the event

The rights guaranteed under the Aarhus Convention enable members of the public, including environmental non-governmental organisations, to act to defend the environment in the public interest.

This lecture delves into the role and influence of the Convention and its innovative compliance mechanism. It identifies significant new developments within the Aarhus framework concerning the protection of environmental defenders and broader threats to democracy and the rule of law. It offers insights into the complex process of integrating international environmental law obligations into domestic legal frameworks and reflects on the many challenges surrounding successful implementation.

It concludes with a brief look to the future and a renewed call for effective accountability mechanisms to uphold the rule of law and to protect participatory rights in environmental matters.

Speaker

Áine Ryall - Professor at the School of Law, University College Cork

About the Speaker

Áine Ryall is a Professor at the School of Law, University College Cork where she is Co-Director of the Centre for Law & the Environment. She is Chair of the Compliance Committee to the Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (Aarhus Convention). She is a member of the Avosetta Group of Experts on EU Environmental Law, a Vice-President of the Irish Centre for European Law (ICEL) and a member of the Academic Panel at Francis Taylor Building, Inner Temple, London. She serves on the Audit and Risk Committee of the Environmental Protection Agency (Ireland)

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

About the event

The lecture will address the different processes of adjusting international human rights law to the challenges posed by new and emerging digital technology, including the re-interpretation of existing human rights to cover the needs and interests of individuals impacted by digital products and services, the introduction of new digital human rights and the expansion of obligations to respect and ensure human rights to technology companies.

Ultimately, the lecture will discuss the question of “fit” between international human rights law created to deal with a specific set of challenges posed by the modern state and the post-modern challenges posed by the political, economic and technological structures of the digital age.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

UK Law Fair (London)

Join us at the Common Room, London Law Society for an exciting day filled with networking opportunities and career advice !

Don't miss out on this chance to connect with top law firms, meet fellow law enthusiasts, and learn more about the legal industry. Whether you're a student, a recent graduate, or a seasoned professional, there's something for everyone at the UK Law Fair (London)!

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Our more eagle eyed readers will have noticed this event is up twice - if you want to to this event, but dont want to go alone, why not go along with Women in Law society?

Join WIL as we head to The Law Society for England and Wales for their annual Law Fair!

Step into the heart of the legal profession with Women in Law’s exclusive trip to the annual Law Fair at the Law Society of England and Wales! This event is a powerful opportunity to connect with leading barristers' chambers and top-tier solicitors' firms, where members will network directly with esteemed legal professionals, learn from their experiences, and gain exclusive insights into the evolving world of law. You’ll have the chance to engage in meaningful conversations, explore various legal career paths, and pick up practical advice on navigating the profession with confidence.

Whether you're looking to expand your network, learn about diverse practice areas, or build relationships that could shape your future career, this trip promises to inspire, empower, and equip you with the connections and knowledge to excel. 

Dont miss out, secure your ticket today

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Skills training for early career practitioners is a core part of the Bar Human Rights Committee (BHRC)’s learning and training advocacy track, bridging the widening gap between academic knowledge and real-world practice and offering perspective and experience exchange on various aspects of practice, including client interaction and interviewing, advanced advocacy techniques, and vital communication and leadership skills. BHRC is committed to supporting our members and partner networks with opportunities to develop these essential skills for human rights practice and to build the confidence and capacity to handle complex, challenging human rights cases using a holistic, human-centred, trauma-informed approach.

The Human Rights Lawyers Association (HRLA) is open to all connected with the law and the legal profession who have an interest in human rights law in the United Kingdom. The Association currently has over 2,000 members including solicitors, barristers, advocates, judges, government lawyers, legal academics, legal executives, in-house lawyers, pupils, trainees and law students. HRLA exists to increase knowledge and understanding of human rights and to aid their effective implementation within the UK legal framework and system of government.

BHRC and HRLA are proud to be partnering on this event as a follow up to the ‘Human Rights Careers, Skills & Values’ seminar jointly hosted in November 2023. Through a half-day programme of intensive but insightful and interactive sessions, ‘Skills for Human Rights Practice’ aims to support the development of confidence, community and competency among junior members of the Bar and the legal profession overall, with content specifically designed to help early career practitioners, pupils, trainees and law students skill up in key areas that support advanced, human-centred advocacy approaches to human rights practice. Speakers will be drawn from the Executive Committees and member networks of BHRC and HRLA, as well as valued contacts from the legal profession, from NGOs and higher education.

The half-day seminar will be open to UK and members of BHRC and HRLA, UK and international law students (including undergraduates and postgraduate / postdoctoral researchers), trainee solicitors, pupil barristers and early- to mid-career solicitors and barristers who are already working in or interested in moving into human rights practice, or more deeply embedding a rights-based approach within their legal and professional practice in general. Please bookmark this page for updates on speakers, agenda and registration, or to register, please do so here.

Session Programme [Subject to Change]

Event Hosts: The Bar Human Rights Committee & Human Rights Lawyers Association (Zoom)
Speakers: Members of the BHRC & HRLA Executive Committees plus Special Guests
Convenor: Dr Louise Loder (BHRC Project Team, HRLA Executive Committee)
Date: Wednesday 27 November 2024 on Zoom
Time: 12:00 – 16:00 (with break)

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

The History of Double Jeopardy and Criminal Jurisdiction: Gamble v U.S. (2019) and R v Hutchinson ( 1677 ) (Profs Mumford and Alldridge)

Synopsis

In a 2019 decision of the United States Supreme Court – Gamble v US - the question was whether an acquittal or conviction in a different jurisdiction falls within the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment so as to provide a defence. The Court answered that it did not have enough evidence about the English case upon which the appellant relied – Hutchinson - to hold that English law in 1676, and hence at the time of the ratification of the US Constitution, was that an overseas acquittal would support a claim of autrefois acquit. This prompted us to engage in a search for better evidence (than was before the US Supreme Court) as to what happened in Lisbon in December 1675 and subsequently. The narrative that emerges is of conflict and attempted revenge in the highest echelons of Restoration society. By identifying the actors in and the politics of the case we show that the decision of the United States Supreme Court was made on an incorrect premise.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

About the conference

On the occasion of the newly published book Women, Gender and Constitutionalism in Latin America, edited by Francisca Pou Giménez, Ruth Rubio Marín and Verónica Undurraga Valdés (Routledge, 2024), the Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism invites you to join an international group of academics to engage with questions of constitutionalism through the lens of gender.

The Book About the conference

Women, Gender and Constitutionalism in Latin America (Routledge, 2024) discusses how and to what extent constitutional design and practice in Latin America have helped in combatting the subordination of women and LGBTQIA+ people. Covering eleven jurisdictions, this book offers an overview of common features and challenges revealed by a gender-sensitive approach to contemporary Latin American constitutional law and practice. The chapters identify the key elements of the constitutional gender order, examining jurisprudential and legislative developments in areas such as equality and non-discrimination; self-determination and gender identity; quotas and gender parity; family structure and same-sex marriage; sexual and reproductive rights; gender-based violence; and work, care and economic citizenship.

In the context of a constitutionalism that has been celebrated as particularly innovative and socially engaged, the book assesses constitutional performance in the quest to supersede the separate gendered spheres tradition and the subordination of women and sexual minorities to heteronormative hegemony.

The book provides much-needed insight into matters that are relevant for legal and socio-legal scholars, an ever-growing number of social actors and movements, and all those interested in comparative constitutionalism and in the intersections between law and gender.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

With a combined 35+ years' experience as barristers (covering family, general/white collar crime, commercial, contentious regulatory and FS litigation) and 20+ years' experience working with trauma and distress, Camilla and Rebecca both now run coaching and consultancy businesses. Together, they founded Trauma Informed Law.

