|
|
Issue 4: July
2009
|
|
|
|
|
In this issue
|
|
|
|
-
Michaelmas Term 2009 public lecture
series announced More
-
Report from the
Modern Law Review
38th annual Chorley Lecture
More
-
President of Ghana visits the Department
More
-
New research projects from the Department's
academics
More
|
|
|
|
|
|
Public Lecture Series: Law and
Other Things
|
|
|
|
|
In the Department of Law we
usually organise our public lectures on the assumption that we are
catering mainly for students who are settled on becoming lawyers. But of
course not all law students progress to legal careers, and so this year
we have decided to do things slightly differently. In our autumn series
this year, public figures who were once lawyers or law students will
speak about what led them away from law and how, if at all, their
experience of studying, teaching or practising law has been of value to
them in their other careers. Further venue and title details will
be announced in the next issue and will posted online
here by 1 September 2009.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Geoff Hoon MP
Tuesday 20 October 2009 6.30pm-8pm (venue TBC)
Geoff
Hoon is
formerly Defence Secretary, Leader of the House of Commons
and Secretary of State for Transport
Chair: Robert Reiner, Professor of Criminology
(LSE)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hilary Mantel CBE:
Rules of
Evidence
Tuesday 10 November 2009 6.30pm-8pm
(venue TBC)
Hilary Mantel is an award-winning
novelist and an LSE alumna
Chair:
Nicola Lacey FBA, Professor of Criminal Law (LSE)
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Richard Susskind OBE:
The End of Lawyers?
Tuesday 8 December 2009 6.30pm-8pm (venue TBC)
Richard Susskind is an
independent adviser on information technology
Chair:
Andrew Murray, Reader in Law (LSE) |
|
|
|
|
Other events in
Michaelmas 2009
|
|
|
|
|
Legal Biography
Project
Legal biographies and autobiographies are a rich and important source of
information about the legal system, statute law and the legal
profession. Yet, despite a growing interest over the last fifty years in
the information they contain, they have been much neglected in the study
of law. To remedy this omission, the LSE Department of Law has
established a Legal Biography Project which forms the focus in
Britain for biographical research in law, for research on the history of
the legal profession, and for the many varieties of social and
historical research which draw on data concerning the lives of
influential British lawyers.
Further venue and title details will be announced in the next issue and
will be posted online
here by 1 September 2009.
Tuesday 13 October 2009 5.30pm-7pm
(venue TBC)
Dr Ruth Dukes (University of Glasgow): Kahn Freund
Tuesday 3 November
2009 5.30pm-7pm (venue TBC)
Mark Pallis (Barrister and former specialist adviser to the All Party
Parliamentary Group): Garrow
Battle of Ideas:
Who Owns Culture?
Tuesday 17 November Time and venue TBC
LSE Department of Law, in conjunction with the Institute of Ideas, are
pleased to announce Who Owns Culture? as part of the Battle of Ideas
2009, a festival of high-level, thought-provoking debate. The panel
will include James Cuno (President and Eloise W. Martin Director of the
Art Instiute of Chicago) who has recently published a book on this
subject, and Dr Tatiana Flessas (LSE Lecturer in Law with research
interests in cultural property and heritage law). Further details to be
released. More information on the Battle of Ideas is available form
their website here.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Modern Law Review 38th Annual Chorley
Lecture:
Abdullahi A An-Na'im:
The Compatability of Islamic Law and State
Law
by
Giorgio Monti
|
|
|
|
|
The annual Chorley Lecture is the most
significant occasion in the calendar of the Modern Law Review.
This year’s lecturer was Professor Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, the Charles
Howard Candler Professor of Law at Emory Law School in Atlanta, Georgia,
USA. Originally from Sudan, he is an internationally recognized scholar
of Islam and human rights; his most significant recent work is Islam
and the Secular State (Harvard University Press, 2008). His lecture
was entitled: ‘The Compatibility of Islamic Law and State Law’, a
particularly topical issue of global significance given that one fifth
of the world’s population are of the Muslim faith.
The key claim in Professor An-Na’im’s
lecture was that Islamic Law cannot be or become state law. He defended
this claim in two ways. First, by arguing that there is no religious
duty to transpose Islamic Law into State Law, and further that the
nature of Islamic Law is not consistent with a number of basic tenets of
State Law (for instance, that Islamic Law defies codification because it
is a law that is not definitive but subject to changing human
interpretation, so that any codification is likely to be disputed; that
State Law rests on a system of coercive enforcement while Islamic Law
invokes divine power). Second, by arguing that the state cannot have a
religion. He also supported this claim by offering examples of the
difficulties faced by states (like Sudan and Pakistan) which asserted
they were Islamic states, but he also noted the risks inherent in
countries where Muslims are a minority. For example he suggested that
the UK courts' recognition of religious arbitral awards is problematic
because British judges lack the competence and authority to adjudicate
on Islamic Law.
