Securing Justice in an Unjust World
An Bord Pleanála (http://www.pleanala.ie/)
- 15 Sep 2015
‘Securing Justice in an Unjust World’ with Baroness Helena Kennedy QC Principal, Mansfield College, University of Oxford.
The Centre for Criminal Justice and Human Rights (School of Law, UCC) was delighted to host the lecture ‘Securing Justice in an Unjust World’ delivered by Baroness Helena Kennedy QC Principal, Mansfield College, University of Oxford
.jpg "The Hon Mr Justice Sean Ryan, (President of the Court of Appeal) chairing the Annual CCJHR lecture.
Aula Maxima, 10th September, 2015. Picture: Patrick Rice")
Venue: Aula Maxima, University College Cork
Thursday September 10th, 2015
6pm to 7.30pm
Chair: President Seán Ryan, Court of Appeal
Continuing Professional Development 1.5 hours General CPD – Group Study
Biography
Helena Kennedy is a leading barrister and an expert in human rights law, civil liberties and constitutional issues. She is a member of the House of Lords and chair of Justice – the British arm of the International Commission of Jurists (Link to the Justice website). She is a bencher of Gray's Inn and President of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She was the chair of Charter 88 from 1992 to 1997, the Human Genetics Commission from 1998 to 2007 and the British Council from 1998 to 2004. She also chaired the Power Inquiry, which reported on the state of British democracy and produced the Power Report in 2006. She has received honours for her work on human rights from the governments of France and Italy and has been awarded more than thirty honorary doctorates. She is currently acting in cases connected to the recent wave of terrorism – including the conspiracy to bomb Transatlantic Airlines and Operation Crevice.
In Helena's practice of law as a barrister – she is a member of the Doughty Street Chambers in London – she has acted in many of the most prominent cases of the last 30 years including the Brighton Bombing, the Michael Bettany espionage trial, the Guildford Four appeal and the bombing of the Israeli embassy. She has also acted in many homicide trials with a domestic setting. She was the British member of the recent International Bar Association Task Force on Terrorism. She recently chaired an inquiry for the Royal College of Pathologists and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health into sudden infant death, in the aftermath of miscarriages of justice where mothers were wrongly convicted of murdering their babies. As a life peer she also participates in the House of Lords on issues concerned with human rights, civil liberties, social justice and culture. She has led the opposition to encroachments on the right to jury trial and for her courageous stand against the government was awarded the Spectator's Parliamentary Campaigner of the Year Award in 2000.
Helena was a seminal force in promoting equal opportunities for women at the Bar. Ahead of her time, she was a singular voice in the seventies and eighties, writing and broadcasting on the discrimination experienced by women in the law, as lawyers but also as users of the law - victims and defendants. She became a member of the Bar Council to champion women in the profession and called for research into the experience of women lawyers and particularly their absence on the Bench. This led to changes in policy in the Lord Chancellor's Department and codes of practice at the Bar. For her work for women she received the Times Newspaper's Lifetime Achievement award in 1999.
Helena was a founding member of Charter 88, the constitutional reform group which was set up in 1988 in response to growing concerns about the failure of British institutions to serve our democracy. Support for the organisation swelled and she chaired the organisation with considerable energy from 1992 - 1997, calling for a written constitution, devolution, electoral reform, a bill of rights, a freedom of information act, reform of parliament and of the judiciary. With a handful of others she played a key role in persuading the New Labour Party to embrace this reform agenda as a central plank of its manifesto, which led to the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into British Law and a whole range of constitutional reforms including reform of the House of Lords.
Baroness Kennedy QC was a commissioner on the National Commission for Education 1991—1993 and then chaired the Further Education Commission into Widening Participation which produced the seminal report Learning Works 1997. As a result the sector created a trust in her name - the Helena Kennedy Foundation - which provides bursaries to help the most disadvantaged in society move into Higher Education. She is currently (appointed since 2011), Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford University and previously served as President of SOAS (2008-2012).
Bookings can be made at the following link: http://www.uccconferencing.ie/product/annual-lecture-centre-for-criminal-justice-and-human-rights-securing-justice-in-an-unjust-world/
There is no charge to attend this event but advance booking is essential.
For queries please contact Noreen Delea, Centre of Criminal Justice and Human Rights, School of Law, UCC. (021) 4903220, email: n.delea@ucc.ie
Venue directions:
http://www.ucc.ie/en/visitors/maps/