Trauma Informed Law specialises in providing education and support in respect of trauma, distress, heightened emotions and overwhelm within the legal profession. Their lived experience of the legal world, combined with their specialist somatic coaching skills, means that they are able to approach these topics in a way that is safe, relatable and empowering, allowing space for discussion and response.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Join us for a 1 hour seminar on Vicarious Trauma, hosted by Trauma Informed Law

With a combined 35+ years' experience as barristers (covering family, general/white collar crime, commercial, contentious regulatory and FS litigation) and 20+ years' experience working with trauma and distress, Camilla and Rebecca both now run coaching and consultancy businesses. Together, they founded Trauma Informed Law. Trauma Informed Law specialises in providing education and support in respect of trauma, distress, heightened emotions and overwhelm within the legal profession. Their lived experience of the legal world, combined with their specialist somatic coaching skills, means that they are able to approach these topics in a way that is safe, relatable and empowering, allowing space for discussion and response.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

In 2023, the Law Commission of Canada re-emerged after a 17-year hibernation. The experience of discontinuity encourages broad and deep reflection on what a Law Commission can or should do, and how it justifies its existence. In particular, the relationship between legal education and law reform might be reimagined. Each can support and enrich the other in what might be surprising or unexpected ways that confront easy or usual assumptions. The vocation of a Law Commission can and should include supporting and enriching legal education; that of a Faculty of Law can and should include supporting and enriching law reform. I suggest that law students and legal scholars can be thought of as creators of law and active participants in its evolution, while jurists engaged in law reform can be understood to do so in classrooms, community organizations, and courts, as well as in law commission offices. All are at the same time plumbers, problem solvers, and poets. By challenging what we mean by “law reform” and “learning and researching law” along these lines, we may begin to see more clearly how both domains incorporate and indeed demand creativity, evolution, dreams and hope.

Speaker: Professor Shauna Van Praagh, President, Law Commission of Canada and Professor of Law, McGill University, Quebec

Chair: Professor Carl Stychin, IALS Director

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This lecture will be delivered by Joana Mendes, as part of the Current Legal Problems Lecture Series 2024-25

About the lecture

The liberal democratic ideal that public law can keep within reviewable bounds the exercise of public power and that administrative powers are necessarily subordinated to the law has been, in the EU and elsewhere, an important condition of the legal and political legitimacy of the exercise of public power, an antidote to the authoritarian connotations of administrations. In the EU, it has turned the Court of Justice into a pillar of integration, as the ultimate arbiter of its law. This perspective, however, ignores that administrations can be constitutive of legal regimes that delimit their mandates by reference to the pursuance of public interests. Administrations can create their own powers while exercising their attributed competences: in given circunstances, they get to interpret key legal norms and they give content to the public interests that they were set up to pursue. In these cases, courts do not control administrative powers, they enable them. Control would mean disrupting the administrative system that supports the functions that administrations must fulfil in contemporary societies, in which they are deeply imbricated. This is not an anomaly, but a feature of those functions, which public law must accommodate.

In this lecture, Dr Joana Mendes will argue that a more realistic understanding of the relationship between law and administrative power, commensurate with the constitutive role of administrations, requires us to abandon the assumption that legal norms establish material (and judicially ascertainable) limits to administrative action when they enable administrations, for example, to prohibit mergers that constitute a “significant impediment to effective competition” (CJEU judgment CK Telecoms on mergers, 2023), to take the necessary and suitable actions to secure “price stability” (Gauweiler, 2014, and Weiss, 2019, on the legal boundaries of monetary policy) or “financial stability” (Fundación Tatiana Perez, 2024, on the delegation of powers to EU agencies), or to authorise pesticides because they do not have “undesirable effects to the environment”. I will foreground the role of public administration in EU integration as a continuation of the political role that administrations have in contemporary societies and the ensuing tensions with liberal constitutional premise of subordination to legal norms and judicial control.

About the speaker

Joana Mendes is Professor of Comparative and Administrative Law at the University of Luxembourg since 2016, where she teaches courses in Comparative Administrative Law and EU Law. She graduated in law and obtained a master’s degree in public law at the University of Coimbra (Portugal). She has a doctor degree from the European University Institute (Italy). Before joining the University of Luxembourg, she worked at the University of Amsterdam, where she was Associate Professor at the Department of International and EU Law and PhD Dean. She has been a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Yale Law School (2014). She has also taught as a guest lecturer at the University of Coimbra, the European University Institute, the LUISS Carlo Guidi School of Government (summer school), and at the Legal and Judicial Training Centre of Macao. She is co-founder of European Law Open and was previously co-editor of the European Law Journal. She is a member of the editorial board of the German Law Journal, of the Steering Committee of ReNEUAL (Research Network of European Administrative Law) and was member of the Council of the International Society of Public Law between 2017 and 2022.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Attend our corporate and commercial panel event to learn how to navigate training contracts and vacation schemes in law. Hear from legal professionals who will offer advice on applications, interviews, and choosing the right firm. It's a great opportunity for aspiring solicitors to gain practical tips, network, and explore career options.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

About

Bringing key Shakespeare texts into dialogue with feminist socio-legal research, this book investigates the notion of a ‘crime of passion’ – indicatively, wife-killing. Its key concern is to bring attention to a cultural and legal revolution widely overlooked even in the law field where it occurred. Fifteen years ago, the English Parliament passed a controversial law abolishing the defence of provocation. Explaining the new law, reformers said that this so-called ‘heat of passion’ defence had allowed men to get away with murder by blaming the victim. Abolishing it in cases of alleged ‘infidelity’ would ‘end the culture of excuses’. Unpacking what was at stake in the reformers’ revolutionary challenge to the English law of murder’s age-old concession to ‘human frailty’ in ‘red mist’ rage cases, this book charts passion’s progress in wife-killing cases over the centuries. It commences in the early modern era when jurists were busy distinguishing murder from manslaughter and, contemporaneously, Shakespeare set about querying culturally inscribed excuses for femicide in his plays, Titus Andronicus and Othello.

This book will appeal to feminist and socio-legal scholars, criminologists and those working in the fields of law and literature, legal theory and Shakespeare studies. More widely, it will appeal to anyone interested in so-called ‘crimes of passion’.

"Howe's book is a substantial and significant new work on loss of self-control in homicide cases, and a fine example of how painstaking study of the interrelation of law, literature and culture may pay significant scholarly dividends" Jeremy Horder, The London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.

About the author

Adrian Howe is an Honorary Principal Fellow

School of Historical and Philosophical Studies

University of Melbourne

Act 1 The book

Act 2 A performed reading of Act 2, the Courtroom, Othello on Trial (or the tragedy of Desdemona, the wife)

Act 3 You’re the Jury! (Or: the coming community of inquirers, a rehearsal)

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Followed by a drinks reception at 6:30 pm.

Fashion Law is a burgeoning, complex, and exciting area of interdisciplinary practice and research. Expertise must begin with fashion itself, understanding its complexity as a creative and commercial industry: its expression through art and design; its access as a resource for cultural participation; its performance through workers, models, and consumers; its commercialisation and real estate; its waste and sustainability; its innovation and advancements in technology. Fashion practice demands not only an interdisciplinary proficiency in the law but also an affinity with fashion itself as a form of cultural identity and participation. Fashion thus extends throughout our cultural, social, political, and legal lives, and fashion research and practice really must live fashion. In this public lecture, Professor Gibson explores the horizons in fashion law education, research, and practice and outlines the importance of attention to legal education in fashion and creating opportunities within the legal academy for the development of this practice area and the establishment of the discipline.

Speaker: Professor Johanna Gibson - Herchel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property Law, Director Intellectual Property Programme, Convenor, Fashion Law at CCLS/School of Law

Johanna Gibson is Herchel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property Law, Director of the Intellectual Property Law LLM in the School of Law and the Deputy Director of the Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies (CCLS). Professor Gibson convenes Fashion Law and chairs the Film Fashion Forum at CCLS and publishes widely in fashion, film, and the creative industries. She is also Editor-In-Chief of the Queen Mary Journal of Intellectual Property (QMJIP). Before joining CCLS, Johanna practised law in Melbourne, Australia at Allens, specialising in Intellectual Property, Media and Communications Law, and Competition Law.

Fashion Law at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies

Professor Gibson introduced a fashion law pilot in 2008, making CCLS in the QMUL School of Law one of the first law schools in the UK, and indeed around the world, to introduce fashion law on its postgraduate LLM programme. Professor Gibson then expanded the offerings in 2014 to address the breadth of intellectual property rights in fashion, as well as the interaction between intellectual property and other areas of law (including equality and diversity, commercial practices, data protection, sustainability and ESG, social media and influencer marketing, and fashion in the metaverse), making CCLS home to the biggest LLM fashion cohort in the UK. CCLS now boasts the largest postgraduate LLM community in fashion law in the UK, with 1000s of fashion law alumni around the world.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Learn about how the right to judicial divorce came to be part of substantive Maliki law.

