Winter ends with some maverick voices and an unlikely DNA trio

February and March are always good months for lectures. The long evenings keep people inside. This season provided a good crop of images on the current hot topic on the circuit, the role of the judiciary. Rick Rawlings, newly inaugurated as the head of UCL’s law school, added “spaghetti junction” as a model for how judicial review is melding different historical sources—the European Union, European Court of Human Rights, private international law, the common law and various truncated statutory forms. From the consequent mix, the European concept of proportionality rises triumphant over old-fashioned, domestic rationality— desirable or not according to your view.

ALTERED STATES

Meanwhile, Professor Aharon Barak, once chair of the Israeli Supreme Court, waxed lyrical in the second Law Commission lecture. Judges, he argued, even in extremis, should avoid allowing the state to assume additional powers during times of emergency. To do so was like “leaving a loaded gun around” and “courts should reflect history not hysteria”.