Annual Lecture 2019
Populism and the Assault on Law
On 21 October 2019, the Human Rights Law Centre was delighted to have our Annual Lecture delivered by Baroness Helena Kennedy QC.
Baroness Kennedy highlighted the importance of the rule of law in a democracy. She stressed the fact that the rule of law was under scrutiny and challenge in a context of global recession and rise in extremism and populism, as seen in Britain in the context of Brexit where populist politicians exploited the law for their own purposes. She affirmed that the current political trajectory was not a good one and that populism’s assault on the law was a danger to us all.
After the lecture, Baroness Kennedy signed copies of her latest book Misjustice: How British Law is Failing Women.
About the Speaker
Baroness Helena Kennedy QC is Director of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI). She is a member of the House of Lords and chair of Justice, the British arm of the International Commission of Jurists. She is a bencher of Gray’s Inn and 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 40 honorary doctorates.
Baroness Kennedy has practiced at the Bar for 40 years in the field of criminal law and has conducted many of the leading cases in those years, including the Balcombe Street Siege, the Brighton bombing trial, the Guildford Four Appeal, the Michael Bettany Espionage case, the bombing of the Israeli embassy, the Jihadist fertiliser bomb plot, and the transatlantic bomb plot. She has championed law reform for women, especially relating to sexual and domestic violence and developed the defence of Battered Women's syndrome in the British courts. She was also the leading voice for equal opportunities in the legal profession for women. She authored a number of books on law reform, wrote the successful television series Blind Justice and became a well-known broadcaster on law and ethics during the eighties, presenting the BBC's Heart of the Matter.
Baroness Kennedy has chaired the British Council. She has been a member of the House of Lords for over 20 years, where she chairs the European Union Sub-Committee. She is an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She is the chair of the Booker Prize Foundation. She has stepped down as Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford and become the new Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam university.