The Centre of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law will host a public lecture on:

Doctrinal Change in Islamic Law: the Right of a Wife to Judicial Divorce

Professor Mohammad Fadel, Professor of Law, University of Toronto will speak about the Maliki rule permitting wives' access to judicial divorce upon proof of harm (darar)' and how this rule has become widely adopted in modern Islamic family law. Yet, the concept of darar as grounds for a judicial divorce is absent in the earliest sources of Maliki law. This talk will discuss how the right to judicial divorce came to be part of substantive Maliki law and what that process tells us about how doctrinal change took place in Islamic law in the age before parliaments.

Join experts Professor Lynn Welchman, Professor of Law (SOAS) and Professor Mashood Baderin, Professor of Law (SOAS), who will discuss Professor Fadel's research. This event will take place on 28 November from 7-9 pm at the Paul Webley Wing, SOAS, in the Senate Wolfson Lecture Theatre (1st Floor).

Mohammad Fadel is a professor of law at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. He has written extensively in Islamic legal history, Islam and liberalism, modern Islamic reform movements, and international law.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Beyond the Spectacle: Exploring the Nexus of Art, Migration, and the Law

In a unique partnership between the University of Westminster’s HOMELandS Research Centre and Migration Collective’s London Migration Film Festival, this Symposium will bring together scholars, artists, performers, legal experts, and activists to explore the interconnected themes of art, migration, and law. The aim is to facilitate interdisciplinary dialogue, and collaboration, and ultimately drive change.

In the past few decades, there has been an unprecedented proliferation of socially engaged art. Particularly since the 2015 "Refugee Crisis," migration and mobility have sparked extensive discussion, representation, and engagement across various disciplines, including the arts. Art has the power to subvert structures, inform, and evoke emotion. We recognize its potential as a soft-power tool to raise awareness, counter harmful political rhetoric, and shift cultural and societal norms.

Conversely, law may be perceived as a strictly normative and seemingly neutral set of rules that governs behaviour and the relationship between individuals and the state. In this sense, it can appear as the antithesis of art. However, law, especially common law, is continuously contested and (re)created, making it, like art, generative. If something has the capacity to influence or transform law—whether directly or indirectly—it wields power, and art has proven to be an increasingly potent force for transformation and subversion.

This Symposium, through the contributions of artists, activists, and researchers, will specifically explore how and where art intersects with legal structures, with a particular focus on migration.

For further information please contact Dr Federica Mazzara (University of Westminster):

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

If you have been to one of our Employability Induction Events, you may already have met Jake Schogger. Jake is a qualified lawyer, best-selling author, career coach, entrepreneur, copywriter and consultant. He is the founder and CEO of City Career Series, a publishing company that has sold ~50,000 handbooks designed to help students secure City careers, including the best-selling Training Contract Handbook and critically acclaimed Commercial Law Handbook. Definetely someone worth listening to!

This is a highly personal, immensely practical session - delivered by an ex-Magic Circle (and current practising) lawyer - designed to equip you with the professional skills and insider insights needed to effectively navigate a corporate environment as an intern, a paralegal, or a trainee solicitor. 

In particular, we'll be covering:

• Practical career administration (e.g. choosing which team to sit in, dealing with time recording, secondments and qualification etc.)
• Interacting effectively with colleagues and supervisors
• Handling appraisals and feedback
• Time management techniques
• How to take instructions and ask the right questions
• How to approach new legal tasks 
• Key professional legal skills
• Microsoft Office tips and tricks

There will also be time for an in-depth Q&A, where you’ll be able to ask Jake Schogger about the good, the bad and the ugly!

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Revision is stressful, there's no way around that. Exams aren't meant to be easy, but we can try our hardest to make it easier.

We will discuss effective, multisensory ways to revise for your exams and try some out! 

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

The lecture Affording Justice: Financing dispute resolution in the 21st century is to be given by The Rt Hon Lady Justice Andrews DBE, and will be chaired by James Kitching (Vice Chair, BACFI). The event is organised by BACFI (The Bar Association for Commerce, Finance and Industry) and is sponsored by LexisNexis and Marque Wealth Management.

This event is free for all to attend but you must register beforehand as there are limited spaces available.

To register or if you have any queries, please email events@bacfi.org

Crown Office Chambers look forward to welcoming prospective applicants to their Open Evening. Come and meet members of Chambers and learn about life at Crown Office.

To attend, email events@crownofficechambers.com

The EU is flexing. It has updated its trade defence instruments and seems prepared to use them more routinely. With the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism it has extended its carbon trading regime to production abroad.

In adopting the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive it aims better to police multinational corporations’ activities extraterritorially. Yet could and should it work? What are the pitfalls?

The Chair:

Ugljesa Grusic - Professor of Private International Law (UCL)

Speakers:

Geert van Calster - Professor University of Leuven

Prof van Calster - Senior fellow at both Monash University’s Law faculty (Melbourne) and Melbourne University Law School and adjunct professor at American University

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

The lecture focuses on the role of the individual as a subject of European Union law. It explains the rights and standing of the individual before courts with jurisdiction to deal with EU law and the rights related to free movement and settlement. The first part of the lecture is dedicated to the nature of EU law within the context of international and local law as a sui generis legislation. It then evolves into how the individual participates in enacting and enforcing EU law. Reference is made to the citizen's access to the European Parliament the MEPs, and the national courts necessary to interpret and apply EU law in the domestic context. In this part, the citizen must understand the relationship between the domestic courts and the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU). The third part of the lecture deals with EU institutions' access, particularly direct access to the CJEU by private citizens. Here, brief reference is made to the notion of locus standi for actions of annulment under Art 263 TFEU and access to the European Ombudsman. The final part of the lecture is dedicated to free movement and the rights of third-country nationals in EU member states. The lecture does not focus on UK law post-Brexit or on Brexit itself. However, it deals with British citizens' rights in EU countries, particularly as potential third-country permanent residents in the EU.

The event is intended to be a collaboration between the University of Malta and the IALS under the umbrella of Associate Fellows' contributions to the IALS. The lecturer is a recipient of a Jean Monnet Chair at the University of Malta. The project is about EU citizens and individuals' rights under EU law, hence the subject of the lecture. While the project is mainly implemented at the University of Malta, it does provide for outreach at other universities in Europe, irrespective of whether these are located within the EU or in third countries. As part of the fellowship opportunity with the IALS, the IALS is listed within the programme as one of the potential beneficiaries of this project.

After Brexit, the EU remains a topic of interest to the UK, irrespective of how the relationship continues evolving. Hence, the lecture interests British citizens and international students studying in the UK. The lecture is purely from a legal perspective and does not discuss political issues. 

The topic fits the strategic plan and is a way to understand the legal implications of current affairs. It is of general interest and goes beyond academia. It discusses EU citizens and individual rights from a practical perspective. 

Speaker: Prof Ivan Sammut – Associate Professor University of Malta and Associate Fellow IALS.

Chair: Dr Constantin Stefanou, IALS Taught Programmes Director and Director of the Sir William Dale Centre for Legislative Studies

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

The annual UCL Institute of Brand and Innovation Law's Innovation Seminar

About the Event

It is generally accepted that ‘modern’ UK patent law took root in the (first) steam-driven industrial revolution of the 18th century. On the whole, the basic tenets of patent law established back then seemed to flex and so weather the next two industrial revolutions that followed.

But now, as we find ourselves in what is dubbed ‘4IR’ or ‘Industry 4.0’, speculation abounds over the suitability of current patent law in an AI-driven world. Ahead of stakeholder consultations, the previous UK government acknowledged that patent law might need revision in order to ‘unleash the transformational power of Artificial Intelligence’, but what is the optimal patent protection for AI systems and AI-assisted inventions? And how different might it look from the status quo?

At a conference, entitled ‘AI Frontiers in Intellectual Property Law: Navigating the Future’ held at QMIPIR, a neighbouring institution, earlier this year, Lord Justice Richard Arnold identified a number of basic issues that patent law and policy should look to address, including:

• What activities does patent law need to incentivise, and where should the balance be struck if aiming to motivate technical innovation by applicants and to encourage public disclosure of inventions (to stimulate innovation by others)?
• How does the requirement of public disclosure work if an invention is made by machine learning (perhaps using non-public data), and how important is it?
• If we try to fit AI-generated inventions into the existing system, how will patent requirements, such as inventive step and sufficiency be applied?

