This week’s event announcements include:
The Putney Debates 2017: ‘Constitutional Crisis in the UK’, 2-3 February 2017
Study of Parliament Group and UK Constitutional Law Association Seminar: ‘Parliament and the Law Round Table: Parliament and the Law’, 7 February 2017
Call for Panels and Papers: ‘Courts, Power, Public Law’, ICON-Society Annual Meeting, 5-7 July 2017
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The Putney Debates 2017
Constitutional Crisis in the United Kingdom
2–3 February 2017
St Mary’s Church, Putney, London SW15 1SN
The Oxford Foundation for Law, Justice and Society, in association with Oxford University Law Faculty, is restaging the historic Putney Debates for the Brexit age, 370 years after the original Putney Debates ushered in a new democratic order.
The Putney Debates 2017: Constitutional Crisis in the UK will be held at the site of the original Putney Debates, St Mary’s Church in Putney, on 2–3 February 2017. The debate will address the fall-out from the EU Referendum and the ongoing constitutional conflict between government, the legislature, and the judiciary as the government seeks to challenge the High Court ruling that it must consult Parliament before triggering Article 50 to leave the EU.
The Debates will be chaired by the UK’s leading legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg, Cambridge philosopher and Cross-bench Peer Baroness Onora O’Neill, and Oxford constitutional law experts Professor Paul Craig and Professor Denis Galligan, who will preside over four panels of over 30 prominent figures from the law, politics, and civil society.
Renowned philosopher and prominent Brexit critic AC Grayling will make an impassioned plea for a written Constitution for the UK, 370 years after it was first proposed at the original Putney Debates;
Former Lord Justice of Appeal Sir Stephen Sedley will ask: In the wake of the legal challenges over the use of the ancient Royal Prerogative to trigger Article 50, does the separation of powers still work?
Rob Murray, lead partner at Mishcon de Reya LLP, representing Gina Miller in the Article 50 case before the UK Supreme Court, will bring his insights into the key findings of the Supreme Court in the Miller/Article 50 case;
Renowned human rights lawyer Michael Mansfield QC will argue for the value of the popular vote;
Professors Will Hutton, Timothy Garton Ash, and Paul Craig will assess the political, historic, and legal implications of Brexit;
Robert Hazell CBE, founder of the Constitution Unit at UCL will assess the purpose of referendums and argue why we need fewer of them;
and Anthony Barnett, founder of openDemocracy, will assess the democratic and constitutional principles that the original Putney Debates brought about and how they should be updated for the twenty-first century.
In keeping with the original Putney Debates, there will also be a select number of places for members of the public who submit short video presentations to info@fljs.org. Participants will speak briefly on the constitutional issues facing the country and offer their vision for future directions, before the debate is opened up to questions from the audience.
Please find the event flyer here. To see the panel of participants, find out more, and book tickets, visit: www.putneydebates2017.co.uk or email info@fljs.org.
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Study of Parliament Group and UK Constitutional Law Association Seminar:
Parliament and the Law Round Table: Parliament and the Law
Tuesday 7 February 2017, Committee Room 4, in the House of Lords, 5-7pm.
Following the publication of Parliament and the Law in September 2013, there have been a number of significant new changes (and challenges) facing Parliament. This round-table event (which is being held in advance of the publication of the 2nd Edition of the book) will address a number of these issues, including: English Votes for English Laws; the operation of constitutional conventions; Parliament’s role in protecting human rights, as well as the Parliament’s responsibility for financial scrutiny.
Speakers will include:
Professor the Lord Norton of Louth – Constitutional conventions;
Megan Conway – (former House of Lords Clerk to the Joint Committee on Human Rights) – Parliament and human rights;
Liam Laurence Smyth (Clerk of Legislation, House of Commons) – English Votes for English Laws;
Colin Lee (Principal Clerk, House of Commons Public Bill Office) – Financial scrutiny.
The event will be chaired by Alexander Horne, Deputy Legal Adviser to Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights (and a co-editor, with Professor Gavin Drewry and Professor Jeffrey King) of the forthcoming book.
If you would like to attend, RSVP to Alexander at: hornea@parliament.uk
As the event will be held on the Parliamentary estate, if you are not a pass holder, please do leave some time to clear security.
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Call for Papers and Panels: ‘Courts, Power, Public Law’
ICON-S Annual Meeting
Copenhagen, July 5-7, 2017
The first three Annual Meetings of ICON-S (Florence 2014, New York 2015 and Berlin 2016) have been overwhelmingly successful. The time has come to turn our attention to the 2017 Annual Meeting. ICON-S, the International Society of Public Law, invites paper and panel submissions for its 2017 Annual Meeting to be held in Copenhagen on July 5-7, 2017, under the auspices of at the University of Copenhagen’s Faculty of Law and iCourts – the Danish National Research Foundation’s Center for Excellence on International Courts.
The overarching theme of the ICON-S 2017 Annual Meeting will be ‘Courts, Power, Public Law‘. The Conference will feature a keynote address as well as three plenary sessions featuring prominent jurists, intellectuals and decision-makers, and focusing on the general theme of Annual Meeting. A provisional program can be found here. At the heart of the Conference, however, are the two days devoted to the papers and panels selected through this Call.
ICON-S welcomes proposals for fully-formed panels as well as individual papers dealing with any aspect of the Annual Meeting’s theme. However, paper and panel proposals need not be limited to that theme, and may focus on any theoretical, historical, comparative, empirical, jurisprudential, ethical, behavioral, ethnographic, philosophical or practical, policy-oriented perspective related to public law, including administrative law, constitutional law, criminal law, immigration and citizenship law, human rights, and/or international law in their entire varieties, and may address domestic, subnational, national, regional, transnational, supranational, international and global aspects of public law.
We particularly encourage the submission of fully-formed panels. Panel proposals should include at least three papers by scholars who have agreed in advance to participate. Such fully-formed panel proposals should also identify one or two discussants, who may also serve as panel chair and/or paper presenter. Concurrent panel sessions will be scheduled over two days. Each concurrent panel session will be scheduled for 90 minutes.
We invite potential participants to refer to the ICON-S Mission Statement when choosing a topic or approach for their papers or panels.
ICON-S is by no means restricted to public lawyers! We particularly welcome panel proposals that offer genuinely multi-disciplinary perspectives from various areas of law (including civil, criminal, tax, and labor law), as well as from scholars in the humanities and the social sciences (e.g. history, economics, political science, sociology) with an interest in the study of courts, power, and public law. We welcome submissions from both senior and junior scholars (including advanced doctoral students) as well as interested practitioners.
All submissions must be made through the ICON-S website (here) by February 15, 2017. Successful applicants will be notified by April 1, 2017.
All participants will be responsible for their own travel and accommodation expenses.
For more information, see the Society’s website here.
Filed under: Events, UK Parliament Tagged: Brexit