These claims do not prevent certain
principles of Islamic Law becoming implemented as State Law, but in his
view, this can only occur because there is a ‘ civic reason’ for adopting
Islamic Law as State Law; so that a Principle of Islamic Law does not
become State Law by virtue of its source, but because there are good
public policy reasons for adopting it as State Law. To adopt a law on
grounds that it is the will of God is risky because it affords no space
for debate or disagreement when the law is enacted and it prevents calls
for reform. This approach, Professor An-Na’im suggests, allows a space
for Shari’a principles to play a positive role in shaping public life in
a way that requires society to balance such principles with other public
policy considerations.
This did not mean that State Law is
superior to Islamic Law or vice versa, because the two are different
normative systems. Rather, it means that one should ‘abandon the
romantic illusion that Islamic Law can become State Law’ as a
pre-requisite for finding ways for the two normative systems to
co-exist, but this cannot occur overnight by the application of a
theoretical, abstract formula; it requires mediation through practice
over time.
Professor An-Na’im’s stimulating and
provocative lecture will be published in the January 2010 issue of the
Modern Law Review.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
President Atta Mills of Ghana
visits the Department |
|
|
|
|
The President of Ghana returned to the Department of Law
where he studied more than 40 years ago on a visit to LSE. But President
John Atta Mills found a very different environment from his student
days, with the department now housed in LSE's state of the art New
Academic Building.
 The President toured the new building on Lincoln's Inn
Fields, met students, staff and fellow alumni and was welcomed by Peter
Sutherland, the School's Chairman. Mr Sutherland spoke of LSE's growing
links with Africa, in particular the new African Initiative which will
develop more joint research and scholarship with African universities
and scholars. He said: “This long-term collaboration will inspire and
support generations of students and scholars who will help themselves to
effect global change.” In response, the President said he warmly
welcomed the initiative, which includes the foundation of the first
Chair in African Development at LSE to be taken up in September by
Professor Thandika Mkandawire.
During his visit President Mills also watched the Department
of Law's Moot Court in action before chatting to LSE students from Ghana
and others whose courses have a particular focus on Africa.
President Mills began a distinguished law career at LSE,
completing an LLM in 1968. He subsequently studied at Stanford Law
School in the USA before becoming a lecturer and then associate
professor at the University of Ghana. He was elected President of Ghana
in 2008, taking office in January this year. The visit ended with him
accepting a gift of an LSE baseball cap (a traditional gift from the
School to visiting world leaders) and t-shirt. The President also had
gifts for his former university - presenting LSE with a chair for the
Moot Court, a painting and a traditional Ghanaian leadership stool for
Mr Sutherland.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
New Research Projects from the
Department's academics
|
|
|
|
|
The
following research projects were recently announced and further details
on each will be available online as of the beginning of Michaelmas Term
2009 on the Department’s
research site.
Transnational Regulation and Disputes
by Dr Jan Kleinheisterkamp
The LSE Law Department has recently decided to launch a new research
project that will concentrate on the problems of transnational
regulation and disputes. The object of the project will be, in broad
terms, the transnational dimension of the law that is evolving as a
reaction to the globalisation of the economy. The insufficiency of the
traditional approach of co-ordinating conflicting national laws,
jurisdictions and administrative actions has given rise to two important
phenomena: the exponential growth of arbitration as a means for
resolving international economic and commercial disputes; and the
corresponding emergence of international and transnational law governing
the substance of these transactions. The main theme of the project is
the balance between private and public interests outside the traditional
venues of dispute resolution and the implications of this public/private
fault line on the appropriate design of procedural and substantive laws
in this area.
The project will federate the LSE staff members whose respective
specialisations reflect the different angles under which the central
theme of the project can be approached, which are also reflected by the
current expansion of research-led teaching in the LLM Programme, with
courses like Investment Treaty Law, Fundamentals and Advanced
Issues of International Commercial Arbitration, Uniform Law of
International Sales and International Commodities Transactions;
International Commercial Contracts; International Business
Transactions and International Economic Law. The project will
hence consolidate the Department’s recent strategy to develop the field
of international transactions, following the recruitments of
Dr Andrew Lang
and Professor Michael Bridge in 2006 and 2007;
Jacco Bomhoff,
Dr Jan
Kleinheisterkamp, and Anthea Roberts in 2008; as well as the
appointment of
Jan Paulsson, former co-head of arbitration of Freshfields and one of
the world’s leading arbitrators and counsel in international commercial
and investment treaty arbitration, as a centennial professor this
autumn.