Our expert panel will use these questions as the spring board to initiate a much-needed debate on this important area.

The Panel

The UCL Institute of Brand and Innovation Law has brought together a distinguished panel to evaluate the adequacies of patent law in the AI-age.

• Virginia Driver, CPA, EPA, Page White Farrer
• Matt Hervey, Head of Legal and Policy at Human Native AI, General Editor of The Law of Artificial Intelligence
• Michael Prior, Deputy Director of Patents Policy, UKIPO
• Professor Noam Shemtov, Queen Mary University of London

Chair: Carter Eltzroth, Legal Director, DVB

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Not long to go to the end of term! This can be a stressful time of year and it can be hard to prioritise anything other than work and study. Why don't you spend time time on your physical and mental health?

CitySport has very kindly agreed to host a free yoga session for us in the Atrium - join us! You might find a new hobby, or just create a nice memory with your friend. Yoga has a whole host of wonderul benefits, what do you have to lose?

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

The lecture focuses on the role of the individual as a subject of European Union law. It explains the rights and standing of the individual before courts with jurisdiction to deal with EU law and the rights related to free movement and settlement. The first part of the lecture is dedicated to the nature of EU law within the context of international and local law as a sui generis legislation. It then evolves into how the individual participates in enacting and enforcing EU law. Reference is made to the citizen's access to the European Parliament the MEPs, and the national courts necessary to interpret and apply EU law in the domestic context. In this part, the citizen must understand the relationship between the domestic courts and the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU). The third part of the lecture deals with EU institutions' access, particularly direct access to the CJEU by private citizens. Here, brief reference is made to the notion of locus standi for actions of annulment under Art 263 TFEU and access to the European Ombudsman. The final part of the lecture is dedicated to free movement and the rights of third-country nationals in EU member states. The lecture does not focus on UK law post-Brexit or on Brexit itself. However, it deals with British citizens' rights in EU countries, particularly as potential third-country permanent residents in the EU.

The event is intended to be a collaboration between the University of Malta and the IALS under the umbrella of Associate Fellows' contributions to the IALS. The lecturer is a recipient of a Jean Monnet Chair at the University of Malta. The project is about EU citizens and individuals' rights under EU law, hence the subject of the lecture. While the project is mainly implemented at the University of Malta, it does provide for outreach at other universities in Europe, irrespective of whether these are located within the EU or in third countries. As part of the fellowship opportunity with the IALS, the IALS is listed within the programme as one of the potential beneficiaries of this project.

After Brexit, the EU remains a topic of interest to the UK, irrespective of how the relationship continues evolving. Hence, the lecture interests British citizens and international students studying in the UK. The lecture is purely from a legal perspective and does not discuss political issues. 

The topic fits the strategic plan and is a way to understand the legal implications of current affairs. It is of general interest and goes beyond academia. It discusses EU citizens and individual rights from a practical perspective. 

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Law reformers tend to be remembered as those responsible for transforming the law; but for their involvement, the law may not have changed as it has. As academic lawyers, we are trained to look for evidence of direct links between conduct and effect. But when this evidence is not apparent, we might discard as remote campaigns which were in fact very important. These campaigns may have been neither immediately nor directly successful, but had, what I have termed, ‘inconspicuous impact’.

Inconspicuous impact is an effect upon the law that did ultimately lead to change, but not in a linear or short-term fashion. The effect is inconspicuous because it relates to efforts to change the law that are not typically viewed or credited as having contributed to reform, perhaps because those efforts were initially or ostensibly unsuccessful. The inconspicuousness of impact is especially characteristic of feminist efforts to reform the law through legal channels since historically, feminists have struggled to gain a sympathetic ear among members of the executive or judiciary. This has often left feminist pressure groups outside of formal law-making processes, but they have nevertheless been lawmakers in an indirect sense.

This lecture is about why, and how, we should pay attention to the more subtle ways in which feminists have contributed to law’s development. Using examples from the attempts of one feminist pressure group to use law as a tool for change – the Married Women’s Association – I identify reasons why impact can be inconspicuous and why this should lead to revisionist accounts of legal change. Where the norm is for women’s impact upon law to be washed from gender neutral law reports, statutes and government reports, this over time builds into a cumulative tide, whereby feminist contributions are written out of legal history and replaced by dominant, androcentric narratives. Understanding and elevating the enduring importance of such contributions means ensuring that inconspicuous impact counts in our assessment of how law came to be as we know it. As this lecture will explore, this compels us to look in different places, to widen our intellectual bandwidth, and to rethink what constitutes law reform, and impact on law reform.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Interested in working for the Law Commission? Check out what City Alumna Rose Edwards has to say about the experience here!

Every year, the Law Commission recruits a number of research assistants to help make the law simple, modern and fair. We look for exceptional candidates from all backgrounds, all of whom have a passion for law reform. 

Ahead of the launch of our 2024/25 research assistant recruitment campaign, we are holding a live event for all prospective applicants. The event will cover who we are at the Law Commission, the role of a research assistant, the application process, and some top tips for a successful application. There will also be an opportunity to hear from our current research assistants about their experiences, and to ask any questions.

Ahead of the presentation, you can find out more information about the research assistant role on our website. 

How to attend: To attend the event, fill out this registration form. You will be sent an email confirming that your spot is reserved for this event. That email will contain a “join event” button, which will allow you to join the meeting on the day.

Questions: Please direct any questions to enquiries@lawcommission.gov.uk. 

Recording: A recording of the event will be made available on YouTube. Our Guide for Applicants will be published ahead of applications opening in January. 

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Thinking about a career in one of the United Kingdom’s foremost law firms? Then LawCareersNetLIVE is a must-attend event, looking at the skills, attributes and techniques that are necessary to launch a career at this type of firm.

Our conference is for talented students (law and non-law) who want to learn more about how to build a successful career as a solicitor in a prestigious firm.

Apply now

The one-day programme features panel discussions on key topics, workshops presented by our sponsor firms and networking sessions offering the opportunity to speak to partners, trainees and graduate recruiters from our firm sponsors and overall sponsor, The University of Law.

The London conference takes place on Friday 6 December 2024, timed to maximise the benefit to students intending to apply for 2025 vacation schemes.

The event offers;

• advice on crafting excellent applications, shining at interview and forging a successful career;
• exposure to, and insight from, some of the UK's most experienced recruiters and lawyers;
• networking opportunities with those same recruiters and lawyers, and fellow delegates; and
• participation in interactive firm-led workshops, which drill down into what it's like to work in a particular practice area within a national firm.

If you want to learn more about life as a lawyer in a top firm, from the people who are already living it and those who hire them, and you have the experience and grades to back up your enthusiasm, then LawCareersNetLIVE is the perfect event for you.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Women @ the Chancery Bar Careers Event

Does this sound like you?

Are you…?

• articulate, analytical, diligent, and self-motivated?
• looking for a career which is Challenging? Stimulating? Varied? Well-paid?

Yes? Good! Sign up to the Women at the Chancery Bar Careers Event this December.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Come and join us for the public premiere of Changes in Light, a short film that focuses on the decolonising work of IALS. It was made by IALS’ first practitioner in residence, and now Associate Fellow, Dr Anna Macdonald, working with Head Librarian, Marilyn Clarke, director of photography Marisa Zanotti and IALS library staff. It is a warm, nuanced film that brings attention to the colonial legacies that influence library design and the importance of work staff are doing to address this. Drawing on Macdonald’s background in screendance (an artform combining dance and film) Changes in Light explores the impact of the affective qualities of libraries on those who use them as a way of revealing the colonial complexities of law itself. 

The screening will involve an introduction to the project from IALS director Carl Stychin, short responses to the film from invited guests (tbc), an open discussion and refreshments.

Please be aware that this film and discussion will raise issues of decolonisation and archival practices within the library which may trigger racial trauma.

