James Smith will be speaking about the work of The Aegis Trust, a UK-based genocide prevention organisation, which he co-founded. Aegis undertakes research and policy advice with regard to genocide prevention. It runs genocide education programmes and provides support for survivors and communities where genocide has happened. Based at the UK Holocaust Centre, it is responsible for the Kigali Memorial Centre, Rwanda. One focus will be on Aegis 'Protect Darfur' campaign, and members of Aegis Students will also contribute their experience.

The lecture is accompanied by an exhibition of drawings by Darfurian and Chadian children, collected by London-based NGO Article 1, which describe attacks on their villages, and which have in 2007 been accepted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague as contextual evidence for war crimes committed.

Tuesday 3 November 2009
UCL Lunch Hour Seminar Series
Why the courts are as important as hospitals to the nation’s health
Professor Dame Hazel Genn DBE, QC

This lecture will be available to view online shortly from:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lhl/lhlpub_autumn2009/07_031109

Keynote Address:

• Professor Andrew Ashworth CBE QC DCL FBA, Vinerian Professor of English Law in the Universitry of Oxford

Panel discussion:

• Professor Bob Sullivan, UCL (chair of panel)
  
• The Rt Hon Sir Richard Buxton, former Lord Justice of Appeal,
• Professor Jeremy Horder, Law Commission, and
• Professor Nicola Lacey, Professor of Criminal Law, LSE.

In this lecture Professor Weiler will speculate on the motives of the AB in adopting this hermeneutic, analyze whether it actually explains outcomes or is a mere rhetorical dressing, evaluate whether it has served and continues to serve the interest of the system(s) (WTO; general international law), and assess the extent of possible change, actual and potential.

Read more about the work of the Centre for Law and Governance in Europe

About this lecture
As international arbitral tribunals are called to adjudicate more and more disputes brought by foreign investors vis- à-vis host States involving very delicate economic, social and environmental policies, a growing number of scholars have raised concerns about the legitimacy of international investment arbitration. In order to contribute to this debate (as well as to the broader debate about the legitimacy of the emerging system of international investment law), the presentation focuses on the legal reasoning of investment treaty tribunals. The presentation starts with an overview of the current legitimacy debate particularly addressing investment arbitration and arguing that clarity in investment tribunals’ legal reasoning would strengthen the legitimacy of investment arbitration. It then examines the arbitration rules provided for by the major arbitration institutions as well as those found in international investment treaties with regard to the requirement for investment tribunals to provide reasons. The presentation, then, focuses on the following three types of egregious failures that may render investment tribunals’ legal reasoning unclear: (a) abuse of precedents, (b) lack of internal consistency and (c) excessive minimalism. The methodology of this section is case-law based and selective: the analysis will focus on a few
awards (CMS, Metalclad, Vivendi, Enron, LG&E, and Continental) dealing with a small selection of treaty provisions (expropriation and emergency exception). As part of strengthening their internal and external legitimacy,
the presentation argues that investment tribunals should, at a minimum, avoid incurring in these egregious failures. While these imperfections do not appear to constitute the norm (in fact closer to the exception), given the particular
context in which investment decisions takes place, investment tribunals should aim at perfection.

• the effectiveness of directors’ individual and collective duties as a constraint on irresponsible levels of risk-taking;
• the role of performance remuneration design in both creating and mitigating incentives for excessive risk-taking;
• the effectiveness of civil and administrative sanctions available in respect of breach of directors’ individual responsibilities;
• how the principles of corporate governance bear on the discharge of collective responsibility; and
• the main features of the banking collapses – as they appear from published material – which suggest a need for official investigation

About this lecture
Against a backdrop of concerns about the 'politicization' of criminal justice, several proposals have recently been made for the establishment of a criminal justice equivalent to the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE). Such as body would disseminate guidance on best practice in criminal justice and help fund programmes in the light of research demonstrating what works and doesn't work to reduce crime. This, the argument runs, would produce criminal justice policy and practice that is more evidence-based and less driven by political ideology and calculation. In this lecture, I examine the appeal of this proposal to extend a medical model of decision-making to the justice arena and consider what its emergence tells about the present relations between politics and criminal justice. I then consider the limits of such efforts to insulate criminal justice from political and popular pressure and render it more 'evidence-based'. In so doing, I use the case of NICE as a window though which to examine how we might best understand the interplay between expertise/public opinion, reason/emotion and knowledge/politics in the making of criminal justice policy.

The event explored:

• General aspects of the reform of Vertical Restraints
• A retrospective and prospective of the vertical restraints reform
• Internet distribution and vertical restraints
• Tying/bundling
• Resale Price Maintenance
• Exclusive territories and parallel trade
• Vertical restraints and the rise of retailer power: competition law and alternatives
• Vertical restraints in national competition laws and international convergence

For more information about the UCL Jurisprudence Review see:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/laws/jurisprudence-review

• Does human rights express ideology of western liberalism?
• Does it view social injustice too narrowly?
• Whom does it benefit most and who is left out?
• Has the human rights movement reached its potential?

