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The Hamlyn Trust was created by Miss Emma Hamlyn in memory of her father, a solicitor and Justice of the Peace in Torquay, Devon, England. The object of the Trust is to further knowledge and understanding of the law, and this is achieved through an annual series of public lectures by distinguished judges, legal practitioners, academic lawyers and other eminent speakers. The first of these lectures was given by Lord Denning in 1949. The Series of lectures are normally delivered in the Autumn. In 2005 Cambridge University Press took over as publisher of the annual volume of the lectures. Publication is marked by the annual Hamlyn Seminar which is usually held in London in the Spring following the previous Autumn's lectures.

  • Chairman of the Hamlyn Trusts: Avrom Sherr, University of London

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18 results in The Hamlyn Lectures

Laws for a Nation and Laws for Transnational Commerce
  • John Thomas
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2025
    Print publication:
    31 July 2025
  • In the 75th Hamlyn Lectures, former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales Lord Thomas examines Welsh law and the law used for transnational commerce to assess what laws are best national in their application and which are best transnational. He first argues that Wales as a nation should be able to make its own laws on the basis of clear principles and sets out possible solutions to the issues raised by the devolution of law-making powers in 1999. He then explains the success of English commercial law in attaining transnational use and examines the emergence of transnational law from the late nineteenth century. At a time of unprecedented change and competition, his analysis of the present position of the use of English law for transnational commerce and the challenges it faces provides the essential context for a series of practical options for its continued use in the future.

Courts and the Body Politic
  • Kate O'Regan
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    May 2025
    Print publication:
    31 May 2025
  • Over the last half century, courts have come to play increasingly important roles in democracies. That role is studied by historians, political scientists, constitutional lawyers and political theorists, but it is also important to all who are concerned about the practice and future of democracy. This book explores why it is that courts are playing this expanded role, as well as exploring two of the most distinctive features of the role of courts: their relationship with the executive arm of government and the role of courts in protecting fundamental rights. The book argues that the role played by courts in modern democracies varies across time and place and depends on a range of factors including constitutional text, constitutional history, and legal and political culture. This book draws on Justice O'Regan's experience as one of the first judges on South Africa's Constitutional Court, which was established shortly after the transition to democracy in 1994.

Advocacy
  • David Pannick KC
  • Published online:
    23 February 2023
    Print publication:
    02 March 2023
  • Lord Pannick celebrates advocacy: that controversial legal issues are decided in court after reasoned argument in which the participants refrain (usually) from shouting, personal insults or threats, and the points on each side of the debate are tested for their relevance, their accuracy, and their strength. The book seeks to identify the central characteristics of good and bad advocacy with the aid of examples from courtrooms in the UK and abroad. Lord Pannick also examines the morality of advocacy - that the advocate sets out views to which he does not necessarily subscribe, on behalf of clients for whom she may feel admiration, indifference, or contempt. Lord Pannick seeks to answer the question he is often asked - more by friends than by judges - 'How can you act for such terrible people?'. Finally, he addresses the future of advocacy, arguing it should and will survive pressures for efficiency and technological developments.

English Law Under Two Elizabeths
  • The Late Tudor Legal World and the Present
  • Sir John Baker
  • Published online:
    19 January 2021
    Print publication:
    28 January 2021
  • Comparative legal history is generally understood to involve the comparison of legal systems in different countries. This is an experiment in a different kind of comparison. The legal world of the first Elizabethans is separated from that of today by nearly half a millennium. But the past is not a wholly different country. The common law is still, in an organic sense, the same common law as it was in Tudor times and Parliament is legally the same Parliament. The concerns of Tudor lawyers turn out to resonate with those of the present and this book concentrates on three of them: access to justice, in terms of both cost and public awareness; the respective roles of common law and legislation; and the means of protecting the rule of law through the courts. Central to the story is the development of judicial review in the time of Elizabeth I.

A Magna Carta for Children?
  • Rethinking Children's Rights
  • Michael Freeman
  • Published online:
    18 September 2020
    Print publication:
    01 October 2020
  • The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in the world, yet everyday children still face poverty, violence, war, disease and disaster. Are the rights we currently afford to children enough? Combining historical analysis with international human rights law, Michael Freeman considers early legal and philosophical theories on children's rights before exploring the impact and limitations of the Convention itself. He also suggests ways that we may rethink children's rights in the future as well as identifying key areas for reform. This book will appeal to an interdisciplinary audience who are interested in children's rights, children's studies, the history of childhood, international human rights, and comparative family law. It is a crucial restatement of the importance of law, policy and rights in improving children's lives.