This film was made with kind support from the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, School of Advanced Study and Research at Central Saint Martins, UAL.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

LawCareersNetLIVE Virtual is an online careers conference that brings the valuable opportunities of attending one of LawCareers.Net’s in-person events to you at home. It's a unique chance to network with and gain insights into a stellar roster of law firms. Alongside our London and Manchester conferences, LawCareersNetLIVE Virtual is designed to widen access to leading legal employers.

Our conferences are for talented students (law and non-law) who want to learn more about how to build a successful career as a solicitor in a prestigious firm.

Apply now On LawCareers.Net

The two-day programme features panel discussions on key topics, workshops presented by our sponsor firms and networking sessions offering the opportunity to speak to partners, trainees and graduate recruiters from our firm sponsors and overall sponsor, The University of Law.

The conference takes place on the afternoons of Tuesday 10 and Wednesday 11 December 2024, timed to maximise the benefit to students intending to apply for 2025 vacation schemes.

The event offers;

• advice on crafting excellent applications, shining at interview and forging a successful career;
• exposure to, and insight from, some of the UK's most experienced recruiters and lawyers;
• networking opportunities with those same recruiters and lawyers, and fellow delegates; and
• participation in interactive firm-led workshops, which drill down into what it's like to work in a particular practice area within a national firm.

If you want to learn more about life as a lawyer in a top firm, from the people who are already living it and those who hire them, and you have the experience and grades to back up your enthusiasm, then LawCareersNetLIVE is the perfect event for you.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This year's annual Human Rights Day lecture will be a critical reflection on the history and politics of human rights.

Tembeka Ngcukaitobi (@Ngcukaitobi1) is a legal scholar, practicing lawyer, and advocate of the Johannesburg Bar in South Africa. He is an expert of constitutional and public law, and has written extensive about labour and land law in the South African context. He is a member of the legal team representing South Africa in a case under the Genocide Convention brought before the International Court of Justice against Israel with regards to their conduct in Gaza.

Mahvish Ahmad is Assistant Professor of Human Rights and Politics in the Department of Sociology and Co-Director of LSE Human Rights. She studies state violence and social movements, including the Global War on Terror. She recently published an article entitled Movement Texts as Anti-Colonial Theory.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Please note - while this event is free, you are required to put down a refundable £10 deposit to ensure you attend.

LawCareersNetLIVE Virtual is an online careers conference that brings the valuable opportunities of attending one of LawCareers.Net’s in-person events to you at home. It's a unique chance to network with and gain insights into a stellar roster of law firms. Alongside our London and Manchester conferences, LawCareersNetLIVE Virtual is designed to widen access to leading legal employers.

Our conferences are for talented students (law and non-law) who want to learn more about how to build a successful career as a solicitor in a prestigious firm.

Apply now

The two-day programme features panel discussions on key topics, workshops presented by our sponsor firms and networking sessions offering the opportunity to speak to partners, trainees and graduate recruiters from our firm sponsors and overall sponsor, The University of Law.

The conference takes place on the afternoons of Tuesday 10 and Wednesday 11 December 2024, timed to maximise the benefit to students intending to apply for 2025 vacation schemes.

The event offers;

• advice on crafting excellent applications, shining at interview and forging a successful career;
• exposure to, and insight from, some of the UK's most experienced recruiters and lawyers;
• networking opportunities with those same recruiters and lawyers, and fellow delegates; and
• participation in interactive firm-led workshops, which drill down into what it's like to work in a particular practice area within a national firm.

If you want to learn more about life as a lawyer in a top firm, from the people who are already living it and those who hire them, and you have the experience and grades to back up your enthusiasm, then LawCareersNetLIVE is the perfect event for you.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This year billions of people around the world have been to the polls. What have been the surprises and takeaways from election results?

Our panel will explore some of the issues that have come to the fore in this bumper year for politics as well as the implications of key outcomes.  

Meet our speakers and chair

Mukulika Banerjee (@MukulikaB) is Professor in Social Anthropology at LSE and was inaugural director of the LSE South Asia Centre. Her books include Cultivating Democracy: Politics and Citizenship in Agrarian India, Why India Votes?, The Pathan Unarmed and The Sari (with Daniel Miller); and the series Exploring the Political in South Asia. She created the BBC R4 documentary Sacred Election: Lessons from the biggest democracy in the world on the 2009 Indian National Elections.

Sara Hobolt (@sarahobolt) is the Sutherland Chair in European Institutions and Professor in the Department of Government at LSE. Previously, she has held posts at the University of Oxford and the University of Michigan. She is the Chair of the European Election Studies (EES), an EU-wide project studying voters, parties, candidates and the media in European Parliamentary elections.

Peter Trubowitz (@ptrubowitz) is Professor of International Relations and Director of the Phelan US Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Associate Fellow at Chatham House.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Lovely bit of aliteration in the title there!

It's that time of year again - the days are shorter, you have 100 deadlines BUT - City Law School is putting on a do for your all to come and say goodbye to term one.

There will be games, there will be treats and the chance to create more memories for the 2024 highlights reel. Join us!

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Registrations are now open for The Legal Cheek December Virtual Pupillage Fair 2024 on Thursday 12 December from 2-5pm.

Drawing on Legal Cheek‘s unrivalled law student subscriber and follower base, as well its extensive campus ambassador network, the Fairs give students from all parts of the UK the opportunity to meet the nation’s leading chambers from their laptops, as well as the Inns of Court and several leading law schools.

Come along to the Fairs to ask your questions directly to barristers, explore different practice areas, and pick up application tips. All of this for free and from the comfort of your own home.

Over 6,000 students from more than 120 universities have participated in our Pupillage Fairs since their launch four years ago.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Please come along to learn about pupillage opportunities, applications, and interviews, and to find out about life as a pupil and practicing barrister at South Square.

The event is open to prospective applicants with a genuine interest in the commercial bar.

We particularly encourage women and those from under-represented groups to come and get to know our barristers.

Spaces will be allocated on a first-come-first-serve basis.

 

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Advocacy skills are more important than ever for a young barrister. This is particularly true in the Commercial Court, where the guidelines recommend that oral advocacy is shared around within a counsel team, including among junior counsel.

Twenty Essex is hosting a webinar – Find your voice: An introduction to advocacy – for students and prospective barristers, on Monday 16 December (5pm). The lineup features three leading commercial barristers with different levels of experience: Luke Pearce KC, Andy Feld and Maria Kennedy.

Together, the panel will cover:

• Becoming an effective advocate in moots, in court and in arbitration
• The advocacy element of pupillage applications and interviews
• Improving presentation skills
• Questions from the crowd.

The Panelists:

• Luke Pearce KC – 2023 silk, 2007 call
• Andy Feld – 2013 call
• Maria Kennedy – 2018 call

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This looks set to be a highly interesting lecture, as a part of the 'The UK's Unwritten Constitution: Is It Worth the Paper It's (Not) Written On?' series by Gresham College.

Recently, the UK has gotten into a muddle over Scottish independence and Brexit. This lecture considers what we can learn from the US, which took much of its system from the theory behind the UK structure: the King as the Executive, a Legislature made up of the House of Commons balanced by the House of Lords, and the judiciary.

It asks questions such as, what role should the judiciary play? Have the British got confused about the notion of ‘Parliamentary Supremacy’, deciding that this meant that Parliament was supreme not just to the King, but to the judiciary too?

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

About this Inaugural Lecture

The lecture is aimed at taking some steps towards a new theory of the nature of law that takes seriously the role of legal examples or exemplars as constituents of the law of any legal system. There are two subsidiary goals. In her recent book Rules (2022), a wide-ranging history of rules in general, the historian of science Lorraine Daston observes that nothing is more humdrum than our reasoning “from exemplum to example, from paradigm to particular”, but then remarks: “The mystery is not that we do it but how we do it. . . . [H]ow is it possible to follow [an example] . . . without being able to analyze that ability into explicit steps like the rule for finding the square root of a given number?” One subsidiary goal of the lecture is to explain the nature of examples in such a way as to show how we reason based on them. The second subsidiary goal is to understand the interplay between, and the co-evolution of, rules and examples in legal systems. This goal is prompted by Edward Levi’s observation, in his seminal An Introduction to Legal Reasoning (1949), that judges will sometimes try to rise above making decisions based on similarities and differences between particular cases, and will attempt to articulate rules. Some such attempts may succeed, whereas others will fail. Either way, according to Levi, rules never entirely replace the relations of similarity and difference between legal examples. At the same time, he observes, the rules themselves affect the ways that examples figure in judges’ subsequent reasoning. My explanation of legal examples is aimed at making sense of such phenomena in an integrated way. In pursuing both subsidiary goals, I rely on conceiving examples as points located in multi-dimensional topological spaces, and the dimensions of such spaces as assigning properties to the examples and specifying relations among them.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

About this event

On the 20th of January, 6-7.30pm, we will launch the book Structural Injustice and the Law (UCL Press, 2024), co-edited by Professor Virginia Mantouvalou (UCL Faculty of Laws) and Professor Jonathan Wolff (University of Oxford).

