Lawbore Legal Events Calendar
Featured Legal Events
This is an event run by Inner Temple, featuring Professor Sir John Baker and Professor John Wass.
Plague and Pandemic are not new nor are the efforts of government to deal with them by executive proclamations. Professors Baker and Wass will discuss and illustrate the Tudor and Stuart governments approaches, their legitimacy and effectiveness. Followed
by Q&A.
Booking is free but essential (Non-members: scroll down and click on Add Ticket)
Gresham College lecture
Speaker: Professor Thomas Grant QC
In the wake of the decision in the parliamentary prorogation case Miller (No.2), the question of the politics of the judiciary has been thrust into the public eye. Was it “a constitutional coup” as some have claimed?
The Government has promised to “update the Human Rights Act” and review the “relationship between the government, parliament and the courts”.
Will this limit the power of the judiciary to do justice? Do British judges have too much “power” and are they over-politicised?
This book talk on The EU as a Global Regulator for Environment Protection (Hart 2019) by Ioanna Hadjiyianni considers how the EU has been understood to have global effects through its environmental laws. City, University of London welcomes the author and discussants who are scholars from backgrounds in environmental law, EU studies and jurisdiction and territory with respect to international law to consider how global effects are considered. Discussants consider also comparative and transborder questions of the book generally, particularly as to US law and international law.
March 2021
The tremendous Support Through Court has this excellent event to celebrate International Women's Day.
Hosted by Kay Burley, Sky News presenter and broadcaster, our speakers include Christina Blacklaws, former President of the Law Society, Dame Bobbie Cheema-Grubb, the first Asian woman to serve as a High Court Judge in the UK and Adeola Fadipe, a Pupil Barrister who founded an organisation to help diverse candidates access the Bar.
Tickets are just £15 general admission and discounted to £8 for students and Support Through Court volunteers. All funds raised from this event will go directly to funding the work of Support Through Court. Further information and the link to register for the event can be found here.
The Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies and the Next 100 Years campaign are delighted to welcome you to this special online event in celebration of International Women's Day 2021.
We will be honouring the lives of pioneering women in the legal profession and reflecting on the legacies we want to create for future generations of women lawyers. The session will explore why it is important for us, as women, to share our personal experiences and record our testimonies for posterity. The panelists and audience will be asked to consider the role and value of women’s groups and networks in fostering women’s empowerment and professional advancement.
We will be joined by three excellent speakers who are actively supporting and promoting women lawyers in their careers. All three women have recently recorded their life stories for the Inspiring Women Lawyers Oral History Project, which has been conducted by the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies in collaboration with National Life Stories British Library supported by the John Fell Fund. Our speakers are: Her Honour Judge Khatun Sapnara, Deputy High Court Judge and Co-Chair of the Temple Women’s Forum; Dana Denis-Smith, Founder of Obelisk Support and the First 100 Hundred Years/Next 100 Years campaign; and Laurie-Anne Power, barrister at Bedford Row Chambers and Chair of the Women in Criminal in Law’s Racial Equality Committee. They will be interviewed by Dr Dvora Liberman, researcher and interviewer for the Inspiring Women Lawyer’s Project; and the event will be chaired by Professor Linda Mulcahy, Director of the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford.
Hosted by UK Human Rights Blog & chaired by Marina Wheeler QC
Expert Panel: Dr Mukulika Banerjee (London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE) Dr Shruti Kapila (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge) Professor Tarunabh Khaitan (Wadham College, Oxford)
Seminar Programme
Topic 1: The erosion of controls on executive power
Internationally, India’s Constitution is hailed as a progressive mechanism, providing comprehensive protection for minorities, upheld by a strong, independent-minded Supreme Court. Professor Tarunabh Khaitan will consider if this is an accurate interpretation. He will outline the erosion of controls on the political executive, covering the Courts and judiciary as well as other “watch-dog” institutions such as the CBI, Electoral Commission etc.
