Agenda

To download a pdf version of the conference programme please click here.

All conference sessions will take place at the Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin, except for the conference gala dinner on the evening of 7 July, which will be held at St Patrick’s Hall, Dublin Castle.

The conference will begin on the evening of 6 July, at 5.30pm, with a plenary session on the Irish Constitution, to mark the centenary of the first Irish Constitution of 1922. The speakers are Justice Donal O’Donnell (Chief Justice of Ireland) and Justice Gerard Hogan (Supreme Court of Ireland). This will be followed by a welcome buffet dinner at 7.00pm, held at the Law School.

The 7th and 8th of July are full days and comprise a mixture of plenary and parallel panel sessions. Proceedings will begin on the morning of 7 July with two keynote plenaries on the making and re-making of public law, featuring Dame Helen Winkelmann (Chief Justice of New Zealand), Dame Siobhan Keegan (Lady Chief Justice of Northern Ireland), Justice Sheilah Martin (Supreme Court of Canada), and Justice Steven Majiedt (Constitutional Court of South Africa). Panels featuring doctoral speakers will be held at 8.00am on each of the 7th and 8th. The conference will end at 5.30pm on 8 July.

Morning and afternoon tea and lunch will be provided on each of the 7th and 8th of July. The conference dinner will be held at 7.45pm on 7 July at St Patrick’s Hall, Dublin Castle, and will be preceded with drinks at Dublin Castle at 7.15pm. As is tradition, the winner of the Richard Hart Prize will be announced at the conference dinner.

Wednesday 6th July

4.00pm-5.30pm Registration and Welcome Tea & Coffee - Atrium, Sutherland School of Law

5.30pm-5.40pm Welcome remarks by UCD Vice-President for Research, Innovation and Impact, Professor Orla Feely - A&L Goodbody Theatre

5.40pm-6.45pm Opening Plenary on the Irish Constitution Today - A&L Goodbody Theatre

Chair: Professor Kate O’Regan (Director, Bonavero Institute, Oxford)

• Hon Justice Donal O’Donnell (Chief Justice of Ireland) The Impact in Irish Law of International Trends
• Hon Justice Gerard Hogan (Supreme Court of Ireland) Why Does Ireland Have A System Of Judicial Review Of Legislation?

6.45pm-9.00pm Welcome Reception and Buffet - Atrium & Courtyard (sponsored by Mason Hayes & Curran)

Thursday 7th July

7.30am-8.00am Registration

8.00am-8.50am Doctoral Panels

Public Law Institutions and Cultures - Moot Court Theatre
Chair: Associate Professor Janina Boughey (UNSW)

• Anurag Deb (QUB) L’Enfant Terrible: the Northern Ireland-shaped Wrinkle in the Fabric of UK Constitutional Orthodoxy
• Shreeya Smith (UNSW) Remaking Public Law: Common Law Traditions and a Written Constitution – The Australian Experience

Public Law Processes: Dialogue and Deliberation - William Fry Theatre
Chair: Dr Sarah Fulham-McQuillam (UCD)

• Matilda Gillis (Cambridge) Re-thinking the Dialogue Model: The Application of the Democratic Dialogue Model to the Interactions between Domestic Legislatures and International Courts
• Seána Glennon (UCD) The Impact of Deliberative Minipublics on Formal Public Law Processes: The Role of the Citizens’ Assembly in the Reform of Ireland’s Abortion Law and Lessons Learned for the Effective Integration of Novel Deliberative Structures into Traditional Legal Reform Processes

9.00am-10.10am Opening Remarks and Keynote Plenary: Making and Re-Making Public Law - A&L Goodbody Theatre

Chair: Professor Jason Varuhas (Melbourne)

• Professor Eoin Carolan and Professor Jason Varuhas
• Rt Hon Dame Helen Winkelmann (Chief Justice of New Zealand) The Power of Narrative – Shaping Aotearoa New Zealand’s Public Law
• Rt Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan (Lady Chief Justice of Northern Ireland) Justice Devolved: Milestones in Northern Ireland Constitutional Law Since 2010

10.10am-10.30am Morning Tea & Coffee - Atrium

10.30am-11.30pm Keynote Plenary: Public Emergencies: Re-Making Public Law? - A&L Goodbody Theatre

Chair: Hon Justice Sheilah Martin (Supreme Court of Canada)

• Professor Cheryl Saunders (Melbourne) Beyond the Obvious. Insights for Public Law from Experience with the Pandemic
• Professor Gillian Metzger (Columbia) Fear of the State and the Pandemic

11.30am-1.00pm Parallel Panels

Public Law and Indigenous Peoples - A&L Goodbody Theatre
Chair: Professor Val Napoleon (Victoria)

• Mary Liston (UBC) “A Long Time Ago in the Future”: Methodology, Mindfulness, and Modesty in Comparative Administrative Law
• Kathryn Chan (Victoria) Time for a Pluralist Approach? Judicial Review of Norm-Generating Communities in Canada
• Gabrielle Appleby (UNSW) and Megan Davis (UNSW) First Nations Constitutional Recognition in Australia: Addressing Foundational Failures of Rule of Law

The UK’s Post-Brexit Constitution - Mason Hayes & Curran Theatre
Chair: Professor Aileen McHarg (Durham)

• Colm O’Cinneide (UCL) ‘You Can’t Go Home Again’: Constitutional Fidelity and Change in Post-Brexit Britain
• Roger Masterman (Durham) and Matthew Nicholson (Durham) From Dualism to Exceptionalism? Defining the Relationship between the UK Constitution and the International Legal Order
• Tom Hickman (UCL/Barrister) Parliamentary Sovereignty: Shifting Sands

Democratic Machinery - William Fry Theatre
Chair: Associate Professor Michael Pal (Ottawa)

• Sarah Moulds (South Australia) Connected Parliaments: Evaluating the Impact of Parliamentary Public Engagement on Public Law-making in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the United Kingdom
• Marie-Luce Paris (UCD) Reviving the Democratic Machinery via Deliberative Democracy: A Comparative Exploration of the Citizens Assemblies and Their Legal and Constitutional Basis
• Kenny Chng (SMU) Falsehoods, Foreign Interference, and Compelled Speech in Singapore

1.00pm-1.45pm Lunch - Atrium

1.45pm-2.45pm Plenary Session: ‘The People’ in Public Law - A&L Goodbody Theatre

Chair: Rt Hon Dame Helen Winkelmann (Chief Justice of New Zealand)

• Professor Carol Harlow (LSE) and Professor Richard Rawlings (UCL) Populism and Administrative Law: Some Reflections
• Professor Neil Walker (Edinburgh) Populism and Constitutional Democracy: Feature or Bug?

2.45pm-3.00pm Afternoon Tea & Coffee - Atrium

3.00pm-4.30pm Parallel Panels

Making and Re-Making Administrative Law - A&L Goodbody Theatre
Chair: Justice Matthew Palmer (New Zealand High Court)

• Jason N E Varuhas (Melbourne) The Nature of Judicial Review as a Supervisory Jurisdiction
• Dean Knight (Wellington) Grounds of Review: Foundations Reconstructed
• Cora Hoexter (Witwatersrand) and Glenn Penfold (Witwatersrand) The Remaking of South African Administrative Law

Pandemic Public Law - Mason Hayes & Curran Theatre
Chair: Dr Sarah Fulham-McQuillam (UCD)

• John Golden (Texas) Chasing the Endless Frontier: Science and Technology Policy for a Democratic Society
• Jelena Gligorijevic (ANU) Emergency, Acquiescence, and Accountability: Re-making the Judicial Role in Scrutinising Executive Power?
• Bruce Chen (Deakin) COVID-19 Stay at Home Restrictions and the Interpretation of Emergency Powers: A Comparative Analysis

Constitutional Transformations and Public Law’s Futures - William Fry Theatre
Chair: Professor Colm O’Cinneide (UCL)

• Peter Oliver (Ottawa) Public Law and the Future: A Sustainable Jurisprudence?
• Yuvraj Joshi (UBC) Racial Equality Compromises
• Nomfundo Ramalekana (Cape Town) On the Way to Justice? South African Transformative Constitutionalism as ‘Non-Reformist Reform’

The Normative Underpinnings of Judicial Review - A&L Goodbody Theatre
Chair: Professor Peter Oliver (Ottawa)

• Aileen Kavanagh (TCD) A Collaborative Case for Constitutional Review
• Tom Hickey (Dublin City) Legitimacy - Not Justice - and the Case for Judicial Review

Public Law: Historical Perspectives - Mason Hayes & Curran Theatre
Chair: Professor Cora Hoexter (Witswatersrand)

• Donal Coffey (NUI, Maynooth) The Crown in the Irish Free State and Australia in the Inter-War Period
• Kevin Costello (UCD) The Origins of Jurisdictional Error Demonstrated by Affidavit: the Milborne Port Case (1773)

Public Law and the Environment - William Fry Theatre
Chair: Professor Paul Daly (Ottawa)

• Lael Weis (Melbourne) Re-Making Constitutional Theory: Theorising a Green Constitutionalism
• Sam Bookman (Harvard) Creativity and Climate Rights in Common Law Jurisdictions: A Comparative Analysis
  

Please note a separate ticket is required for this and can be bought as part of the registration process

Public Law and Private Law: Traversing the Divide - Moot Court Theatre
Chair: Professor Jason Varuhas (Melbourne)

• Meghan Finn (Johannesburg) Reconstituting the Public/Private Divide in South African Anti-Discrimination Law
• Joanne Murray (McGill) Are we Re-making the Supervisory Jurisdiction into a Quasi-Administrative Jurisdiction in England and Canada?: A Comparative Reappraisal of Administrative Law with the Law of Trusts

Public Law: Theoretical Perspectives - William Fry Theatre
Chair: Associate Professor Lael Weis (Melbourne)

• Gaurav Mukherjee (CEU) Judicial Pathologies & the Legitimacy of Transformative Constitutionalism
  
• Somsubhra Banerjee (UCD) Making Public of Public Institutions; From Functional to Normative Grounding of Institutional Legitimacy
  

Chair: Professor Eoin Carolan (UCD)

• Hon Justice Sheilah Martin (Supreme Court of Canada) Indigenizing Public Law the Canadian Way
• Hon Justice Steven Majiedt (Constitutional Court of South Africa) The Building of South Africa’s Constitution on the Ruins of its Past: the Indigenising of Public Law in Post-Apartheid South Africa
  

Chair: Professor Jason Varuhas (Melbourne)

• Professor Sir John Baker (Cambridge) The Beginnings Of Judicial Review (1558-1640)
• Rt Hon Lord Sales (UK Supreme Court) Long Waves of Constitutional Principle in the Common Law
• Professor Janet McLean (Auckland) Good Counsel as a Constitutional Imperative

Executive Powers - A&L Goodbody Theatre
Chair: Associate Professor Vanessa MacDonnell (Ottawa)

• Gavin Phillipson (Bristol) The Case of Prorogation: Process not Substance; Exception, not Rule
• Robert Craig (Bristol) The Myth of Third Source Powers

Processes of Constitutional Change - Mason Hayes & Curran Theatre
Chair: Professor Aileen Kavanagh (TCD)

• Oran Doyle (TCD) The Purpose and Value of Constitutional Amendment Powers
• John O’Dowd (UCD) Premature Birth: Constitutional Contingency Planning for a British Disengagement from Northern Ireland in the Event of a Vote for a United Ireland

The Public-Private Intersection - William Fry Theatre
Chair: Professor Carol Harlow (LSE)

• Nick Friedman (Cambridge) Administrative Law in Contractual Settings: Legal Authority, the Separation of Powers, and the Public/Private Divide
• Sarah Fulham-McQuillan (UCD) Identifying and Shaping Constitutional Rights in the Shadow of Private Law

Judicial Review and Institutional Interfaces - A&L Goodbody Theatre
Chair: Dr Andrew Butler (Barrister)

• Eoin Carolan (UCD) Re-making the Boundaries of the Judicial Function
• Vanessa MacDonnell (Ottawa) Accounting for a Strong Executive in Theories of Bill of Rights Interpretation
• Michael Pal (Ottawa) Democracy and the Notwithstanding Clause

Federalism and Devolution - Mason Hayes & Curran Theatre
Chair: Professor Richard Rawlings (UCL)

• Christopher McCorkindale (Strathclyde) and Aileen McHarg (Durham) Devolution and the Remaking of Parliamentary Sovereignty? Challenge and Reassertion
• Michael Wait (Solicitor-General of South Australia) Treaty Making under the Australian Constitution: Federal Challenges and Opportunities
• Erika Arban (Melbourne) Constitutional Law, Federalism and the Unit Question

Administrative Law: Trajectories of Legal Development - William Fry Theatre
Chair: Professor Tom Hickman (UCL/Barrister)

• Paul Daly (Ottawa) The Ages of Administrative Law
• Janina Boughey (UNSW) Administrative Justice in the Modern Mixed Administrative State: Moving Beyond Taxonomies
• Sam Guy (York) Crowdfunding and the Changing Face of ‘Public Interest’ Judicial Review: An Empirical Study
  

Chair: Professor Eoin Carolan (UCD)

• Hon Justice Brian Murray (Supreme Court of Ireland) Private Rights and Public Wrongs
• Professor Val Napoleon (Victoria) Public Faces: Indigenous Law Today and through the Futuristic Looking Glass
• Professor Kate O’Regan (Director, Bonavero Institute, Oxford) The Remaking of Administrative Law under South Africa’s Democratic Constitution