About the book

Structural Injustice and the Law presents theoretical approaches and concrete examples to show how the concept of structural injustice can aid legal analysis, and how legal reform can, in practice, reduce or even eliminate some forms of structural injustice. A group of outstanding law and political philosophy scholars discuss a comprehensive range of interdisciplinary topics, including the notion of domination, equality and human rights law, legal status, sweatshop labour, labour law, criminal justice, domestic homicide reviews, begging, homelessness, regulatory public bodies and the films of Ken Loach. Drawn together, they build an invaluable resource for legal theorists exploring how to make use of the concept of structural injustice, and for political philosophers looking for a nuanced account of the law’s role both in creating and mitigating structural injustice.

Speakers

• Dr Emily McTernan, UCL Department of Political Science
• Professor David Nelken, King’s College London, Dickson Poon School of Law

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This lecture will argue that the idea of a fair administrative process has an under-theorised social side. This is the idea that the public’s perceived (un)fair experiences of administrative processes, particularly in everyday encounters with public services, affect their attitudes and behaviours over time. In the aggregate, this effect can potentially shape the overall outcomes of government action and, in turn, society. The lecture will show how a range of empirical evidence suggests advancing understanding of this social side of the fair process presents a viable pathway to improving the fairness, legitimacy, and efficacy of public action. However, maximising the possibilities here requires us to fundamentally change how we think about procedural fairness and its role in the pursuit of good government and a more just society.

About the speaker

Joe Tomlinson is Professor of Public Law at the University of York. He is also Director of the Administrative Fairness Lab at York and co-leads the Transforming Justice programme at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Previously, he has been Research Director of the Public Law Project, a national legal charity, and an ESRC Academic Fellow in the House of Commons. He was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize in Law in 2023 for his research at the intersection of administrative law and socio-legal studies.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This is another lecture in the 'Lawgivers in Political Imagination' series by Gresham College.

When and why do written laws emerge in ancient societies? This lecture considers these questions in light of evidence such as the law code of Hammurabi; the earliest attestation of written laws in Greek (found in Crete); and the full-blown commitment to written laws by the Athenian lawgiver Solon. It explores how writing relates to the functions of law more generally, in light of debates in contemporary legal philosophy. 

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This lecture will argue that the idea of a fair administrative process has an under-theorised social side. This is the idea that the public’s perceived (un)fair experiences of administrative processes, particularly in everyday encounters with public services, affect their attitudes and behaviours over time. In the aggregate, this effect can potentially shape the overall outcomes of government action and, in turn, society. The lecture will show how a range of empirical evidence suggests advancing understanding of this social side of the fair process presents a viable pathway to improving the fairness, legitimacy, and efficacy of public action. However, maximising the possibilities here requires us to fundamentally change how we think about procedural fairness and its role in the pursuit of good government and a more just society.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Abstract

Targeted sanctions are sophisticated tools of foreign policy, particularly the freezing of assets of designated individuals and entities, often referred to as listed, “blacklisted" or blocked persons. However, these measures face a major challenge: circumvention.

The restrictions imposed on individuals create strong incentives for evasion, and targets may find creative ways to bypass them. Family members are often used as the simplest way to evade sanctions, in particular through the transfer of assets, luxury goods and properties.

In response, both the European Union and the UK have introduced sanctions targeting family members to prevent the circumvention of asset freezes and ensure the effectiveness of sanctions.

While such family-based designations were traditionally rare, the sanctions against Russia since 2022 have seen a significant rise in their use. Numerous family members of Russian oligarchs have been designated since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.

This presentation will focus on the use of these designations in the EU and UK. It will address the proportionality concerns in targeting family members through a comparative analysis of recent case law  from the ECJ and UK Courts.

About the speaker

Francesca Finelli is a Ph.D. candidate in International and EU Law at the University of Luxembourg, under joint supervision with the University of Pisa. She is supervised by Prof. Matthew Happold and Prof. Sara Poli, respectively, in the two universities.

Her research focuses on international economic sanctions, including EU restrictive measures, and she studies how different jurisdictions counter the phenomenon of sanctions evasion.

Specifically, Francesca conducts a comparative analysis of the legal frameworks in the EU, US, and UK, examining their response to circumvention. Special attention is given to circumvention schemes against targeted sanctions in the form of designations and asset freeze measures.

To further her research, Francesca has spent four months in the US (January-May 2024) as a visiting researcher at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington DC, and she is now a visiting researcher at City Law School in London (from September 2024), to delve into the responses of the US and UK jurisdictions.

Francesca was awarded 'Best Doctoral Student of 2023' by the Department of Law in Luxembourg.

Her academic interests include public international law, EU external relations law, the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), and sanctions law.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

About the lecture

The importance of accessibility, particularly to disabled and older people, has long been acknowledged. It is given international prominence by Article 9 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2006, the opening words of which affirm that it is a precondition “to enable persons with disabilities to live independently and participate fully in all aspects of life”. At the national level, accessibility barriers provided a key focus of and driver for campaigns for legal protection from disability discrimination. Disability rights advocates were quick to identify the potential for systemic change, including on accessibility, of equality law obligations such as the anticipatory reasonable adjustment duty and the Public Sector Equality Duty.

In this paper, Pr Anna Lawson critically reflects on the extent to which equality law in Britain is in fact working to embed and enhance accessibility. Alongside a number of successes, concerns about the adequacy of the Equality Act as the guardian of accessibility will be explored. This reflection provides the backdrop for the question at the heart of this paper – whether the solution is simply to make the Equality Act work harder to protect accessibility, or whether it is now time for the UK to follow jurisdictions such as the EU and Canada and introduce specific accessibility legislation? Pr Anna Lawson will argue that it is indeed time for a new approach.

About the speaker

Anna Lawson is a Professor of Law at the University of Leeds, where she is also (from January 2025) co-director of the Centre for Law and Social Justice and formerly a director of the multidisciplinary Centre for Disability Studies. Anna has led a range of multinational research projects, including most recently a European Research Council Advanced Grant project called ‘Inclusive Public Space: Law, Universality and Difference in the Accessibility of Streets’. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Academy of Social Sciences; patron of the National Association of Disabled Staff Networks; honorary Master of the Bench at the Middle Temple; and winner of the 2016 Bob Hepple Award (from the Equal Rights Trust and Industrial Law Society) for her work on disability equality.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Legislators in the United States and Europe are moving quickly to regulate artificial intelligence to minimize its risks to privacy, safety, and security while benefiting from its efficiencies in industry, governance, and society. 

While the European Union has moved ahead with more omnibus legislation like the AI Act, the Digital Services Act, and the General Data Protection Regulation, the US and the UK are exploring approaches that differ from the EU in both scope and focus. 

This event will bring together a group of scholars with an international focus on the different kinds of AI regulation and their consequences. The speakers will explore the human values served by these different models, their compatibility with each other and other frameworks, and their possible effects on our world. 

This public (in person) seminar concerns policy areas of significant interest to policymakers, and the wider public.

The topics also have significant appeal nationally and internationally.

It will also have policy impact in terms of national policymaking, particularly given forthcoming reforms to UK data protection law and forthcoming UK legislation on AI.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Something different for you here - another lecture in teh 'Lawgivers in Political Imaginations' series by professor Melissa Lane at Gresham College.

Sophocles’ Antigone refers to “unwritten laws”, as does Thucydides’ Pericles. From the late fifth century BCE, the idea that laws are more effective when learned by memory and observation than when written down creates a distinctive current in political reflections. Plutarch even claimed the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus had prohibited the writing down of his laws.

