LLM Seminars are displayed in the LLM General Course [LSE Staff and Students only].

SUMMER TERM

Wednesday 1 May 2013  |  6.30pm  |  NAB 1.15

LEGAL BIOGRAPHY PROJECT

'Pitfalls of Judicial Biography'

Speaker: Ted White (David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Virginia)

There has recently been a growing interest, in both the US and UK, in biographies of judges. One unusual feature of that development is that some American judges (primarily members of the Supreme Court of the United States) have elicited biographies largely designed for popular audiences. The development seems curious in one respect: with the exception of a handful of figures, most visible judges in the US and the UK have not had careers in other fields which might have wider appeal to lay audiences than those of law and judging. There was a time when American Supreme Court justices included persons with previous political experience (William Howard Taft, Charles Evans Hughes, Hugo Black, and Earl Warren come to mind), but that has not been the case since the 1970s. Justices now tend to be drawn almost exclusively from the ranks of lower court judges. The result is that the pre-Court careers of most current justices have been firmly within the legal and judicial sectors, and their involvement with visible public issues has been minimal.

It would seem to follow that a prospective judicial biographer should expect to be confronted with a subject whose life has been spent primarily as a legal professional and that the chief value of undertaking a judicial biography is to describe and analyse the subject's contributions to law. If one grants that proposition, some attendant difficulties for judicial biographers would seem to emerge.

First, the process by which high court opinions are rendered can be said to downplay rather than emphasize the individual contributions of judges. Second, many of the other tasks associated with being a high court judge - hearing cases, participating in judicial conferences, drafting and circulating opinions, working with law clerks - are regarded as confidential. It is thus difficult to extract what might be called the "human" features in judicial careers: too often the biographer is simply confronted with a judge's public record, which largely consists of high court opinions. Moreover, the working lives of judges does not typically include material of great human interest. This talk will explore ways in which some of these challenges might be surmounted by prospective judicial biographers.

Tuesday 7 May 2013  |  6pm  | Venue: TW1.G.01 Tower One, LSE

CONVERSING WITH THE LAW

LSE Department of Law and Tamils Against Genocide present a screening of:
'No Fire Zone: The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka'

Panel:
Callum Macrae (NoFireZone Director); Shivani Jegarajah (Renaissance Chambers); Janani Jananayagam (founding Director of Tamils Against Genocide)

Chair Dr Devika Hovell (LSE Department of Law)
 

Thursday 9 May 2013  |  12pm-1pm  |  Venue: Room TW2 10.01B (10th Floor, Tower 2)

'The Architecture of Power in Nepal: Constitutionalism, Sovereignty and the Nation'

Speaker: Dr Mara Malagodi (British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Law)
Chair: Dr Ruth Kattumuri (Co-Director of the LSE Asia Research Centre)

The present paper investigates in a historical perspective the articulation of the concept of internal state sovereignty in modern Nepal’s constitutional domain by juxtaposing an analysis of the country’s various constitutional texts with a reading of the physical architectural structures hosting the main central state institutions in Kathmandu. The focus on the ‘internal’ notion of state sovereignty seeks to illuminate the transformation of the relationship between the state and the people in Nepal through its various constitutional configurations over the years. By adopting the approach of Historical Institutionalism, the paper seeks to demonstrate that Nepal’s inability to fully secularise political authority led to the incomplete entrenchment of popular sovereignty, ineffective executive accountability mechanisms, an exclusionary constitutional definition of the Nepali nation and an overall lack of democratic checks and balances in the country.

This event is free and open to all but registration is required. To register, please email arc@lse.ac.uk

Entry is on a first come, first served basis. For any queries email arc@lse.ac.uk or call 020 7955 7615.
 

Thursday 9 May 2013  |  6.30pm  | Venue: Sheikh Zayed Theatre

LSE DEPARTMENT OF LAW / PRS FOR MUSIC PUBLIC DEBATE

'The Theft of Creative Content: Copyright in Crisis'

Speakers: Robert Ashcroft (Chief Executive of PRS for Music); Amelia Andersdotter MEP (member of the Pirate Party); Ludovic Hunter-Tilney (Financial Times); Gary Kemp (musician and songwriter for Spandau Ballet); Dr Luke McDonagh (LSE Fellow)

Join the debate @LSELaw #LSEcopyright

Thursday 9 May 2013   |   6:30-8:00 pm   |   Venue: New Theatre

TRANSNATIONAL LAW PROJECT

'Is Self-Regulation of International Arbitration an Illusion?'

