Law Under Attack: Past, Present and Future [Recording available]

Protest rights and access to the courts are being eroded in the UK. But rights were taken away previously, in the 1980s in Britain and America and at the time of the Iraq War. What insights can we learn from previous moments when rights were under attack? And what should be the campaigners’ alternative? Do we campaign to keep the legal system as it is now or can we imagine something better?

Seminar 1: Attacks on the Rule of Law: How did we get here?

This seminar places the present attack on civil liberties under a historical perspective. It asks: to what extent are our difficulties caused by a past rejection of the rule of law, whether under Thatcher or Reagan, or during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, with its disregard for international law and public opinion? Or was the desire to prevent the unjustified invasion of Iraq through litigation misguided? Can and should we expect a just international law?

Chair: Prof. Alison Scott-Baumann | SOAS University of London

Dr Paul O’Connell | SOAS University of London

Dr Robert Knox | University of Liverpool

Prof. Conor Gearty | London School of Economics 

Seminar 2: The Current Status of the Rule of Law

Centered around the government’s attacks on civil liberties, this seminar explores the way the government is attacking civil liberties, including its Criminal Justice and Criminal Justice Act, judicial review and the Human Rights Act. Do we see a drift away from democracy? How are the courts likely to react to the new legal landscape, in which their ability to restrict the government has been limited?

Chair: Prof. David Renton | SOAS University of London

Dr Rob Faure-Walker | University College London

Dr Joelle Grogan | Middlesex University London

Amanda Weston KC | Garden Court Chambers

Seminar 3: Police Abolition, Legal Abolition

This seminar focuses on alternatives to the attack on protest rights. Should we call for the courts to maintain the powers they have now – or can we imagine a different legal system with a diminished (or even abolished) police and prisons and a better role for the law?

Chair: Prof. Bill Bowring | Birkbeck, University of London

Shanice McBean | Author, Kings College London

Prof. David Renton | SOAS University of London