• Marcel Berlins, Journalist and Broadcaster
• Saimo Chahal, Partner, Bindmans and Solicitor to Debbie Purdy
• Dr Rob George, Care not Killing
• Edward Turner, director of Dignity in Dying
• Katherine Araniello, artist and disability rights campaigner
• Sir Ken Macdonald, former Director of Public Prosecutions
• Dr Evan Harris MP
  

Commentators include:
Tony Allen, Director of CEDR
Professor Richard Moorhead, Cardiff Law School
Professor Judith Resnik, Yale Law School
The Rt Hon The Lord Woolf of Barnes
Emeritus Professor Michael Zander QC, LSE

Chaired by
The Rt Hon Lord Justice Sedley (Hamlyn Trustee)

Friday 12 June 2009
In association with King’s Centre for Risk Management, King’s College London, UCL Laws’ Carbon Capture Legal Programme will host a conference on
Carbon Capture and Storage: Public Perception and Law.

For more information about this event please contact carrie.bradshaw@ucl.ac.uk

Read more about the Carbon Capture Legal Programme

About this event:
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is increasingly being recognised as an important climate change mitigation technology, and in recent months a number of jurisdictions have taken steps to put in place the necessary legal and regulatory frameworks to encourage and ensure the safe deployment of CCS. 

This conference seeks to address the issue of CCS and ‘the public’.  The conference is an inter-disciplinary endeavour, bringing leading risk communication experts together with lawyers working in the field of CCS to consider the role of both disciplines in the deployment of CCS technology internationally.  The conference sessions will seek to consider risk communication literature, together with the relevance of other controversial technologies such as GMOs and nuclear, providing a framework for analysis of the role of law in ensuring responsible risk communication and public engagement with CCS.

• Professor David Evans, UCL / Jevons
• Professor Mark Armstrong, UCL (Economics)
• Miguel de la Mano, Deputy Chief Economist, DG Comp, European Commission
• Amelia Fletcher, Chief Economist, Office of Fair Trading
• Representative from the UK Competition Commission
• Eliana Garces-Tolon, Member of Commissioner Cabinet, DG Sanco, European Commission
• Representative from the US Federal Trade Commission
• Judge Douglas Ginsburg, US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
• Vivien Rose, Chairman of the Competition Appeal Tribunal

Read more about the UCL Jevons Institute

About this event:
Economists have long assumed that people are rational. Such people know what they want and make decisions to maximize the utility from those preferences. A new body of research from economists and psychologists investigates how people actually behave and questions the rationality hypothesis. This new field—known as “behavioural economics”—increasingly spills over into the realm of policy. If people make the wrong decisions because of in effect faulty wiring would they benefit from having the government fix this? That could come in the form of consumer protection policies such as giving people a reprieve from impulsive decisions to other policies such as requiring people to opt-out of certain decisions rather than opting in. There are antitrust implications as well since in principle firms could use our faulty wiring to increase their market power. This new field does not come without controversy. Some question whether the results are exaggerated, whether such policies may unduly disadvantage consumers who are able to defend themselves in the market, and whether a theory in which consumer welfare is ill-defined can provide a good way to develop economic models or devise policy interventions. The Colloquium will delve into this new field, its implications, and its controversies.

• Competition authorities with dual roles (competition authority and consumer protection authority): advantages and disadvantages
• The unification of public competition law enforcement: is one better than two? (the reform of the French competition law system)
• Integrating economics and economists in competition authorities: the recent reform of the DG Comp with the position of the chief economist, the redesign of the units….
• Issues of independence, transparency, competition advocacy
• Relations with sector-specific regulators
• Political influence: Competition authorities in times of economic crisis.
  
  Roundtable Discussion Recording download to listen here
  Roundtable Discussion Programme (pdf) download here
  Roundtable Discussion Transcriprion (docx) download here
  

Less attention has been paid to the evolution of the fundamental underlying bases of copyright. In my view there are concurrent and conflicting shifts in the appreciation of copyright at the level of current popular and copyright discourse. These shifts are indicative of conflicting underlying conceptions which are at a critical juncture, both in the Canadian context and globally. The understanding that we have of this subtle shift, and the weight and direction we give to concurrent and often competing justificatory arguments will influence the outcome of various copyright debates, particularly those on copyright reform and the impact of current technologies on copyright.

This lecture sets out to understand and clarify these changes, and their implications current copyright issues.