Topic 2: The decline of secularism and majoritarian democracy
Dr. Shruti Kapila will examine the roots of Hindu nationalism, anti-Muslim sentiment, blasphemy laws, “Love Jihad”, and the role of the Courts in protecting minorities and challenging discriminatory laws, including the Citizenship Amendment Act.
Topic 3: The right to protest and freedom of expression
Dr. Mukulika Banerjee will focus on the role of “people’s” protests. Does the law protect a right to protest? How has this been handled by the state? What role has the media played?
The presentations from the expert panel will be followed by a discussion/Q&A which will include a contribution from Shona Jolly QC, Chair of the Bar Human Rights Committee (BHRC).
This event will be recorded and available after the webinar.
Hosted by the School of Law, University of Leeds.
Dame Sara Thornton has worked in policing since 1986, when she joined the Metropolitan Police. During her 33 year career within policing she served as Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police from 2007 until 2015 and was appointed the first Chair of the NPCC in 2015. She has also received the Queen’s Police Medal and, in 2011, was awarded a CBE.
Dame Sara Thornton is the current UK's Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner. She was appointed by the Home Secretary at the time, Sajid Javid, in succession to Kevin Hyland who left the post in May 2018.
Lord Pannick QC, Chairman of the British Friends of the Hebrew University Legal Group invites you to this webinar.
3 papers will feature at this event:
Covid-19 and the Legal Regulation of Working Families
Nicole Busby, University of Glasgow
Grace James, University of Reading
A critique of the nature/implications of the UK’s response to Covid for working families with caregiving responsibilities. In part 1 we assess, drawing on Fineman’s vulnerability theory, the impact of the response on working families. In part 2 we consider how, if viewed through a VT lens, the state’s handling of the pandemic can be analysed so that the lessons learned might aid a more just social / economic recovery. The core focus of this paper is to reveal and disrupt existing allocations of power and privilege and to value our common vulnerability and its consequences for work and families.
Playing with Wench Tactics: Thinking about Rhythm, Routine and Rest in Decelerating University Life after the Pandemic
Ruth Fletcher, Queen Mary University of London
This paper will reflect on collaboration in the production of Wench Tactics (Fletcher et al 2017) in light of slow scholarship (Mountz et al 2015) and slow university aesthetics (van Marle 2018). Wench tactics involved experiments by Feminist Legal Studies with publishers’ schedules, editorial space and savouring unplanned contributions, as journal editors sought to leverage more time and money from Springer, the publishers, and to build slower, and selectively intense, research community through workshops and retreats. Figuring out what works in bringing a mixture of rhythm, routine and rest to scholarly life presents an opportunity to reimagine the post-pandemic university.
Law, Every Day Spaces and Objects, and Being Human
Jill Marshall, Royal Holloway, University of London
COVID-19 lockdown restricts our freedom of movement and ability to physically meet with others, including loved ones. For most, this has meant staying at home. As part of my project investigating law’s functions and how law shapes our understandings of human freedom, identity and living, this paper identifies, and draws on, lockdown themes from Perec’s ‘infra-ordinary’, and de Maistre’s ‘journey around his room’. It explores how questioning our everyday spaces, habits and the material objects of which our lives consist, what goes without saying, can change our ways of being and living in dynamic and transformative ways.
Taking place on Zoom over the evenings of 17 and 18 March 2021 (5pm-7pm), the conference provides a unique opportunity for the next generation of lawyers to come together and discuss cutting-edge justice issues with leading practitioners.
You will be able to attend two thought-provoking workshops on our current projects and find out more about our current work in Parliament, with Baroness Shami Chakrabarti CBE speaking about the role of Parliament in law-making.
