Edward Coke Society: 'The Law as a Moral Dialogue - A Common Lawyer’s View'

The Edward Coke Society is delighted to present to its Annual Lecture: 'The Law as a Moral Dialogue - A Common Lawyer’s View': a discussion with Professor Trevor Allan and Professor Alison Young.

Professor Allan will ask whether we are in danger of forgetting important features of our common law tradition, which is poorly represented by contemporary legal theory. Even if legal positivism were thought to provide a plausible account of statute law, it is a bad fit with the practice of following precedent. While many of our familiar distinctions - between law and justice, just and wicked law, valid and invalid law, legal and moral obligation, law versus the Rule of Law—may have come to seem unchallengeable features of jurisprudential analysis, they sometimes serve to obscure more than they reveal. Legal interpretation, in common law mode, is arguably moral through and through.

Professor Young will then give a response.

The discussion will be followed by drinks in the Faculty's atrium.

The Edward Coke Society is a law society in Cambridge, dedicated to fostering intellectual diversity, critical discussion and informed debate about a broad range of current legal issues. Part of our objective is to bring attention to, and initiate discussion about, such ideas as judicial interpretation, the efficacy or inefficacy of both legislative and judicial protection of fundamental rights, due process in the law, and the rule of law.

You can find more information on the Society Facebook page.

If you have any questions regarding the Annual Lecture, or the Society, please email (jg765@cam.ac.uk).