Thursday 7 May 2009
COMPETITION LAW IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT
Convenor: Dr. Ioannis Lianos
Economic expertise in a generalist court: the experience of a economist/judge in a civil law jurisdiction
Judge Frederic Jenny

Download the slides from this lecture (7 May 09)

Download the slides from the previous lecture (5 March 09) by Judge Jenny on Economic expertise in courts: best practices

About this lecture
Drawing on his experience as the first economist generalist judge at the French Supreme Court (Cour de Cassation), Judge Frederic Jenny will explore the following topics: if and how economic reasoning has been integrated in the Cour de cassation's judgments, since he has been appointed ? Did economic analysis make a difference in any cases? Would it help in the acse of generalist judges to have court-appointed experts, or assessors or judges that have an economics background ? What would be the best method to integrate economic reasoning, taking into account the way the Cour de cassation and other generalist judges work and decide cases?

Accredited with 2CPD hours by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority

Read more about the WTO Scholars' Forum at UCL

About this lecture
This paper explores the idea that legal regimes not only regulate behaviour within their domain of operation, but also help to shape the way we think about - imagine, interpret - the world the social domains on which they act. The aim of the paper is to explore the relationship between law and the production of 'knowledge' empirically, by looking in detail at one case study, namely the international legal regime governing international trade in services, and specifically, the World Trade Organisation's General Agreement on Trade in Services. Over the last fifteen years, this new body of international law has evolved alongside a corresponding body of social scientific expertise on the nature and dynamics of the global services economy. The paper tells a story of the co-evolution of these two systems, and tries to trace in detail the ways in which law and legal processes have been present in processes of knowledge production, shaping the way the global services economy is collectively imagined and its dynamics understood. It argues that we should see bodies of rules/norms and bodies of expertise as two connected parts of a larger system of governance: the knowledge which services experts produce help to make the global services economy amenable to regulation by law, while the forms of rationality which their expertise generates help to shape the behaviour of governmental actors even before those actors are confronted by international legal constraints.

About this lecture
"An Indian born economist once explained his personal theory of reincarnation to his graduate economic class: ‘if you are a good economist, a virtuous economist’ he said 'you are reborn as a physicist. But if you are an evil, wicked economist, you are reborn as a sociologist” (Paul Krugman, Peddling Prosperity: Economic Sense and Nonsense in the Age of Diminished Expectations, 1994). Jokes about economists abound lately. It is well known that political satire aims the great and the powerful; and economists have become powerful and great in the world of competition law. The rise of economics as one of the main (some will advance the most important) “source” of competition law discourse is well documented. This lecture will focus on a facet of the integration of economic analysis in competition law: "economic transplants". The term “economic transplants” refers to specific economic concepts that were incorporated into the legal discourse by an act of “translation”. They represent the ultimate degree of interaction between the legal and the economic systems. Using a paradigmatic approach the lecture will examine their specific characteristics and what distinguishes them from other forms of integration of economic analysis in competition law. It will then critically assess their role and their impact on the legal and the economic discourses

The regulatory framework in areas of high technological and scientific complexity is generally dominated by concerns about human health and the environment. It is however now very widely accepted in academic and policy debate that risk regulation is about much more than this. Even mainstream frameworks for and discussions of risk regulation routinely accept that in principle the social and ethical aspects of technologies and their regulation are significant considerations and should not be ignored.

This recognition of the complexity of risk regulation is now commonplace. The rhetorical expansion of the scope of risk regulation is, however, not always apparent in regulatory decision making. Overwhelming legal and political pressures mean that decisions are generally still explained and justified according to expert judgments of ‘safety’. This lecture will examine the mismatch between rhetoric and practice at national, EU and WTO level. The mismatch reflects a real ambivalence about the scale of the change implied by a broadening of risk regulation, and has significant practical and normative implications for scholars and practitioners of law and regulation.

Monday 16 March 2009
Centre for Law and Governance in Europe:
HOT TOPICS IN EUROPEAN LAW LECTURES
The future relationship between the two European Courts
Tobias Lock, UCL Laws
Accredited with 1 CPD hour

Download the Slides from this lecture

Download the paper for this talk

Programme:
Chair: The Hon Mr Justice Barling, President, Competition Appeal Tribunal.

The Innovation Process and Patenting
Paul Dennerly, AstraZeneca

Regulatory Considerations
Ann Nielson, Bristol-Myers Squibb

The Generic Industry Perspective
Howard Roseberg, Frommer, Lawrence and Haug LLP

Litigating and the Commission's Methodology
David Rosenberg, GSK

Competition Law Issues
John Kallaugher, UCL and Latham & Watkins LLP
DOWNLOAD SLIDES

This programme was developed in co-operation with the Rt. Hon. Sir Robin Jacob.

Click here to join the Institute of Brand and Innovation Law (IBIL) mailing list