Past Events
Please browse past events by year and month using the calendar below, or use the free text search box below to find a specific event.
January 2012
Monday 30 January 2012
|
| Time | Title | Venue |
|
18:00 |
Regulating Private Law: The Framework Jurisprudence ...
Dr Oliver Gerstenberg, Director, Centre for International Governance, University of Leeds; IALS Visiting Fellow.
Chair: Aidan O'Neill QC, Matrix Chambers
In interpreting consumer contracts, courts face a fundamental problem of private law: striking a fair balance between the contradictory demands of the freedom of the parties to arrange their own affairs and protection of the weaker contracting party against lopsided bargains imposed—appearances of party autonomy notwithstanding—by the stronger. Within the single market of the EU this fundamental balancing problem is exacerbated by regulatory diversity—the fact that private law relations “are to a significant extent still governed by national law,” with the consequence that “the same type of [contractual] terms may even have different legal effects in different national legal systems.”
To safeguard consumers and to assure the legal certainty on which commerce depends the EU has therefore chosen to sunder contracts with consumers from the larger body of general contract law and regulate it through several directives harmonizing standards of consumer protection.
Despite their specificity these directives remain—and indeed must remain—incomplete and ambiguous in important regards. A first source of ambiguity is intrinsic to all legislation: Statutory law inevitably fails to anticipate every contingency, embodies compromises that are acceptable precisely because they admit of contrary interpretations, and recurs to abstract and open-ended concepts (e.g. “unfairness”) and general clauses in the effort to extend its own reach. Second, the directives are incomplete, and therefore again open to differing interpretations, because—in the absence of its own legislation—the Community must rely on diverse national, procedural rules for the enforcement of its law. Third, the directives create ambiguity by the unintended effects they produce. Permitting debtors to escape obligations to creditors assumed under impermissible conditions, for instance, may, by extension, allow a previously vulnerable actor to victimize a previously dominant actor.
This paper argues, first, that the Court has developed a solution, which promises to reconcile responses to these three distinct but interconnected sources of ambiguity outlined. The core of this emergent solution is affirmation of the distinction, grounded in Art. 267 TFEU (ex 234 EC), between the twin tasks of the uniform interpretation of Community law by the CJEU, on the one hand, and its subsequent contextualising application by the national courts, on the other, in the light of the full circumstances of the case.
This paper argues, second that the emergent “European way” of regulating contracts transcends the classic opposition between a “liberal” or “formalist” view of private law, which exalts private autonomy—la liberté des modernes—, and a “romantic” or “contextualist” view of private law, which exalts the nation-state as a cohesive whole and as the sole locus of justice and self-government.
|
IALS |
Friday 27 January 2012
|
| Time | Title | Venue |
|
10:00 |
Annual Avoir Fiscal EU Tax Conference
Philip Baker QC, Gray’s Inn Tax Chambers;
Antonio Pedro Braga, Morais Leitão, Galvão Teles, Soares da Silva, Porto;
Peter Cussons, Partner, PWC, London; George Gillham, McGrigors, London;
Per Gyllenstierna, Ernst & Young, Stockholm, Sweden;
Timothy Lyons QC, 4-5 Gray’s Inn Square;
Dr Tom O’Shea, Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary, University of London;
Katerina Perrou, IALS, London and University of Athens;
Grahame Turner, IALS, London;
Simon Whitehead, Partner, Dorsey & Whitney, London.
Draft Programme and Booking Form for the 7th Annual Avoir Fiscal Anniversary EU Tax Conference
FEES: Full Rate £80; Academic Rate: £45.00. Student Rate: £30.00.
Please return the booking form with conference fee by Wednesday 25 January to: Belinda Crothers, IALS, 17 Russell Square, London WC1B 5DR. Tel: + 44 (0)20 7862 5841. Fax: +44 (0)20 7862 5850. Email: Belinda.Crothers@sas.ac.uk
|
IALS |
Monday 23 January 2012
|
| Time | Title | Venue |
|
18:00 |
How to make EU legislation more accessible
William Robinson.
Chair: The Rt Hon Lord Dyson.
William Robinson worked for many years in the field of European Union law and language, first at the European Court of Justice and then at the European Commission. In the Commission's Legal Service he coordinated a team of 20 legal revisers who revise the Commission’s draft legal acts and legislative proposals. Since 2010 he has been engaged in research into EU legislative drafting issues at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies.
His lecture will cover: past calls for EU legislation to be more accessible; action already undertaken; criticism of the present state of the EU statute book; some possible solutions.
Organised by the Statute Law Society with the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and the British Institute of International and Comparative Law.
This is a free event and tickets are not required.
|
IALS |
Wednesday 18 January 2012
|
| Time | Title | Venue |
|
17:30 |
In Internet’s Way: Jihadism on the Free Highway
Professor Raphael Cohen-Almagor, Chair of Politics, University of Hull.
Chair: Professor Eric Barendt, Univerity College of London
The paper is opened with the story of Younes Tsouli, the highly motivated computer geek who was noticed and subsequently recruited to mastermind al-Qaeda activities on the Net. Terrorism is defined as the threat or employment of violence against noncombatant targets for political, religious, or ideological purposes by sub-national groups and/or clandestine individuals who are willing to justify all means to achieve their goals. Terrorist conduct is designed to attract attention to the terrorist’s cause and to spread fear and anxiety among wide circles of the targeted population. Subsequently I analyse how terrorists use the Internet, and what can be done to counter their activities. It is argued that the threat of terrorism is real and significant. As the Internet became a major arena for modern terrorists, we need to devise appropriate methods to forestall their activities and establish security. |
IALS |
Tuesday 17 January 2012
|
| Time | Title | Venue |
|
18:00 |
Free Access to Legal Information: Roles in the expan...
Professor Graham Greenleaf AM, Professor of Law & Information Systems, University of New South Wales (UNSW); Co-Director, Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII); Founding Director, Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre, UNSW (2000-10); Asia-Pacific Editor, Privacy Laws & Business International Report (PLBIR).
Chair: Jules Winterton, Associate Director and Librarian, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies.
After nearly twenty years of development, free online access to legal information is approaching maturity in some parts of the world, but is in its infancy in others. We can answer some practical questions: 'what is the geographical scope of its advance?'; 'what types of institutions have been the main contributors to its provision?'; and perhaps even 'what are the main conditions for its success and sustainability?' But deeper questions need answers too. What should 'free access' mean in relation to legal information in order to be fully effective?: free as in beer, or free as in speech? Perhaps we must first work out what is the significance of free access to legal information to values such as liberty, the rule of law, and democracy. But are the answers to these questions everywhere the same? This paper will start at the shallow end of the pool and progress to the deep. |
IALS |
Thursday 12 January 2012
|
| Time | Title | Venue |
|
18:00 |
Asylum from armed conflict, Islamist extremism and h...
Ronan Toal
Ronan Toal is a barrister at Garden Court Chambers, specialising in immigration law. He has represented Somali asylum seekers for over 20 years. He has written on various aspects of immigration, asylum and human rights law and is editor of Macdonald's Immigration Law and Practice.'
Arranged with the Solicitors International Human Rights Group (SIHRG) and the Society for Advanced Legal Studies (SALS)
|
IALS |
|
