EVENTS ARCHIVE
Tuesday 18 March 2014 |
6.30-8.00 pm | NAB2.16 (New Academic Building) ‘Neil MacCormick and Scotland’ Dr. Maksymillian Del Mar (Queen Mary, University
of London) Tuesday 18 February 2014 | 6.30-8.00
pm | Moot Court Room (New Academic Building, 7th floor) ‘Late Medieval and Early Modern Legal
Prosopography’ Sir John Baker (University of Cambridge)
Wednesday 15 May 2013
LEGAL BIOGRAPHIES WORKSHOP
This workshop was being jointly organised by the British Library, the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies and the Socio-Legal Studies Association. Drawing on the expertise of archivists and academics working in the field the day
focussed be on the methodological considerations and problems involved in doing archival research for legal biographies. The aim
was to draw attention to archives that newcomers to the field may not have been
aware of and to consider the practical problems involved in analysing sources. Speakers include: Lesley Dingle, Squire Law Library, Cambridge; Guy Holborn, Lincolns Inn Library; Les Moran, Birkbeck; John Simms, British Library; Mara Malagodi, LSE; Susannah Raynor, SOAS; Antonia Moon, British Library; Rosemary Auchmuty, Reading University; Elizabeth Dawson, Archivist, IALS Library; Linda Mulcahy, LSE; Kristen Rundle, LSE
Tuesday 21 May 2013 | 6.30pm |
New Theatre, East Building, LSE
download the podcast (mp3 file)
In Conversation with Dame Heather Hallett
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 21 May 2013 | 6.30pm |
New Theatre, East Building, LSE
In Conversation with Dame Heather Hallett
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.
download the podcast (mp3 file)
Wednesday 15 May 2013
LEGAL BIOGRAPHIES WORKSHOP
This workshop was being jointly organised by the British Library, the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies and the Socio-Legal Studies Association. Drawing on the expertise of archivists and academics working in the field the day
focussed be on the methodological considerations and problems involved in doing archival research for legal biographies. The aim
was to draw attention to archives that newcomers to the field may not have been
aware of and to consider the practical problems involved in analysing sources. Speakers include:
• Lesley Dingle, Squire Law Library, Cambridge
• Guy Holborn, Lincolns Inn Library
• Les Moran, Birkbeck
• John Simms, British Library
• Mara Malagodi, LSE
• Susannah Raynor, SOAS
• Antonia Moon, British Library
• Rosemary Auchmuty, Reading University
• Elizabeth Dawson, Archivist, IALS Library
• Linda Mulcahy, LSE
• Kristen Rundle, LSE
Wednesday 1 May 2013 | 6.30pm |
NAB 1.15
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 26 June 2012 | 6.30pm
Justice Edwin Cameron (Judge of the
Constitutional Court of South Africa) in conversation with Professor Linda
Mulcahy
Click here to download the MP3 podcast
An intimate interview with prominent South African Constitutional Court judge Justice Edwin Cameron as part of LSE's ongoing Legal Biography Project.
Described by Nelson Mandela as "One of South Africa's new heroes" Edwin was a leading human rights lawyer during the apartheid era and has received many honours for his legal work, including a special award by the Bar of England and Wales in 2002 for his ‘contribution to international jurisprudence and the protection of human rights’. He was a powerful critic of President Mbeki’s AIDS-denialist policies and has written a prize-winning memoir, “Witness to AIDS”, which is now in its fourth edition. Edwin is the only person in public office in South Africa to acknowledge having HIV/Aids.