The purpose of the project is to enhance internal and external
co-operation with respect to research and teaching in this emerging new
field, which has gained much momentum in practice but to a large extend
still lacks solid theoretical underpinnings. The project will sponsor
speaker series and future conferences over the coming years. For more
information, please contact
Anthea Roberts and
Dr Jan Kleinheisterkamp.
Law in Africa
by Professor Conor Gearty
A
Law in Africa Development Project has recently been established within
the Department of Law. The idea for the project grew out of a successful
School conference that Professor Conor Gearty directed in Rwanda in Autumn 2008,
on ‘Global Climate Change: Sustainable Adaptation, Development and Human
Rights’. During his visit to Rwanda as part of the planning for this
event, Conor met with officials and others involved in the
administration of the law, and also with the Minister for Justice
Tharcisse Karugarama. It became clear that
there were a number of unmet needs on the Rwanda side with regard to the
delivery and administration of justice. In early 2009 a group of LSE
academics and NGOs gathered at a meeting co-convened by Professor
Gearty (together with LSE Governor Cherie Blair) to consider what
assistance could be offered, with the initiative being strongly
supported by Professor Sarah Worthington in her capacity as Deputy Director (research) within
the School. The Project has now been formally integrated into the
Department, with many members expressing great interest and a desire to
be involved.
Planning is at a
very early stage, with the right emphasis still being thought through,
in collaboration both with the Rwandans and with the relevant NGO
community. Niamh McClean (who has worked with Professor Gearty on the earlier
Rwanda initiative) has been appointed part-time manager. The current
plan is to develop and deepen linkages with Rwanda in the Project’s
first phase, building on this template in the future, as more African
countries are brought on board. The Project has the support of LSE
Director Sir Howard Davies and complements other Africa-related
initiatives already underway within the School. For more information,
please contact
Professor Conor Gearty.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
LSE experience at the
Vienna Arbitration Moot
by Dr Jan Kleinheisterkamp |
|
|
|
|
This year’s LSE Team
performed extraordinarily well at the Willem C. Vis International
Commercial Arbitration Moot, which took place on 3-10 April in Vienna.
The five team members Johannes Kater, Kira Krissinel, Sara Nadeau-Séguin,
Manuel Penadés Fons, and Mumuksha Singh were coached by Annabelle
Möckesch (all of them LLM students) and supervised by
Dr Jan
Kleinheisterkamp.
Faced with a problem
that involved thorny issues such as the impact of insolvency proceedings
on the enforceability of arbitration agreements, the extension of
arbitration agreements to non-signatory parties, and voluntary
assumption of contractual obligations by a third party, the team worked
hard on the memoranda for claimant and respondent, due in December and
January, respectively. In the following weeks, the team concentrated on
pleading practice and, besides pleading against other London teams,
practiced with practitioners of the arbitration groups of various City
law firms and participated in a pre-moot in Berlin.
These efforts paid off
well as evidenced by the excellent performance in the pleadings in the
general round in Vienna. The LSE team reached an outstanding 13th place
(out of 228) in the general rounds and moved on to the final rounds.
There, it gained a remarkable victory and defeated the team from New
York University in a breath-taking encounter. Having exhausted its
energy, the team then had to bow to the brilliant team of Aarhus
University.
|
|
At the final awards ceremony, the LSE team obtained an honourable
mention for its memorandum for respondent, a well deserved reward for
the team’s hard work that went into the preparation. Special
congratulations go to Ms Sara Nadeau-Séguin, who obtained a honourable
mention for her pleading (140/150), as well as Ms Mumuksha Singh, who
scored an average of 141/150 (the maximum obtained in the competition
being 144/150) but was ineligible for a honourable mention due to the
strategic order of the pleadings. The Department of Law congratulates
the team for a brilliant performance and wishes to thank the team’s
sponsors CMS Cameron McKenna and WilmerHale for their financial support.
|
pictured above, from left to right:
Kira Krissinel,
Johannes Kater,
Annabelle Möckesch, Manuel Penadés Fons, Sara Nadeau-Séguin, Mumuksha
Singh
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Legal & Political
Theory Forum Conference on the Rule of Law and Political Emergencies
by Dr Thomas Poole |
|
|
|
|
LSE
hosted in May this year, in the bowels of its stylish New Academic
Building, a symposium on the rule of law and political emergencies –
unquestionably one of the hottest topics in legal scholarship and world
affairs. The event was generously supported by both Law and Government
departments and marked the culmination of the second year of the LSE
Legal & Political Theory Forum. The Forum was set up by
Dr Thomas Poole (Law) and
Dr
Philip Cook (Government) as a focal point for working through
theoretical issues of common interest to both legal scholars and
political theorists. Papers are presented regularly throughout term
time, with speakers being drawn from both inside the LSE and elsewhere.