Making Comparisons in Equality Law
  • Within Gender, Age and Conflicts
  • Robin Allen
  • Published online:
    17 September 2020
    Print publication:
    08 October 2020
  • This book seeks to rebalance the relationship between comparison and justification to achieve more effective equality and non-discrimination law. As one of the most distinguished equality lawyers of his generation, having appeared in over 40 cases in the House of Lords and the Supreme Court and many leading cases in the Court of Justice, Robin Allen QC is well placed to explore this critical issue. He shows how the principle of equality is nothing if not founded on apt comparisons. By examining the changing way men and women's work has been compared over the last 100 years he shows the importance of understanding the framework for comparison. With these insights, he addresses contemporary problems of age discrimination and conflict of equality rights.

Fairness in Criminal Justice
  • Golden Threads and Pragmatic Patches
  • Sian Elias
  • Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    23 August 2018
  • British criminal justice is a principal legacy of Empire in the common law world. It attempts fairness between prosecutors and accused in an accusatory system for establishing criminal responsibility supervised by a judge who is conspicuously detached from the fray. Fundamental features, today recognised as human rights, include the presumption of innocence and onus of proof, the privilege against self-incrimination, and the right to legal advice and representation. In these lectures, Dame Sian Elias examines modern challenges to this conception of criminal justice prompted by anxiety about crime and the costs and delays in proof of guilt. They include enlarged prosecutorial discretion in charging, incentivisation of early guilty pleas, adoption of reverse onuses of proof, application to criminal proceedings of principles of modern civil case management, and measures to bring the victim into the criminal justice system. The lectures question whether this repositioning risks the integrity of the system.

Thinking about Statutes
  • Interpretation, Interaction, Improvement
  • Andrew Burrows
  • Published online:
    20 July 2018
    Print publication:
    02 August 2018
  • We are in the age of statutes; and it is indisputable that statutes are swallowing up the common law. Yet the study of statutes as a coherent whole is rare. In these three lectures, given as the 2017 Hamlyn Lecture series, Professor Andrew Burrows takes on the challenge of thinking seriously and at a practical level about statutes in English law. In his characteristically lively and punchy style, he examines three central aspects which he labels interpretation, interaction and improvement. So how are statutes interpreted? Is statutory interpretation best understood as seeking to effect the intention of Parliament or is that an unhelpful fiction? Can the common law be developed by analogy to statutes? Do the judges have too much power in developing the common law and in interpreting statutes? How can our statutes be improved? These and many other questions are explored and answered in this accessible and thought-provoking analysis.

UK, EU and Global Administrative Law
  • Foundations and Challenges
  • Paul Craig
  • Published online:
    05 November 2015
    Print publication:
    26 October 2015
  • Paul Craig's analysis of UK, EU and global administrative law examines the challenges facing each system and reveals the commonalities in and differences between their foundational assumptions. The challenges which they face may be particular to that legal order, endemic to any legal system of administrative law or the result of interaction between the three systems. The inter-relationship between the three levels is important. The legal and practical reality is that developments at one level can have an impact on the other two. Legal doctrine fashioned at the national level may therefore inform developments in EU and global administrative law. The doctrine thus created may then function symbiotically, shaping developments within a domestic legal order. The inter-relationship is equally marked from the regulatory perspective, since many such provisions originate at the global or EU level.

Widening Horizons
  • The Influence of Comparative Law and International Law on Domestic Law
  • Thomas H. Bingham
  • Published online:
    05 October 2014
    Print publication:
    20 May 2010
  • British judges increasingly now pay attention to foreign case law when deciding domestic cases, and are required to interpret and apply international law in domestic courts and administer an international code of human rights. Tom Bingham examines the consequences of this increasingly internationalist outlook of British courts, including cases which rely on a range of foreign cases, cases where an international convention or principle is interpreted and cases in which human rights cases are decided in reliance on principles established elsewhere.

The Common Law Constitution
  • John Laws
  • Published online:
    05 August 2014
    Print publication:
    17 July 2014
  • For the 2013 Hamlyn Lectures, Sir John Laws explored the constitutional balance between law and government in the United Kingdom. He argues that the unifying principle of the constitution is the common law and that its distinctive method has endowed the British State with profoundly beneficial effects, before examining two contemporary threats to the constitutional balance: extremism and the effect of Europe-made laws on the domestic English system.

Judging Civil Justice
  • Hazel Genn
  • Published online:
    05 July 2014
    Print publication:
    15 October 2009
  • The civil justice system supports social order and economic activity, but a number of factors over the last decade have created a situation in which the value of civil justice is being undermined and the civil courts are in a state of dilapidation. For the 2008 Hamlyn Lectures, Dame Hazel Genn discusses reforms to civil justice in England and around the world over the last decade in the context of escalating expenditure on criminal justice and vanishing civil trials. In critically assessing the claims and practice of mediation for civil disputes, she questions whether diverting cases out of the public courts and into private dispute resolution promotes access to justice, looks critically at the changed expectations of the judiciary in civil justice and points to the need for a better understanding of how judges 'do justice'.

