UCL Laws Events & CPD
Laws Events - Past Events 2013
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| Friday 10 & Saturday 11 May 2013 Annual Bentham House Conference Philosophical Foundations of Contract Law
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About this event The focus of this two-day conference was on general themes in the contract theory literature, including for example the nature of promising and more generally voluntary obligations, economic, instrumental and pluralistic conceptions of contract, the relationship between contract and other moral concerns such as fault, and the application of these more abstract philosophical ideas to specific doctrinal issues, such as contract formation, contract interpretation, unfair terms, defences and remedies. |
| Wednesday 1 May 2013 A half-day Conference Negotiating Religion: Inquiries into the History and Present of Religious Accommodation
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About this event Throughout history, religious belief and religious affiliation have been powerful factors in shaping human societies. They have defined individual identities and communities, governed the relationship between commonwealths, and inspired human creativity. Religious visions, hopes and fears also stimulated conflict and unleashed violence. For an overwhelming and growing majority of people living on our planet today, religious belief answers questions central to their existence. It allows them to cope with difficult or decisive moments and structures everyday life. It seems that over the past generations, differences regarding the place and role of religious belief have grown considerably. In a world marked more than ever before by migration and global connectivity, societies which tend towards religious neutrality or indifference need to define anew their relationship to communities with strong religious commitments. In the past as well as today, the relationship between individual and community, between different confessions and religious communities, between these communities and the state, are negotiated in complex processes of moderation, sometimes involving conflict or even violence. This conference is the closing event of a four-worshop series which took place at UCL in 2010-12. It offers a cross-disciplinary assessment of these different forms in which religious identity, commitment and community are negotiated in the contemporary world. Without claiming to exhaust the topic, it proposes to look at the agents, procedures and outcomes of these negotiations, and hopefully will evaluate the potentials and limits of negotiation of religion. |
| 22 - 25 April 2013 The 2013 Quain Lectures The Normativity of Law
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About this event The Quain Lectures were founded as an annual event in 2012, with Professor Phillip Pettit of Princeton University being the inaugural speaker. This years lecturer, Joseph Raz, is one of the most important and influential figures in contemporary legal and political philosophy. He will deliver three one hour lectures on the Normativity of Law. Download the papers for these talks |
| Tuesday 23 April 2013 UCL Centre for Law and Governance in Europe Symposium The Melloni and Åkerberg Fransson judgments: The incoming tide of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights?
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About this event The symposium explored the recent landmark judgments of the EU Court of Justice in Case C-399/11 Stefano Melloni and Case C-617/10 Åkerberg Fransson (26 February 2013). The judgments made important statements about the scope, meaning and effect of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. |
| Tuesday 16 April 2013 New Work in Property & Trusts Symposium
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About this workshop The aim of the symposium was to promote and assist new work in property law and trusts by providing "early career" scholars with a forum to discuss their current research projects and the opportunity to meet other scholars working in the same areas. Each of the six speakers presented a paper, which was commented on by an expert in the field, and then discussed more widely. Attendance was by invitation only. This year's symposium will be the first in an annual series: anyone interested in presenting a paper at, or attending, next year's sympoisum should contact Charles Mitchell (charles.mitchell@ucl.ac.uk) or Ben McFarlane (ben.mcfarlane@ucl.ac.uk) |
| Wednesay 27 March 2013 Science, Politics and Transnational Regulation: Regulatory Scientific Institutions and the Dilemmas of Hybrid Authority
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About this event The main objective of this talk was to develop a better understanding of the structure of transnational regulatory scientific institutions (RSIs). The speaker argued that the hybrid political-legal-epistemic nature of RSIs creates a continual tension between their hierarchical and policy-driven structure and the paradigms of objectivity, parallelism and non-centralism that characterize science. |
| Thursday 21 March 2013 Inaugural Lecture and Bentham Association Presidential Address IP Law: Keep Calm and Carry On? by Professor Sir Robin Jacob (UCL) |
About this lecture: This talk inaugurated the Sir Hugh Laddie Chair in Intellectual Property Law and was also the 2013 Bentham Association Presidential Address. The Bentham Association is the UCL Laws Alumni association. This lecture was filmed and will be available to view soon |
| Friday 15 March 2013 UCL Institute for Human Rights Bridging the divide - Matters to be taken into account in relation to the integration of equality bodies and human rights institutions
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About this event A number of European Union countries have, are or plan to integrate the functions of their national equality body and human rights institution within a single organisation. This conference provided an opportunity to discuss and debate the emerging findings and their implications with both the research team and international experts. It will feed into the final report of the study and associated guidance for policy-makers and practitioners. This was a closed event with attendance by invitation only. |
| Thursday 14 March 2013 Current Legal Problems Lecture Can Economic Sociology save Law and Development?