This lecture considers how Greek authors’ reflections on the interplay between writing and orality remain relevant to modern debates about ethical formation.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This lecture will be delivered by Professor Devyani Prabhat, as part of the Current Legal Problems Lecture Series 2024-25.

The idea of aliens in the immigration context is widespread. The word ‘aliens’ is found in immigration and nationality legislation as well as case law in various countries including the UK and USA. Why is this so? Was it not sufficient to call ‘outsiders’ foreigners or non-citizens? What does this concept of ‘alien’ mean in nationality law? Are there many kinds of ‘aliens’?

This lecture will look into the historical origins of the term and its subsequent conceptual development and impact on global migration through analysis of case law and archival material. It will also unpack the recent controversies in the use of the term ‘alien’ such as the efforts of the Biden administration to remove the word in US nationality processes as well as the use of the term in a pejorative manner in politics.

Is this now an antiquated word reflective of past values which should become extinct in modern nationality and citizenship contexts or does it still have a pragmatic (or symbolic) purpose not quite served by other terminology? In the age of multiple-nationality and existing free/ permitted movement regimes, perhaps an alien is just one we are yet to encounter in outer space, but we mistake for one of our own shared humanity in the meanwhile. This lecture is the story of such human ‘aliens’ in nationality law.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

We are excited to welcome students, staff, professionals, and the public to the seventh London Student Sustainability Conference (LSSC25).

The conference will adopt a hybrid format, allowing participants from London and beyond to attend either in person or virtually.

London Student Sustainability Conference provides attendees with the chance to explore the remarkable work undertaken in the climate and sustainability realms being carried out by students across London.

Applications are now open for student presenters.

Student presenters

The LSSC25 will showcase student research, projects and creative work aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (Global Goals). Visit the UNDP webpage to learn more about the Global Goals.

The Conference provides opportunities for students to exhibit their work through presentations, posters, or other creative mediums. It will be held in person at a Central London location (venue to be confirmed) on Wednesday 26th February 2025, followed by an evening networking event. All presentations and Q&A sessions will also be available to live stream for those attending online.

For participants, this is a fantastic opportunity to present your work to a diverse audience and network with students, staff, and professionals from numerous London universities and beyond!

Oral presentations

Students can present their research or project in a 10-minute presentation, using slides, if you wish (PowerPoint, PDF, Prezi etc) or as a panel discussion, which will then be followed by 10 minutes for questions and answers.

Videos, performances and art installations

We also encourage students whose work takes the form of a film, music piece, dance or spoken word performance, art installation or practical demonstration to take part in the conference. Please let us know if you have any specific requirements to present your work.

Poster exhibition

Presenters are encouraged to create a poster to go alongside their presentation. If you choose to submit a poster, it will be displayed throughout the Conference and during the networking event. Posters offer an excellent way to present your research or project in a visually appealing and easy-to-read format.

Your poster should be A1 size (either landscape or portrait) and contain a mixture of text, images and graphics.

You can decide on the layout, but it must be clear and logical so that the reader’s eye naturally follows the flow of text. Our poster checklist [PDF] helps you create a poster that is engaging and relevant to the conference.

Partnership

We are pleased to announce that this year’s London Student Sustainability Conference is a collaboration between eleven London universities:

• City St. George’s, University of London
• Imperial College London
• King’s College London
• Kingston University London
• London School of Economics
• London South Bank University
• Queen Mary University of London
• University of Greenwich
• University of London
• University of Roehampton
• University of Westminster.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This looks set to be a highly interesting lecture, as a part of the 'The UK's Unwritten Constitution: Is It Worth the Paper It's (Not) Written On?' series by Gresham College.

This lecture discusses a hierarchy of rights. Is the First Amendment the most important of all, given its five foundational rights – no law respecting an establishment of religion; free exercise of religion; freedom of speech and the press; the right peaceably to assemble; the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. How might this apply to the UK?

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

• 'The Development of International Law: The Case for Revisiting Compensation’ by Professor Martins Paparinskis (Faculty of Laws, UCL)

• Chair: Prof Vaughan Lowe (Essex Court Chambers)

About this Inaugural Lecture

The development of public international law is a curious process, often easier to observe and retrospectively explain than predict and direct. Much depends on how particular specialist fields strike the balance between substance, institutions, and means of dispute settlement. Equally, much turns on choices that actors take by turning to these specialist institutions and means, the character of acts or omission that serve as catalysts for these choices, and particularly the fit within the broader context provided by generalist rules and universal institutions. The talk will consider the variety of considerations that shape the development of public international law in modern practice, with an eye to compensation for the damage caused by internationally wrongful acts, a topic entered into the long-term programme work of the United Nations International Law Commission in 2024.

About the Speaker

Martins Paparinskis is Professor of Public International Law at UCL Faculty of Laws. He is a generalist public international lawyer with a variety of specialist interests, and has published on foundational topics of public international law, such as sources, law of treaties, State responsibility, and international dispute settlement, as well as on topics in the subfields of investment law and environmental law. Professor Paparinskis is a member of the United Nations International Law Commission, and has been the Chairperson of its Drafting Committee (2023) and the First Vice-Chair (2024).

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Something slightly different for you here! This is a part of the 'Lawgivers in Political Imaginations' series by Professor Melissa Lane at Gresham College.

The Hebrew lawgiver Moses was compared to ancient Greek lawgivers such as Lycurgus of Sparta and Solon of Athens by the ancient Jewish authors Philo and Josephus—both writing in Greek while living in the Roman empire.

This lecture explores their views of Moses and ancient Greek lawgivers on topics including education, ethical habituation, writing, prophecy and political rule. Early modern authors would inherit and examine these lawgivers, along with others, in their own reflections on law, culture, and politics. 

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This lecture will be delivered by Dr Anna Chadwick, as part of the Current Legal Problems Lecture Series 2024-25

About the lecture

The analysis of prices is an activity that has traditionally taken place within the domain of Economics, and legal scholars have had very little to say about how prices are formed. Yet as the impacts of price spikes for resources like oil or gas, the effects of long-standing inequalities relating to the terms of international trade, the contentious practice of pricing of sovereign debt, or the current cost-of-living crisis all underline, prices have significant implications for a matter with which lawyers have traditionally been concerned: justice.

Legal institutions are increasingly understood by economic sociologists and institutionalist economists to be of critical importance in processes of price formation, yet there has been no systematic attempt to understand the role of law in the formation of prices. In this lecture, I build on important foundations around ‘the just price’ to evaluate the potential of developing an alternative theoretical approach to analysing prices from a legal perspective. I identify and critically discuss four different ways of analysing the role of law in processes of price formation that take as their point of departure the following intellectual traditions: I) New Institutional Economics, II) Economic Sociology, III) Law and Political Economy, and IV) Marxist Economics. In addition to offering a comparative analysis of distinct legal-theoretical perspectives on the engineering of prices, I reflect on whether it is possible to advance a legal theory of prices that is both sociologically convincing and that also has explanatory power.

Prices govern peoples’ lives and dictate courses of action to elected governments, often entrenching and exacerbating inequalities. Can a greater understanding of their legal engineering open up any avenues to making prices any more ‘just’?

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

The UK’s Immigration Legislation and a Hierarchy of Modern Slavery Victimhood by Dr Marija Jovanovic

We are delighted to host Dr Marija Jovanovic as part of the Wilberforce Institute's Public Lecture programme, in association with Hull Museums.

The talk will explore a paradox and implications of the UK’s public declarations of commitment to anti-slavery action and protections embedded in the ‘modern slavery’ legislation introduced in 2015, on one hand, and the denial of such protection to certain categories of victims brought about by the recent immigration legislation, on the other.

The UK has sought to position itself as a global leader in anti-slavery action, both historically through the abolition of state-sponsored slavery in the 19th century and in its present-day initiatives to tackle ‘modern slavery’ and human trafficking (MSHT) – an umbrella term for a range of exploitative practices which persist in the 21st century despite being almost universally outlawed. Accordingly, the Modern Slavery Act 2015 is often portrayed as ‘a world-leading piece of legislation’ (UK Secretary of State for the Home Department, 2019). Similarly, the expert body in charge of monitoring States’ compliance with the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings, noted that ‘[t]hrough its strong measures to identify victims, the UK is setting an important model for Europe’ (GRETA, 2021). More recently, the UK has led efforts to establish the Global Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking in order to address a widely perceived lack of political leadership and declining global attention to the issue, despite increasing numbers of victims worldwide. The UK Government has also listed tackling modern slavery as one of its five pledges to mark the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, 2023).