The Forum now provides an important bridge between Law and Government
departments, facilitating ideas sharing across not only those groupings
but also among scholars in the Centre for the Study of Human Rights, International
Relations and beyond.
The May
symposium was a characteristically interdisciplinary and wide-ranging
affair. The participants, ‘stars’ in their respective fields, came from
around the world to take part. It was no surprise, given the high
quality of the contributors, that the event was very well attended,
drawing to London scholars and students from all around the UK.
Professor Martin Krygier from the University of New South Wales kicked proceedings off
with a typically broad and sophisticated paper on the sociology of the
rule of law. Professor Chandran Kukathas from the LSE Government department
replied with insight and flair. Cricket metaphors abounded at this stage
of the day, with the fairness (or otherwise) of bending the rules for
that cricketing legend W.G. Grace providing something of an early
leitmotif.
Professor Jeremy
Waldron (NYU Law) took us in to lunch with a fine paper on the
importance of procedures to our understanding of the rule of law. Some
in the room have since described the dexterous style in which he
communicated his ideas as little short of spell-binding. Our own
Professor Nicola Lacey, commenting on
the paper, was Waldron’s equal in both percipience and elegance of
manner.
While the
morning sessions tackled more theoretical matters, the afternoon papers
focused more squarely on the emergency theme. Professor Adrian Vermeule from
Harvard Law School – who has written controversially on emergency topics
since September 11th – presented a searching paper on crisis
governance in the administrative state, making connections between 9/11
and the very different emergency brought about by the financial meltdown
of 2008. Professor Paul Kelly – soon to take over as Head of the LSE Government
Department – gave a finely-grained and acutely critical response which
set up a fabulous debate in the subsequent Q&A.
The day
finished on a high note with
Professor Conor Gearty, who is moving from the Centre for the Study
of Human Rights more
firmly into the Department of Law, broadening our horizons with a
disquisition on international human rights law and the current age of
counter-terrorism. Lively discussion followed a reply from Professor Chris Brown
(International Relations, LSE) that, in its genial but nicely probing
air, perfectly encapsulated the mood of the day.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
LSE Lawyers' Alumni
Group Summer Drinks Soirée |
|
|
|
|
 The
Lawyers' Alumni Group rounded off a successful
academic
year with a
Summer Drinks Soirée
on 18 June. Many thanks to everyone who came to the event - a
full report and photos is now
available online
here.
For more information about the Group and how to get involved, please see
Houghton Street Online
here.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2009 WG Hart Legal
Workshop on Law Reform and Financial Markets
by Professor Niamh Moloney |
|
|
|
|
LSE Department of Law continues to contribute to the
international regulatory and policy debate on the financial crisis. The
Department was closely involved with the 2009 WG Hart Legal Workshop
(23-25 June) which this year considered the timely theme of Law Reform
and Financial Markets. Professor Niamh Moloney and
Dr Joanna Benjamin
were members of the Organising Committee, together with Professor Eilís
Ferran (Cambridge) and Professor Kern Alexander (Queen Mary).
The two
and a half day Workshop was supported by the Institute of Advanced Legal
Studies, Cambridge Finance, and the ESRC’s World Economy & Finance
Research Programme, and sought to consider and challenge the current
international regulatory reform movement and to probe the complexities
and risks of law reform in the financial markets. It opened with a
Plenary Lecture by LSE alumnus Sean Hagan, General Counsel of the IMF,
chaired by LSE Director Sir Howard Davies. A series of Plenary Sessions
followed during which a range of distinguished speakers from the
international academic, regulatory (the Bank for International
Settlements, BaFin [the German market supervisor], CONSOB [the Italian
market supervisor], the European Commission, the US Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation, the FSA, and the Swiss National Bank were all
represented), and practitioner communities debated the financial crisis
and law reform. The complexities of legal intervention in the financial
markets were discussed in panel sessions over the following two days,
with participants including LSE alumnus Richard Heckinger of the Federal
Reserve Bank of Chicago.