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About this talk: Professor Amanda Perry-Kessaris argued that 'Law and development' is a field of inquiry and practice of ever-greater significance and ever-diminishing coherence for which economic sociology offers a possible lifeboat. The substantive focus of the field is best defined, and that substance is best approached, using the analytical, empirical and normative components of economic sociology. However, plenty of law and development work has been, and will continue to be, done using other approaches. So an economic sociology of law and development will probably only become seaworthy once it is communicated in an open source visual form. |
| Wednesday 13 March 2013 UCL Legal & Social Philosophy Colloquium Giving Desert its due
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About the speaker: T.M. Scanlon is Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity at Harvard University. He received his B.A. from Princeton in 1962 and his Ph.D. from Harvard. In between, he studied for a year at Oxford as a Fulbright Fellow. He taught at Princeton from 1966 before joining Harvard in 1984. |
| Tuesday 12 March 2013 UCL Laws Symposium The Eweida Decision
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About this event The Eweida decision heralded significant changes in the law on freedom of religion in the workplace and its relationship to other rights. It is likely to have a major importance for the development of European and domestic law on anti-discrimination and on workplace regulation of religious clothing and conduct. The symposium rought together four speakers all of whom are both academics and barristers and all of whom acted for parties or interveners in this case. |
| Tuesday 12 March 2013 UCL Institute for Human Rights with Waging Peace A Decade of Darfur: Why the genocide continues today
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About this event Ten years ago, the Sudanese regime unleashed a systematic genocide in Darfur which continues to this day, away from media attention. Khartoum's policy of ethnic cleansing destroyed 90% of black African villages, killing an estimated 300,000 people. Today, three million people who fled the violence live mostly in camps, but their lives are still fraught with danger. Waging Peace and UCL are hosting a discussion of the current situation in Darfur and life in the camps in particular |
Thursday 7 March 2013
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About this talk: The EU's accession to the ECHR raises questions about the autonomy of EU law, and about the relationship between the the EU Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. The lecture will critique the prevailing theories of legal/constitutional pluralism, and propose an alternative paradigm: the integration of laws. Within integrated legal systems, the argument goes, conflicts between supreme adjudicators can be resolved from within the law. There is a law of integration, and the relationships between supreme/constitutional courts are governed by a principle of limited and shared jurisdiction. |
| Monday 4 March 2013 A Lunchtime Public Law Lecture The Future of the UK Bill of Rights
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About this talk: In December of 2012, the Commission on a UK Bill of Rights presented their findings in a paper marked by a deep lack of consensus. On the surface, this division was attributed to the polarized political standpoints within the Commission. For the minority, Philippe Sands QC, a Liberal Democrat adviser, opposed the introduction of a UK Bill of Rights on three grounds: devolution, responses to the Commissions' consultations, and decoupling the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights. Supporting a UK Bill of Rights became a smokescreen for severing Britain's relationship with Strasbourg – an unwarranted departure from the Commissions' framework of reference. Philippe Sands QC will speak of his experience of working for the Commission, and he will address the future implications of their Report. Will calls for a UK Bill of Rights resurge after the 2014 Scottish Referendum on independence? Or will the existing Human Rights Act by then become regarded as a "UK Bill of Rights in all but name"?. |
| Friday 1 March 2013 London Roman Law Group Carriage by Sea
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About this talk This paper was concerned with the Roman law of maritime transport of goods. It explored the legal rules governing this form of transport of goods and the management structures employed by owners of maritime vessels to facilitate the transport of cargo. Using legal and archeological evidence, it argued that the legal solutions created by the Roman jurists were also informed by 'real life' problems, as opposed to purely intellectual concerns, and that more attention needs to paid to these 'contexts' in order to enhance modern understanding of this area of Roman private law |
| Thursday 28 February 2013 Current Legal Problems Lecture Minorities, Pluralism and the Law
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About this talk: This lecture explored the different ways in which a liberal democracy can accommodate the claims of those from minority groups who want to make legal decisions in tune with their culture and beliefs. As part of this discussion, it also examined the rights of those 'minorities within minorities' who are vulnerable to pressure to comply with the norms of their social group.Finally, the lecture pointed out some of the advantages and disadvantages of the practical ways in which the state can respond to and work with minorities who want to follow their own distinct norms to regulate their individual and community life. |
| Wednesday 27 February 2013 Institute of Brand and Innovation Law (IBIL) Annual Brands Lecture Assessing confusion in trade mark and passing off cases
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About this talk Confusion plays a fundamental role in establishing passing off and infringement and registrability in trade mark cases and yet, what is required to show confusion is underexplored. This seminar considered the issue from a legal perspective, in terms of what courts in the UK and the US require of parties in order to show confusion, and through the examination of cutting-edge consumer behavioural science and marketing research. Watch this lecture online on the IBIL website |
| Wednesday 27 February 2013 UCL Legal & Social Philosophy Colloquium Proportionality: Diagnostic, not Constitutive
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Download the discussion paper |