In contrast with this professed global leadership in anti-slavery action, recent legal and policy developments designed to tackle ‘illegal’ migration tell a different story. Namely, following the publication of new immigration policy in 2021 (UK Secretary of State for the Home Department, 2022), the UK has adopted several pieces of legislation that exclude any victim of MSHT who either arrives in the UK ‘illegally’ (sections 22-29, Illegal Migration Act 2023) or is found to have committed a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment (known as ‘public order disqualification’ in section 63, Nationality and Borders Act 2022) from any protection available under domestic modern slavery legislation. This means that even those MSHT victims who were forced to commit criminal offences (a phenomenon known as ‘criminal exploitation’) as well as those who breach immigration rules because they were trafficked to the UK are made ineligible for any protection and support.

By denying protection and support to these categories of MSHT victims, the UK has created a hierarchy of victimhood expressly prohibited by its international legal obligations. Not only does international law binding on the UK not allow for a distinction between different categories of victims, it also expressly contains additional protections for victims compelled to commit criminal offences and those with irregular migration status.

The talk will address this tension and consider the immediate and long term implications of prioritising immigration control goals over human rights commitments and taking action against the perpetrators of this serious crime.

Marija Jovanovi? is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the Essex Law School and Human Rights Centre. Her research focuses on modern slavery and the way this phenomenon interacts with different legal regimes, such as human rights law, criminal law, labour law, immigration law, international trade law, and business regulation. She is the author of State Responsibility for ‘Modern Slavery’ in Human Rights Law (Oxford University Press, 2023). Marija’s recent work includes a research project on the experiences of modern slavery survivors in UK prisons and a legal analysis of the compatibility of the Rwanda Treaty and Act 2024 and Illegal Migration Act 2023 with the UK’s international obligations. Marija holds DPhil, MPhil, and Magister Juris degrees from the University of Oxford, and a law degree from Serbia. She previously held a Postdoctoral Fellowship in ASEAN Law and Policy at the National University of Singapore, and a Lectureship in Serbia.

This year we are teaming up with Hull Museums to offer attendees at our public lectures the opportunity to visit Wilberforce House Museum next door before they join us for the lecture. As a result all our lectures will begin at 4.30pm, directly after the Museum closes, and all will take place at our home in Oriel Chambers, 27 High Street, Hull, HU1 1NE. We are very grateful for the financial support Hull Museums is providing to the Wilberforce Institute’s public lecture programme, and hope that some of you will take the opportunity to have a look round their exhibitions and displays in advance of the lectures. Please join us for refreshments from 4.15pm onwards, and if you can, stay afterwards for a glass of wine and a chance to talk with our speaker.

There are a limited number of tickets available to attend in person. If you can’t make it in person, you can still enjoy the lectures by streaming online – please select the ticket according to your preference when you make your booking.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This lecture will be delivered by Professor Bebhinn Donelly-Lazarov, as part of the Current Legal Problems Lecture Series 2024-25

‘I didn’t know what I was doing!’

‘I wasn’t myself when I did that!’

‘I had no control over what I did!’

What is missing when defendants disown their actions?

Speaker: Professor Bebhinn Donelly-Lazarov (University of Surrey)

About the lecture

A defendant who commits an assault while sleepwalking may have, in that moment, a very clear understanding of what they are doing. They may perceive their environment with clarity. They may have resolute motivation and perform their action through coordinated movements well-equipped to achieving their end. Moreover, that end may be fixed by the defendant’s own desires rather than set as a response to perceived threats or physical attack.

At first glance, if we are to consider exculpation, we are, therefore, left with a problem. The physical movements and states of mind that make up a criminal offence are present, and they are present in the typical way; straightforwardly bringing about a prohibited end. All this notwithstanding the fact that the behaviour may be entirely contrary to anything usually the agent would do.

So, what gives? In virtue of what precisely are we no doubt absolutely right to say that the defendant is not culpable? That is the question I seek to answer. Where the cognitive, emotional, and physical apparatus of typical human action (reflected by the elements of a crime) appears present, what, we might consider, is missing such that it is simply obvious a defence is due? I will say that what the defendant lacks is a very distinctive and interesting kind of knowledge; that unique self-recognition that connects any agent to the action they do such that it ‘becomes’ an action of theirs.

Above and beyond the legal elements of an offence, this knowing attachment to one’s own actions is necessary to (if never sufficient for) culpability of any sort. It is an attachment so foundational that it does not feature in the elements of a crime. It may come into view only when its absence matters.

For our sleep-walker, it matters a good deal!

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This Inaugural Lecture will be on ‘Family Law As Social Policy: Taking Family Problems Upstream’ and delivered by Professor Rob George.

About this Inaugural Lecture

In recent years, family law legislation has often been a focal point for reforms which have aimed as much at changing the societal attitudes and behaviours of family members as affecting their statutory entitlements or how the courts approach family law cases. There has been a tension in the approach of politicians between, on the one hand, restricting access to the courts and thus to law for family disputes and, on the other, using family law as a tool of policy to influence how family members think and behave in relation to one another. This lecture situates family law as a tool of social policy, but one which is often not up to or not suited to the job. Post-separation parenting arrangements are a key example: using family law, as it now does, to stipulate that the involvement of both parents in a child’s life is likely to promote their welfare comes too late to make effective change. The problem needs to be taken ‘upstream’, considering the policy factors that influence the way in which parenting was arranged prior to parental separation rather than focusing only on arrangements made post-separation. Policy factors that affect family problems such as this include parental leave and flexible working policies, situated as part of employment law; housing policy, seen as part of social welfare law; and provision of services such as mental health support, part of healthcare law (if seen as a concern of law at all). This lecture seeks to reposition these upstream policy issues as the central considerations for those interested in effecting societal change to family life.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This looks set to be a highly interesting lecture, as a part of the 'The UK's Unwritten Constitution: Is It Worth the Paper It's (Not) Written On?' series by Gresham College.

Regarding the US Constitution, there is a major split between the Originalists (typically conservatives) and those who believe in an organic document that grows with the times. There have been enormous changes since 1789 – the internet is just one example – and the document must change one way or the other.

This lecture explores some of the unenumerated rights that might be added. These are not without their own subjective cultural elements. For example, Europeans are much more focused on ‘privacy’ than Americans, and it is debatable whether free speech is truly consistent with privacy.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

This looks set to be a highly interesting lecture, as a part of the 'The UK's Unwritten Constitution: Is It Worth the Paper It's (Not) Written On?' series by Gresham College.

The U.S. Constitution had to be formed through debate before it could be ratified. Mirroring this, a British constitution must emerge through debates held by the next generation.

This lecture indicates schools are a good environment to foster this. For students, there are many contentious issues that tap into discussions at the heart of writing a constitution. Students being punished for swearing raises questions of limits to free speech. Students wishing to intervene when an unpopular peer is bullied would be empowered by constitutional duty obliging them to do so.

Schools tend to be authoritarian institutions, benevolent or otherwise, and can either provoke students to develop ideas on power structures and recognise the need for their own rights and duties, or condition them to accept the status quo.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Something slightly different for you here! This is a part of the 'Lawgivers in Political Imaginations' series by Professor Melissa Lane at Gresham College.

For many modern thinkers, the lawgiver has been important as a founding figure of civic identity and cultural values. Rousseau analysed the legacies of Solon and Lycurgus, believing in the need for a lawgiver to make a true social contract possible. By contrast, Nietzsche felt it necessary to seek a lawgiver in history who was also a poet and prophet.

This lecture uses their perspectives and others to explore how the figure of the lawgiver has encapsulated key debates in modern political philosophy.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).

Something slightly different for you here! This is a part of the 'Lawgivers in Political Imaginations' series by Professor Melissa Lane at Gresham College.

How have lawgivers featured in modern revolutions?

This lecture considers key moments in revolutions, including seventeenth-century Britain, eighteenth-century France and (what would become) the United States, and twentieth-century Iran.

The appeal to lawgivers (including ancient ones from many cultures) in revolutionary visions and in consolidating new constitutions is a striking feature of modern politics.

Find out more on their event details page (external site).