4^th LSE Arbitration Debate with Sundaresh Menon (Chief Justice of Singapore) and Jan Paulsson (LSE)

Registration by email: Law.TL.Project@lse.ac.uk  (subject line: “Register 9 May LSE Debate”)

download the PDF flyer

Friday 17 May 2013  |  12.30-2pm   |   Venue: COL 2.01 (Columbia House)

Discussion of Professor Conor Gearty's Liberty and Security (Polity Press, 2013)

Chair: Professor Richard English (University of St Andrews)

Discussants: Dayyab Gillani (PhD student, University of St Andrews); Marco Scalvini (PhD student, Media Studies); Maria Werdine (PhD student, European Institute)

Reply from Conor Gearty

If you would like to come can you please email Sarah Atkinson at s.atkinson@lse.ac.uk by Wednesday 15th

Monday 20 May 2013     |   6:30-8:30 pm   |   Venue: Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building

'The Government's Proposals on Legal Aid: The Client, The Lawyer and The Rule of Law - Town Hall Meeting'

Chair: Professor Conor Gearty

Confirmed speakers include Nathalie Lieven QC, Simon Creighton (Bhatt Murphy, prison aspects of the reforms), Polly Glynn (Deighton Pierce Glynn, social welfare implications), and Nick Armstrong (Matrix, specialist in public law; legal aid and its regulation).

 What do the government’s legal aid proposals mean for access to justice and the rule of law? This meeting, which is being organised by LSE with the support of Matrix Chambers, will consider the proposals for civil legal aid and public law, set out in the consultation paper Transforming legal aid: delivering a more credible and efficient system. It is aimed at all those with an interest in the proper functioning of the public law system, including politicians, judges, academics, solicitors, barristers, client groups, and the media. It will look in particular at cases that will not be capable of being brought under the new proposals, whether because they will fail the proposed residence test (which would exclude a great many of the major cases of the last few years) or the prison law scope test; but it will also and more generally assess the viability of specialist public law practice in the future.

All this and more will be considered by our panel and audience. The meeting will be informal and town-hall-like in its approach. We expect a number of people to come and go: the London Legal Walk finishes nearby and walkers are particularly welcome to join afterwards. More speakers are being added all the time, and we expect a full and perhaps heated debate. Chris Grayling, the Lord Chancellor, and his team are invited, as well as other parliamentarians and judges. It is an open meeting and all are welcome.

It would be very helpful, in order to let us gauge interest, if those who are intending to come would confirm by email to rsvp@matrixlaw.co.uk. However, please attend even if you do not email.
 

Tuesday 21 May 2013     |   6:30-8:00 pm   |   Venue: New Theatre

LEGAL BIOGRAPHY PROJECT

Speaker: The Rt. Hon Lady Justice Hallett

Interviewer: Prof Linda Mulcahy

The Rt. Hon Lady Justice Hallett has been a Court of Appeal Judge since 2005, was the first woman to chair the Bar Council and was formerly a member of the Judicial Appointments Commission. We are delighted to welcome Dame Heather to the LSE to be interviewed about her life and career. The interview will be conducted by Professor Linda Mulcahy and is open to staff, students and the public.

Tuesday 28 May 2013  |  6.30pm  |  Moot Court Room, 7th floor, NAB  CANCELLED

LEGAL BIOGRAPHY PROJECT

'Reason and Imagination: the selected correspondence of Learned Hand'

Speaker: Constance Jordan (Professor of English, Claremont Graduate University)

Judge Learned Hand is an icon of American Law. Though he was never nominated to our country's highest court, Hand is nevertheless more frequently quoted by legal scholars and in Supreme Court decisions than any other lower court judge in US history. He was the model for all judges who followed him, setting the standard for the bench with a matchless combination of legal brilliance and vast cultural sophistication.

Hand was also renowned as a superb writer. In this paper Constance Jordan offers a unique sampling of the correspondence between Hand and a stellar array of intellectual and legal giants, including Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Theodore Roosevelt, Walter Lippmann, Felix Frankfurter, Bernard Berenson, and many other prominent political and philosophical thinkers. The letters on which she draws - many of which have never been published before - cover almost half a century, often taking the form of brief essays on current events, usually seen through the prism of their historical moment. They reflect Hand's engagement with the issues of the day, and showcase decades of penetrating and original thought on the major themes of American jurisprudence.

Tuesday 4 June 2013  |   6pm  |  Shaw Library

THE MODERN LAW REVIEW 42nd ANNUAL CHORLEY LECTURE

'The Challenge of Executive Democracy in Europe'

Speaker: Professor Deirdre Curtin (Professor of European Law, University of Amsterdam)

Thurs/Fri 20 & 21 June 2013   |    All day   |    Venue: Moot Court Room, 7th Floor, NAB

CONFERENCE

'Law, Liberty and State: Hayek, Oakeshott and Schmitt on the Rule of Law'

The conference will discuss the theme of Law, Liberty, and State in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Political theorists, international relations scholars, philosophers and lawyers from various fields of public law will present papers on this theme, reflecting on the contribution of the following thinkers: F.A. Hayek, Michael Oakeshott, and Carl Schmitt.

Speakers: Nehal Bhuta (EUI); David Boucher (Cardiff); David Dyzenhaus (Toronto); Duncan Kelly (Cambridge); Paul Kelly (LSE); Erika Kiss (Princeton); Chandran Kukathas (LSE); Martin Loughlin (LSE); Jan-Werner Müller (Princeton); Thomas Poole (LSE); Adrian Vermeule (Harvard); Lars Vinx (Bilkent)

There is limited space available for this conference. Those wishing to attend are advised to register their expression of interest via email to: T.M.Poole@lse.ac.uk

Selected 2009/10 public lectures: