Judicial independence is increasingly under threat, at home and abroad. The rise of populist and nationalist sentiment threatens to undermine the separation of powers, with judges being portrayed as elitist and ‘enemies of the people’, and governmental interference with judicial matters becoming routine.
An interdisciplinary conference, co-convened by BiE's Dimitrios Giannoulopoulos and Dr Yvonne McDermott-Rees, seeks to situate contemporary challenges to judicial independence in their legal, philosophical, sociopolitical, comparative and historical contexts. The programme can be downloaded from here.
It will bring together academic scholars, judges, politicians, third sector experts and legal professionals, from across the UK, Europe and the United States.
"Trump isn’t just reckless, and he doesn’t just seem to think he is above the law. He has an authoritarian’s hostility to the very idea of a principled inquiry into the truth", says David Sklansky, Stanford Law School Professor, who will be speaking at the British Academy conference next week about 'Judicial Independence in Trump's America'.
The conference asks what core shared democratic values judicial independence seeks to protect, and how can threats to that independence be protected against.
Tickets available for purchase at the British Academy webpage.