Tuesday 22 May 2012 | 6.30pm
A.W.B. Simpson in Context: The Life of Brian
Speaker: Professor David Sugarman (University of Lancaster)
Tuesday 28 February 2012 | 6.30pm
Lady Justice Arden in conversation with Mr. Justice Cranston
Click here to download the MP3 podcast
Tuesday 14 February 2012 | 6.30pm
Justice Marcia Neave: Case Study of a Feminist Judge
Speaker: Prof Rosemary Hunter (Kent Law School)
Tuesday 18 October 2011 |
6.30pm
The Art of Justice: The Judge’s Perspective
Speaker: Dr Ruth Hertz (Former Judge and Associate at the Centre for
Criminology, Oxford University)
Throughout his career in northern France, from 1930 to 1969, Judge Pierre
Cavellat produced hundreds of drawings and paintings of courtroom scenes. The
uncensored images give an unprecedented insight into how a judge perceives his
profession and the institution of justice as a whole. Given the scarcity of
autobiographies by judges as well as their reticence to expose their inner
feelings and thinking, the images reveal in a candid and immediate fashion the
deeply hidden emotions, ambiguities if not fantasies of a judge while going
about his profession. By using the judicial way of thinking which judges learn
during their education and training as a foil, Dr Hertz hopes to expose how
personal background, history and experience play an additional, sometimes
conflicting, role in ‘judgecraft’.
10 May 2011 | 6.30pm
Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz
Professor Barbara Babcock (Judge John Crown Professor of Law and author of Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Folz, Stanford University Press.)
Clara
Foltz became one of the first women lawyers in the United States when she fought
her way into the California Bar in 1878 as a 29 year old single mother of five.
In a career full of firsts, she was a trial lawyer before women could serve on
juries and a highly paid political orator before they could vote. The
introductory part of the seminar will introduce her as an extraordinary figure
in American legal history.
In addition to her law practice, Foltz was what we would call a public intellectual—a “thinker” in nineteenth century parlance. This seminar will focus on that part of her career. In the 1890s Foltz participated (as commentator, counsel, and shadow juror) in a series of cases in which women were accused of murder. Perhaps most famous of the “Victorian murderesses” was Florence Maybrick, an American woman married to a British Lord. Her supporters on both sides of the Atlantic urged that male justice was inadequate for a female accused, and that women should not be subjected to the death penalty for that reason. Foltz rejected such arguments, and argued for equal treatment of women in the criminal justice system.
We will look at the other famous murderesses and discuss the use of individual criminal cases in the rhetoric of the women’s rights movement. More generally, we will deal with Foltz’s thoughts and writings about the criminal justice system, and especially her conception of a public defender to match the public prosecutor.
8 February 2011 | 5.30pm
A tour of judicial portraits at Lincoln’s Inn
Professor Les Moran (School of Law, Birkbeck University of London)
Legal biography is not the sole preserve of the written
word. Portraits are an important biographical form. But their study has been
neglected by scholars and portraits frequently dismissed as bland, predictable
and bad art. Professor Leslie Moran’s work on judicial portraits has explored
the origins of this state of affairs and its dangers. His research calls for an
urgent reassessment. Together with Guy Holborn of Lincoln’s Inn and drawing upon
that Inn’s rich collection of legal and judicial portraits Professor Moran will
explore the nature of legal portraiture as a biographical text and examine its
uses.
Tuesday 18 January 2011 | 6.30pm
|
Moot Court
Room, 7th floor, New Academic Building
“Loy et Loyauté: Lord Sumner (1859-1934) –`Hopelessly reactionary’ political Law Lord or bold knight-errant of the Common Law and Constitution?”
Professor Tony Lentin (author of The Last Political Law Lord: Lord Sumner (1859-1934), 2009)
Sumner was a controversial Law Lord and verdicts on him are overwhelmingly hostile. A formidable case can be made out against him on a number of grounds, especially his contentious interventions in the most sensitive political issues of his day. His biographer, Tony Lentin, asks whether Sumner’s rehabilitation is not overdue as a sound, pragmatic judge and a staunch defender of the Constitution and the sovereignty and independence of Parliament.