Aspects of Law Reform
  • An Insider's Perspective
  • Jack Straw
  • Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    04 July 2013
  • The British justice system is an ancient one that has continually evolved to meet modern needs. In this set of three essays, originally presented as the Hamlyn lectures in 2012, Jack Straw reviews some of the most important recent reforms to the system of British justice and suggests key areas in need of further reform. He focuses in particular on the criminal courts, human rights, judicial appointments and the relationship between the UK Parliament, the domestic courts and the European Court of Human Rights. In all three cases, he argues that the British justice system is now in a healthier state than it has been in his lifetime, but that there remains much room - and need - for improvement.

The Rule of Law and the Measure of Property
  • Jeremy Waldron
  • Published online:
    05 August 2012
    Print publication:
    21 June 2012
  • When property rights and environmental legislation clash, what side should the Rule of Law weigh in on? It is from this point that Jeremy Waldron explores the Rule of Law both from an historical perspective - considering the property theory of John Locke - and from the perspective of modern legal controversies. This critical and direct account of the relation between the Rule of Law and the protection of private property criticizes the view - associated with the 'World Bank model' of investor expectations - that a society which fails to protect property rights against legislative restriction is failing to support the Rule of Law. In this book, developed from the 2011 Hamlyn Lectures, Waldron rejects the idea that the Rule of Law privileges property rights over other forms of law and argues instead that the Rule of Law should endorse and applaud the use of legislation to achieve valid social objectives.

Lawyers and the Public Good
  • Democracy in Action?
  • Alan Paterson
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    15 September 2011
  • For the 2010 Hamlyn Lectures, Alan Paterson explores different facets of three key institutions in a democracy: lawyers, access to justice and the judiciary. In the case of lawyers he asks whether professionalism is now in terminal decline. To examine access to justice, he discusses past and present crises in legal aid and potential endgames and in relation to judges he examines possible mechanisms for enhancing judicial accountability. In demonstrating that the benign paternalism of lawyers in determining the public good with respect to such issues is no longer unchallenged, he argues that the future roles of lawyers, access to justice and the judiciary will only emerge from dialogues with other stakeholders claiming to speak for the public interest.

Can Human Rights Survive?
  • Conor Gearty
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    18 May 2006
  • In this set of three essays, originally presented as the 2005 Hamlyn Lectures, Conor Gearty considers whether human rights can survive the challenges of the war on terror, the revival of political religion, and the steady erosion of the world's natural resources. He also looks deeper than this to consider the fundamental question: How can we tell what human rights are? In his first essay, Gearty asks how the idea of human rights needs to be made to work in our age of relativism, uncertainty and anxiety. In the second, he assesses how the idea of human rights has coped with its incorporation in legal form in the UK Human Rights Act, arguing that the record is much better and more democratic than many human rights enthusiasts allow. In his final essay, Gearty confronts the challenges that may destroy the language of human rights for the generations that follow us.

The Prisoners' Dilemma
  • Political Economy and Punishment in Contemporary Democracies
  • Nicola Lacey
  • Published online:
    31 January 2011
    Print publication:
    29 May 2008
  • Over the last two decades, and in the wake of increases in recorded crime and other social changes, British criminal justice policy has become increasingly politicised as an index of governments' competence. New and worrying developments, such as the inexorable rise of the US prison population and the rising force of penal severity, seem unstoppable in the face of popular anxiety about crime. But is this inevitable? Nicola Lacey argues that harsh 'penal populism' is not the inevitable fate of all contemporary democracies. Notwithstanding a degree of convergence, globalisation has left many of the key institutional differences between national systems intact, and these help to explain the striking differences in the capacity for penal tolerance in otherwise relatively similar societies. Only by understanding the institutional preconditions for a tolerant criminal justice system can we think clearly about the possible options for reform within particular systems.

The Sovereignty of Law
  • The European Way
  • Francis G. Jacobs
  • Published online:
    29 July 2009
    Print publication:
    14 June 2007
  • Recently, the role of courts has changed dramatically. Not only do courts now have to decide cases between parties, they also often have to choose between competing fundamental values. Judges may have to balance the potentially conflicting interests of human life and human dignity; freedom of speech and the right of privacy; or free trade and the protection of the environment. The courts may have to circumscribe freedom of religion, and decide when religious dress may be worn. With the non-specialist in mind, and starting from the basic notion of the rule of law, this book explores how judges can and should address such issues. Both the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Union often play a decisive role, and the book points out both the advantages and the difficulties posed by this. Above all, it seeks to promote a more informed debate.