The workshop sessions on offer are:
- Improving Access to Justice for Separating Families
Ellen Lefley, Lawyer, JUSTICE - Privatisation and Automation: Impact on Access to Justice
Stephanie Needleman, Lawyer, JUSTICE - Tackling Racial Injustice: Children and the Youth Justice System
Tyrone Steele, Lawyer, JUSTICE
Tickets are £5 for non-members, or free for JUSTICE members - book yours today.
In recent years, the notion of a ‘right to hope’ has emerged in European human rights law. Yet what does it mean, to experience hope? And how is this experience made the object of a right as a matter of European human rights law? These are the questions that will be the focus of this seminar, which will examine the way in which hope has been constructed as a right in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. The seminar will consider the origins of the ‘right to hope’ in European human rights law, the meaning of hope in this context, and the relationship that is depicted between hope and dignity. I will argue that the conceptualisation of hope that emerges in European human rights law is an individualised one in which a relationship of dependency is established between the individual and European human rights law and hope itself is constructed as an individual responsibility.
Sarah Trotter is an Assistant Professor of Law at the LSE. Her research is primarily about how particular categories (like ‘the child’ and ‘the individual’) are constructed in law and about the assumptions that are made in European human rights law and domestic law about relationships.
Dr Marco Longobardo (University of Westminster) speaks at this event hosted by the Centre for International Law and Human Rights Events Programme, Lancaster University Law School.
Organised by the Jean Monnet Chair in EU Law at City, University of London this webinar will discuss the relationship between the EU and China.
The webinar will examine the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment and the issues that will be discussed include:
- the legal dimension of the Agreement
- the provisions on the labour standards
- the negotiation of the Agreement in the broader political context of EU-Chinese relations
- the implications for the EU-US relations
- the implications for the EU as a global actor.
The speakers include
Maria Martin Prat, European Commission, Directorate General for Trade (Director, Services and Digital Trade, Investment and Intellectual Property)
David Rennie, The Economist (Beijing Bureau Chief and Chaguan columnist)
Christophe Bondy, Steptoe and Johnson (Partner)
Professor Tonia Novitz, University of Bristol (Professor of Labour Law)
Dr Janka Ortel, European Council on Foreign Relations (Director, Asia programme; Senior Policy Fellow)
This is an event run by Inner Temple, featuring Professor Sir John Baker and Professor John Wass.
Plague and Pandemic are not new nor are the efforts of government to deal with them by executive proclamations. Professors Baker and Wass will discuss and illustrate the Tudor and Stuart governments approaches, their legitimacy and effectiveness. Followed
by Q&A.
Booking is free but essential (Non-members: scroll down and click on Add Ticket)
You are invited to attend (virtually) the annual conference of GenIUS, Italy’s journal on gender, sexuality, and law. The theme of this year is “Hate Speech, Digital Discrimination, and the Internet of Platforms.” Speakers include a representative of the Council of Europe, Kaori Ishii (Chuo University), Enrico Camilleri (Università degli Studi di Palermo), Kim Barker (Open University), Luciana Goisis (Università degli Studi di Sassari), Ann Bartow (University of New Hampshire), Giovanni Ziccardi (Università degli Studi di Milano), Alexandre de Streel (Université de Namur) and Guido Noto La Diega (University of Stirling). Further information here, for registration email Assoc Prof Noto La Diega at gn12@stir.ac.uk.
Gresham College lecture
Speaker: Professor Thomas Grant QC
In the wake of the decision in the parliamentary prorogation case Miller (No.2), the question of the politics of the judiciary has been thrust into the public eye. Was it “a constitutional coup” as some have claimed?
The Government has promised to “update the Human Rights Act” and review the “relationship between the government, parliament and the courts”.
Will this limit the power of the judiciary to do justice? Do British judges have too much “power” and are they over-politicised?
Three years on from the date that the UK did not withdraw officially from the EU but the EU Settlement Scheme was opened to the public, this event takes stock of the position of citizens’ rights in the UK and of the UK.
April 2021
Hosted by the University of Bristol, this workshop will examine the development of vicarious liability across the common law world.