| Thursday 21 February 2013 Centre for Law, Economics and Society Libor, Screening and Reform
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About this talk Investigations into a conspiracy to manipulate the U.S. dollar London Interbank Offered Rate ("LIBOR") and other comparable benchmarks have been launched worldwide. Some of the banks involved have already settled with authorities for record amounts. The LIBOR scandal is potentially the most significant financial manipulation in history, and it was first publicly flagged by simple, but powerful, statistical analyses known as screens. While LIBOR is the most significant success of these techniques, it is not the first, nor will it be the last. This presentation will review the principles of screens, how they worked for LIBOR as early as 2008, and how should LIBOR be reformed. |
| Thursday 21 February 2013 Inaugural Lecture Understanding Equitable Estoppel
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About this talk The lecture considered two notoriously complex areas of English law: promissory estoppel and proprietary estoppel. It will be argued that these doctrines can only be understood if we identify and isolate the specific principles that lie behind their operation. It will be suggested that each doctrine is in fact based on a number of distinct concepts. It is, therefore, a mistake to look for a broad principle that underlies either doctrine; and it would be a bigger mistake to unite the two doctrines into a single category of equitable estoppel. Rather, we should carefully examine each of the specific principles behind the doctrines. In doing so, we can identify a crucial and often overlooked point: English law recognises that a claim can arise to prevent one party suffering a detriment as a result of his or her reasonable reliance on another's promise. |
| Wednesday 20 February 2013 UCL / ILA (British Branch) Lecture Reducing Genocide to Law: Definition, Meaning, and the Ultimate Crime
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About this talk Could the prevailing view that genocide is the ultimate crime be wrong? Is it possible that it is actually on an equal footing with war crimes and crimes against humanity? Is the power of the word genocide derived from something other than jurisprudence? And why should a hierarchical abstraction assume such importance in conferring meaning on suffering and injustice? Could reducing a reality that is beyond reason and words into a fixed category undermine the very progress and justice that such labelling purports to achieve? For some, these questions may border on the international law equivalent of blasphemy. Professor Akhavan's original and daring book entitled 'Reducing Genocide to Law', on which his lecture will be based, is a probing reflection on empathy and our faith in global justice. |
| Tuesday 19 February 2013 Institute for Human Rights Whose Poor?/Who's Poor?: The Significance of Relative Deprivation
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About this talk According to one recent estimate, the poorest five percent of Americans are richer than two thirds of the world's people. But such comparisons can be misleading. Contemporary philosophers have been preoccupied with determining whether we have special moral obligations to members of our own society - for example, our poor compatriots - that we do not have to those outside our society. But they have neglected to ask how to compare the situations of poor people in one society to poor people in another. Judith Lichtenberg argues that for a variety of reasons, well-being is largely relative: how well off you are depends to a great extent on how well off others around you are. This fact has complex implications, which she explores, for our responsibilities for benefiting poor compatriots as opposed to poor people in developing countries. |
| Wednesday 13 February WTO Scholars' Forum: Monetary Measures and Trade - Do GATT Articles XV:4 and XV:9(a) Open the Door for Non-Violation Nullification or Impairment Complaints?
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About this talk Over the recent years, there has been much academic debate on the extent to which contested exchange rate practices, such as the maintenance of an undervalued real exchange rate, could be challenged successfully under WTO law, most notably as a prohibited export subsidy. The focus of this paper was different as it examines the extent to which non-violation nullification or impairment complaints under GATT Article XXIII:1(b) could be brought against contested monetary measures in light of the interaction between the provisions enshrined in GATT Article XV:4 and GATT Article XV:9(a). |
| Thursday 7 February 2013 Inaugural Lecture Equitable Compensation for Breach of Fiduciary Duty
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About this talk 'Equity, in the exercise of its exclusive jurisdiction over trustees and fiduciaries ... does not award compensation for loss.' So wrote Lord Millett in 2005. Yet in recent years his words have been roundly ignored in courts throughout the Commonwealth. Awards of equitable compensation, or even 'damages', for breach of fiduciary duty are frequently made, and claims for such a remedy are the everyday work of Chancery and commercial practitioners. The lecture will review this development and consider a series of questions: what idea of fiduciary duty actuated the rule that compensation was not available for breach of this duty; now that compensation is available, what are the consequences of this for our understanding of the duty and the other remedies available for its breach; how are compensatory awards for breach of fiduciary duty assessed; and what defences can be raised in answer to claims for such a remedy? |
| Wednesday 6 February 201 Centre for Ethics & Law Workshop on the Financial Sustainability of Banks
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About this talk Are you an academic, legal/compliance practitioner or risk manager involved in understanding or managing environmental, social and governance risk within your organisation? The Financial Sustainability project, led by Prof Roger McCormick, is part of the LSE Law and Financial Markets Project. The Sustainable Finance Project's objectives are, first, to develop and, as far as possible, achieve international consensus on the following: a) the legitimate aspirations of market participants and others in relation to sustainability in the context of financial market activity; b) what is meant by "sustainable". |
| Wednesday 6 February 2013 UCL Legal & Social Philosophy Colloquium Is dignity the foundation of human rights?