The Workshop was characterised by wide-ranging
and stimulating debate on a range of issues of central importance to the
current international reform movement, including how best to redesign
regulation, the international dimension of regulation, and the role of
private law in financial markets.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dr
Hoffmann's project explores human rights and dignity |
|
|
|
|
A
research paper on Dignity – a Special Focus on Vulnerable Groups,
coordinated by Dr Florian Hoffmann (LSE) and Frédéric Mégret (McGill
University) and produced by a group of researchers
 from
across the globe is one of the contributions to the ‘Swiss Initiative to
Commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights’, launched in Geneva in December 2008. Instigated and funded by
the Swiss
government, actively supported by the governments of Austria and Norway,
and coordinated by the Geneva Academy for International Humanitarian Law
and Human Rights, the Initiative tasked a Panel of Eminent Persons,
chaired by Mary Robinson and Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, to elaborate an
Agenda for Human Rights which identified core themes and challenges
for human rights in the future. The Panel then commissioned eight
research papers on these themes, with special emphasis being placed on
‘human dignity’ and a ‘world human rights court’, of which Dignity is
one. The Agenda has been presented to the UN community in New York and
Geneva, and it is further planned to launch it at the regional level,
including the OAS and the Council of Europe. Click
here to read more about the Swiss
Initiative.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Recent Staff Publications
|
|
|
|
|
 Professor
Vanessa
Finch
Corporate Insolvency Law: Perspectives and Principles
(Cambridge University
Press, 2009) [Second edition]
Professor Vanessa Finch has published the second edition of Corporate
Insolvency Law. The first edition proposed a fundamentally revised
concept of insolvency law, intended to serve corporate as well as
broader social ends. This second edition takes on board a host of
changes that have subsequently reshaped insolvency law and practice,
notably the consolidation of the rescue culture in the UK, the rise of
the pre-packaged administration and the substantial replacement of
administrative receivership with administration. It also considers the
implications of recent and dramatic changes in the provision and trading
of credit, the movement of an increasing amount of 'insolvency work' to
the pre-formal insolvency stage of corporate affairs and the arrival, on
the insolvency scene, of a new cadre of specialists in corporate
turnaround. Looking to the future, Professor Finch argues that changes of
approach are needed if insolvency law is to develop with coherence and
purpose, and she offers a framework for such an approach.
More on this publication
|
|
 Dr
David
Kershaw
Company Law in
Context: Text and Materials
(Oxford University Press, 2009)
Dr
David Kershaw has published Company Law in Context : Text and
Materials, carefully designed to provide students
with the economic, business, and social context
in which company law operates, enabling them to understand its
application and relevance. Dr Kershaw
provides detailed up-to-date commentary with selected extracts from
company law source materials, and covers key cases in depth, enabling
students to engage critically with judgments, issues, and policies.
Sample chapters may be viewed online, in addition to a video podcast by
the author.
More on this publication
|
|
Other
recent publications of note:
Professor Francis
Snyder: The
European Union and China, 1949-2008: Basic Documents and Commentary
(Hart, 2009)
More on this
publication
Professor Michael Bridge:
The Sale of Goods (OUP, 2009
[2nd ed]) More on this
publication
If you would like to keep even more up-to-date
with research and publications please visit
here.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Other News
|
|
|
|
|
The Department would also
like to congratulate
Professor Christine Chinkin on her appointment
as Scientific Expert to the Council of Europe Ad Hoc
Committee on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and
Domestic Violence. Their mandate is to prepare one or more legally
binding instrument(s), as appropriate, to prevent and combat: domestic
violence including specific forms of violence against women; other forms
of violence against women; to protect and support the victims of such
violence and prosecute the perpetrators.
Dr Jan Kleinheisterkamp
has been quoted in the Financial Times in an article on the conflict
between investment treaty claims and EC law prohibiting state aids, a
topical problem that is arising in a number of ongoing arbitrations in
which investors recently brought against new European member states as
subsidies and other benefits that attracted them to invest had to be
scrapped as part of the preparation for accession to the European Union.
Dr Kleinheisterkamp specialises on international arbitration and has
previously worked in the field of state aid law.
Read the full article here.
To
find out the latest developments within the Department, please visit our
regularly updated News page by clicking here.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Edited
by Bradley Barlow, Department of Law, London
School
of Economics and Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE. Tel: 020 7955 7687.
Fax: 020 7955 7366. Email: b.barlow@lse.ac.uk
Contributors: Professor Hugh Collins, Dr Florian Hoffmann, Conor Gearty, Lee Jackson,
Dr Jan Kleinheisterkamp, Dr Andrew Lang,
Professor Niamh Moloney, Giorgio Monti, Joy Whyte
|
|
|
|
|
To unsubscribe from this newsletter email b.barlow@lse.ac.uk
|
|