Speakers include:
- Australia: Dr Christine Beuermann (Newcastle)
- Canada: Professor Jason Neyers (UWO)
- England and Wales: Professor Paula Giliker (Bristol)
- Hong Kong: Professor Rick Glofcheski (HKU)
- Ireland: Dr Desmond Ryan (Trinity College, Dublin)
- New Zealand: Professor Stephen Todd (University of Canterbury NZ)
- Singapore: Professor David Tan (NUS)
- Scotland: Dr Mat Campbell (Glasgow) and Dr Bobby Lindsay (Glasgow)
This book talk on The EU as a Global Regulator for Environment Protection (Hart 2019) by Ioanna Hadjiyianni considers how the EU has been understood to have global effects through its environmental laws. City, University of London welcomes the author and discussants who are scholars from backgrounds in environmental law, EU studies and jurisdiction and territory with respect to international law to consider how global effects are considered. Discussants consider also comparative and transborder questions of the book generally, particularly as to US law and international law.
3 papers in this event:
Women, Violence and Protest in Times of COVID-19
Kim Barker, The Open University
Olga Jurasz, The Open University
COVID-19 has highlighted the fragility of women’s rights protection. Whilst the predominant focus has fallen on the reporting of domestic violence, there are ‘untold’ narratives about how laws and regulations are used to further restrict women’s rights in times of pandemic; the role and remit of emergency legislative measures; women’s activism – including online protest - to protect their rights in times of pandemic; and the role of women politicians in raising these issues. This contribution explores the ‘untold story’ of the gendered dimension of COVID-19, with a particular focus on women’s activism online and the backlash suffered as a result.
Bahraini Family Laws During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Questioning the Re-emergence of Gendered and Sectarian Identities
Fatema Hubail, Georgetown University in Qatar
With the emergence of the COVID-19 global pandemic, the questions of gender, sect, and class are re-introduced in Bahraini media. Individuals and groups belonging to a specific gender, sect, or class are transformed in the media as examples, spectacles, and objects of critique. The implications of the family laws already pose risks on women and the family structure, but the COVID-19 pandemic magnifies these implications, further reifying the existing sociopolitical conditions. The pandemic does not only carry a health risk, but it has also become a means of social-conditioning, surveillance, and the reification of difference on the basis of gender, sect, class, and nationality. This research explores: to what extent has the COVID-19 pandemic amplified the inequalities and expectations present within the Bahraini Family Law of 2017? Through rereading and analyzing the family law articles, this research will show the implications of these articles on women in light of the pandemic. The Unified Family Law deviates from the Sunni and Shi’ite juristic traditions, and carefully imbues sociopolitical difference through the way the state legally imagines and codifies the ideal Bahraini family structure. With the pandemic, these differences are central in the representation of communities, as Shi’ite groups have experienced retaliation in Bahrain due to travels to Iran early in 2020. The case of the Unified Family Law in Bahrain complicates the lives of women, where the state imagines unification, but the reality suggests that women are found at the intersection of gender, sect, structures of kin, and lastly, the sociopolitical implications of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Law’s Invisible Women: The Unintended Gendered Consequences of the COVID-19 Lockdown
Lynsey Mitchell, University of Abertay
Michelle Weldon-Johns, University of Abertay
This paper examines the unintended gendered consequences of lockdown on women’s rights, particularly those related to women’s health and wellbeing. Situating this assessment within wider feminist legal scholarship, which exposes the gendered nature of law and the tendency to legislate in a way that prioritises a privileged male legal subject, we argue that the legislation and guidance fail to centre women’s lived experiences and so deprioritise women’s needs. We ultimately argue that lessons need to be learned regarding how future emergency responses are implemented to mitigate the impacts on women and ensure gender is mainstreamed within the law-making process.
“What improvements, if any, should be made to the Human Rights Act 1998? Why are they needed?”