Thursday 9 December 2010 | 6.30 pm |
Venue to be announced
Ken Clarke – An interview with Mr Justice Cranston
As part of the Legal Biographies Project lecture programme Mr Justice Cranston interviewed Ken Clarke, QC, MP, Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor about his legal and political career. Video below:
Wednesday 3 November 2010 | 6pm |
Moot Court
Room, 7th floor, New Academic Building
"The Union of Law and Letters: Dicey on Legal Method and Legal Literature"
Professor Mark Walters (Queen's University, Canada)
[an event in collaboration with the Legal and Political Theory Forum]
It
is common to refer to A.V. Diceys work in constitutional law as evidencing a
scientific, mechanical, positivist, analytical, and formalist legal method;
indeed, Dicey is often associated with the emergence of a text-book tradition in
the nineteenth century within which the job of the legal writer was to organize
and codify complex areas of legal doctrine as logical sets of rules. Examining
Diceys lecture notes, correspondence, and essays, Mark Walters suggests that
this view of Diceys approach to legal method and legal literature, and
consequently his contribution to public law theory, stands in need of some
revision. In fact, Dicey became personally disenchanted with the task of
academic codification, and he struggled, not always successfully, to develop an
approach to what he called the union of law and letters that embraced the value
of rich and nuanced legal narratives informed by laws historical, social and
moral contexts.
Tuesday 19 October 2010
| 6.30pm |
Moot Court
Room, 7th floor, New Academic Building
Whatever happened to Miss Bebb?
Professor Rosemary Auchmuty (School of Law, Reading University)
Gwyneth Bebb gave her name to a landmark case in the campaign to open the legal profession to women. In spite of this achievement, which is often mentioned but rarely analysed, historical accounts have given little or no attention to the woman or the campaign of which she was part; and what happened to her then and later has remained shrouded in mystery. It is clear that her disappearance was due in part to the circumstances of her life, but mainly to the tendency of institutional histories, if they acknowledge women's contribution at all, to present it as a simple (though discontinuous) tale of progress, thereby masking continuing prejudice and inequality.
13 October 2009
Dr Ruth Dukes (University of Glasgow) on Kahn Freund
Chair: Professor Neil Duxbury (LSE)
3 November 2009
Mark Pallis (Barrister; former specialist adviser to the All Party
Parliamentary Group on William Garrow)
Chair: Professor Nicola Lacey (LSE)
1 December 2009
Lord Goodhart on A.L. Goodhart
Chair: Mr Justice Cranston
26 January 2010
Baroness Hale in conversation with Mr Justice Cranston
9 February 2010
Dr Catharine MacMillan (Queen Mary) on Judah
Benjamin
Chair: Professor Neil Duxbury (LSE)
5 May 2009
Lord Hoffmann (Lord of Appeal in Ordinary)
Chair: Sir Ross Cranston FBA (Visiting Professor of Law, LSE)
3 March 2009
Professor G. Edward White (School of Law, University of Virginia)
'Biographical Dimensions of Holmes's The Common Law'
Chair: Professor Nicola Lacey (LSE)
2 December 2008
Lord Justice Mummery on Lord Bowen
Chair: Professor Paul Davies (LSE)
4 November 2008
Dr Richard Gwynned Parry (University of Swansea) on
'Sir David Hughes Parry'
Chair: Mr Justice David Lloyd Jones;
Commentator: Hugh Collins (LSE)
14 October 2008
Professor Gail Pearson (University of Sydney) on Mackenzie Chalmers
Chair: Prof Michael Bridge (LSE)
10 October 2007 Launch and Reception
Rt. Hon. Lord Bingham KG (Patron of the Project), in conversation
with Ross Cranston:
'A Life in the Law' [sponsored by Clifford Chance]
17 October 2007
Panel Discussion on Judicial Biography
Lord Rodger will chair a discussion among Professors Lisa Jardine,
Nicola Lacey, Neil Duxbury, and Mr Geoffrey Lewis
24 October 2007
Dr Stephen Cretney
'Are Solicitors' Lives Necessarily Boring?'