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Professor Waldron is University Professor at New York University School of Law and teaches legal and political philosophy. He was previously University Professor in the School of Law at Columbia University. He holds his NYU position conjointly with his position as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at the University of Oxford (All Souls College). For 2011-2013, he is in New York in the Fall and in Oxford in the Spring |
| Thursday 31 January 2013 The Social Networks Research Initiative, UCL Centre for Law, Economics and Society Regulating Social Media: More Harm than Good?
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About this talk The effect of the spread of social media has been dramatic - altering the power dynamic between consumers and providers of goods and services, disrupting traditional business models, undermining intellectual property rights, enabling cultural participation, and facilitating a more democratic flow of information. On January 31, 2013 UCL Laws will play host to a fascinating exchange between leading thinkers involved in the industry and policy surrounding social media. |
| Wednesday 30 January 2013 Centre for Ethics & Law Lehman Brothers and the Lawyers: (When) Are Lawyers Ethically Responsible for Client Wrongs?
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About this talk Should transactional lawyers bear responsibility when their competent actions facilitate unlawful activity by their client? Or is a lawyer's only concern to act in the client's interest by providing her with the advice and support she seeks? The high profile failure of Lehman Brothers provides a unique opportunity to explore these questions in the context of the provision of a legal opinion by a magic circle law firm. |
| Wednesday 30 January 2013 UCL Legal & Social Philosophy Colloquium What's the point of blame?
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About this talk The paper offered a distinctive vindication of blame by reference to the constructive interpersonal mechanism I call Communicative Blame. This kind of blame aims to inspire remorse in the wrongdoer. Blame and remorse are thereby revealed as having a transformative purpose, which consists in the fact that they work to bring the different parties' moral understanding into greater alignment, and so to create a greater alignment of moral reasons. In doing this, they function to continuously (re-)generate our shared moral life. |
| Tuesday 29 January 2013 UCL Centre for Law, Economics and Society From Chaos to Cosmos: The Legal and Social Challenges to Promoting Innovation in Russia
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About this talk Russia is an innovative country in the sense that it is always in a process of change. During the last decade, the promotion of technological innovation has pushed its way into the very center of the Russian economic and political agenda. Indeed, Russia is currently trying to find its role in the new globalized world of hi-tech. However, as the political turmoil of the last year reveals, there is also a hunger for social innovation across diverse groups of Russian society. |
| Wednesday 23 January 2013 UCL Judicial Institute Tomorrow's Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future
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About this talk: According to Richard Susskind, legal institutions and lawyers are poised to change more radically over the next two decades than they have over the last two centuries. This is a central theme of his latest book, Tomorrow's Lawyers, the essential introduction to the future of law for those who want to thrive in the rapidly changing legal landscape. The book is a definitive guide to the future – for young and aspiring lawyers, and for all who want to modernize our legal and justice systems. It navigates the new legal terrain and offers practical guidance for those who intend to build careers and businesses in law. |
Wednesday 23 January 2013
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About this talk: This paper (a) notes the striking congruence between contract as promise - the view defended in C . Fried, Contract as Promise - and the economic analysis of law; (b) seeks to explain that congruence as well as the divergence between the two accounts; and (c) considers the validity and the utility of seeking to impose a template of political morality on as multifarious and practical a subject as contract law. |
| Thursday 17 January 2013 Current Legal Problems Lecture The Nature of Rationality Review
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About this lecture Debates concerning proportionality and rationality have brought into sharper focus the meaning of both concepts. It nonetheless remains the case that the very meaning of rationality within judicial review remains under-theorized and imperfectly understood, with the consequence that erroneous conclusions are drawn regarding issues central to the concept. This lecture seeks to sharpen our understanding of rationality review and to dispel some of the misunderstandings that surround the concept. |
| Monday 14 January 2013 Centre for Law, Economics and Society Competition Law and Intellectual Property Rights: Whose balance of innovation and incentives?
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About this lecture This event will explore the tension between competition law and intellectual property law and will look at the different focuses on static versus dynamic efficiencies. It will explore the differences from the view points of the courts, IP authorities and competition authorities. |