Team of Law scholars present range of papers at annual legal conference

A team of nine academics from the School of Law and Politics presented papers at this year’s Annual Conference of the Society of Legal Scholars (SLS).

This year’s event, which was the 107th and the largest yet, took place at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford University on 6–9 September. It welcomed over 565 participants from all over the world under the theme of ‘Legislation and the Role of the Judiciary’.

A range of papers were presented in the different subject sections by Cardiff academics demonstrating the quality and breadth of legal scholarship being undertaken at the School.

• Sara Drake: Sara is the UK rapporteur for an EU-EEA wide project funded by the University of Bergen, Norway, which is exploring the effectiveness and application of the principle of consistent interpretation in national courts. Sara presented the findings of her UK report to the EU/Competition Law section.
• Julie Doughty: Julie attended two subject streams: Media Law and Family Law. She presented a paper in the Family Law section on 'The views and experiences of adoptive parents about legal and administrative processes early in placement'. This was based on data from the Wales Adoption Cohort Study, which includes 96 questionnaires and 40 interviews with adopters in the year following children being placed with them by adoption agencies in Wales.
• Rachel Cahill-O’Callaghan: Rachel presented a paper with Heather Roberts (ANU) on “Values and agreement in the High Court of Australia” in the Open section.  This work resulted from a collaboration formed during Heather’s period as Visiting Scholar at the School in July 2016.
• Manon George: Manon presented in the Public Law section, where a parallel stream was devoted to Devolution. She presented a paper entitled “The Government of Wales Act 2006: (in)coherent, (un)stable and (un)workable.”
• Huw Pritchard: Huw presented a paper on “The end of the England and Wales jurisdiction as we know it?” His paper considered the prospect of a distinct Welsh legal jurisdiction emerging in the context of the current Wales Bill reflecting work undertaken by the Wales Governance Centre on Justice in Wales.
• Daniel Newman: Daniel co-authored a paper with Thomas Smith (UWE) (presenting) on “Access to Criminal Justice under Austerity” in the Practice, Profession & Ethics section. The paper applied Marx' theory of alienation to the work of criminal legal aid lawyers. Newman and Smith offered the concept of alienation as an analytical tool for advancing the debate on whether the lawyer-client relationship serves access to justice and, if not, how it might be improved to better do so.
• Sharon Thompson: Sharon delivered her paper, “The Married Women’s Association’s fight for wives’ right to housekeeping savings” in the Legal History section.

Roseanne Russell was also in attendance as co-convenor of the Company Law section.

The team would like to thank Annette Morris as the Society’s Sections Secretary. Annette has held the position of secretary for four years and her calmness and efficiency ensured that the conference programme with 325 papers, 4 roundtables across 28 subject sections plus 29 posters ran smoothly.

Next year’s conference will be the first ever to be held outside the UK.  Vice-President of the SLS, Professor Imelda Maher, will be organising the conference at the Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin (UCD) from 5-8 September 2017. The theme is “The Diverse Unities of Law.”  The call for papers or posters will be issued in February 2017.