Join The Law Society as they examine this question posed in the 2021 Graham Turnbull essay competition, in partnership with the Graham Turnbull Memorial Fund.
With the Independent Human Rights Act Review underway and considering whether reforms are needed, they will be looking back at 20 years of the Human Rights Act and where we go from here. They will be joined by speakers to share their thoughts on the Review and the essay competition question.
The winner of the essay competition will be announced during the event. To find out more about the Graham Turnbull essay competition and details on how to enter, visit the Law Society website.
This event is held in memory of Graham Turnbull, an English solicitor who was killed while working as a UN human rights monitor in Rwanda. The Law Society honours Graham’s commitment to human rights through an essay competition and lecture, which encourages law students and junior lawyers to examine current pressing human rights issues and to consider their impact on the wider system of human rights and law.
May 2021
This event features 3 papers:
Ethical Limits of Pandemic Governance: International Refugee and Human RIghts Law Redefined?
Nergis Canefe, York University
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a vast array of social, economic and legal implications. In addition to political and civil rights such as liberty and privacy had to be curtailed in the name of public health, legal responses to the pandemic continue to have a far greater impact upon populations on the move, displaced communities and refugees in radically unequal ways. The dimensions of their subjectification include nationality, legal status, race, gender, disability, vulnerability and social class. Legal interventions causing further hardship in their plight is presented as unequivocal and beyond public debate. Making sense of the relationship between law and the pandemic requires us to re-contextualize the use of law in novel ways to limit, to exclude, and to create exceptions as well as the lacunae created by the anxious and panicked publics’ lack of responses to it. The coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2/COVID 19) pandemic created multifaceted crisis responses affecting every aspect of social life. Measures adopted by domestic authorities across the globe included a broad spectrum of restrictions including mandatory quarantines and isolations of individuals, blanket travel bans and cordoning-off of cities and, in many cases, countries. In turn, these measures unprecedented consequences for the displaced populations and refugee communities, particularly those who survive under the conditions of the war nexus. As governments declared states of emergency and assumed exceptional powers, the relevant obligations, principles of protection and procedures under public international law pertaining to refugees and asylum seekers have been suspended. The strongest instrument of pandemic governance is national legislation. However, the effects of national pandemic governance upon displaced and dispossessed populations is far from clear. Legal analysis and empirical evaluation of implementation of national pandemic measures and exceptional policy guidelines require a comprehensive mapping of events unfolding in global refugee hubs, such as Turkey, Lebanon, Tunisia, India, Columbia and South Africa to create the necessary comparative data for critical legal analysis of repercussions of national legislation’s compliance/lack of compliance with established international obligations and ethical principles in the area of forced migration.
Pandemic, Humanities and the Legal Imagination of the Disaster
Valerio Nitrato Izzo, University of Naples Frederico II
In this proposal I would like to engage the pandemic situation making bridges between the idea of catastrophe and its meaning for law and works from literature and other form of art that pioneered questioning both pandemics and disasters. Pandemic would not be the end of the world or the end of the world as we know it, but it is an important occasion for re-thinking how law can contribute to imagine other ways of being together. For this we need to re-think a legal imagination of the disaster from which it will be possible to learn other legal senses of and for the law.
The Pandemic and the Ship
Renisa Mawani, University of British Columbia
Mikki Stelder, University of British Columbia & University of Amsterdam
The COVID19 pandemic has brought oceans and maritime legalities sharply into view. This paper will examine the pandemic from the vantage point of ships at sea - cruise ships, naval vessels, and migrant boats. How does turning to oceans, ships and international and maritime law provide a different framework for understanding the COVID-19 pandemic? What does an oceanic framework reveal about the geo- and necropolitics of containment and contamination? What can turning to ships and oceans in viral times tell us about law, migration, leisure, militarism, imperialism, colonialism and labor? Ships are not only viral hotspots and carriers of disease, they present interesting and generative microcosms for the study of the virus and its social, political, and global implications.