News and events listing - Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Fellows. The Institute has also created a new post for an additional Information Officer who will be responsible for developing a database on company legislation and a newcorporate law bulletin. At the start of the new academic year the Institute also welcomed as an Inns of Court Fellow Professor S Kupfer from the Golden Gate University in the USA, who will be working in the areas of ethics in the legal profession and access to civil justice. Dr V Lipp, from the University of Mannheim, also joined us as a Visiting Fellow and will be engaged in comparative research on the law relating to protection of persons under disability and incapacity. Another Visiting Fellow is Mr A Huxley of SOAS, who will be working in the field of comparative natural law. We are also very pleased to welcome Mr David Wills, the Squire Law Librarian at the University of Cambridge as our first Visiting Fellow in Law Librarianship. Ms Virginia Towler, from the US Justice Department, will be spending the next year with us as the Atlantic Fellow in Public Policy. She will be focusing on the law and practice relating to international assistance in criminal matters. The Academic Policy and Standards Committee of the School of Advanced Study has recently given its approval to a new diploma course at the IALS on legislative studies. This course will build upon the highly successful course on legislative drafting that Sir William Dale has been running for many years. Sir William's Centre for Legislative Studies, which was set up earlier this year, will also be strengthened by a new Fellowship in Legislative Studies, which has been advertised. Professor A Pizzorusso, of the University of Pisa, has also taken up the Sir William Dale Visiting Fellowship in Legislative Studies. Finally, I am delighted to be able to announce that Dr Chizu Nakajima has been awarded a PhD by the University of London, for her dissertation on the law relating to the regulation of conflicts of interest in English, American and Japanese law. Dr Nakajima has been registered at the IALS; formerly of Keio University and the University of Cambridge, she is now a senior lecturer in financial regulation at the City University Business School. The global markets — crime and law reform The impact of globalisation of business came to the fore in two recent conferences which the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies participated in organising. The first was the annual symposium on economic crime which took place in Cambridge from 14 20 September 1997. The symposium is now in its fifteenth year, although the IALS became one of the principal organisers only two years ago. This year's programme focused on the implications of the globalisation of financial business and trade on the incidence and character of serious criminal activity with particular reference to the significance of developments in technology. The symposium attracted nearly 900 participants from over 93 countries. In addition to the main programme, there were 23 separate workshops and an alternative programme of special interest to law enforcement agencies. The proceedings of the Fifteenth Symposium will be published in an edited form in due course by Kluwer Law International, under the auspices of the Institute. The proceedings of last year's symposium on the prevention and control of corruption have just been published. The Sixteenth International Symposium will take place at Jesus College, Cambridge from 13 20 September 1998 and will consist of two parallel programmes. One will focus on fraud and abuse in the public sector and the other on abuses in the financial markets. Further details can be obtained from the Director of the IALS. The second highly successful programme which also emphasised the impact of globalisation of trade, was the Second International Law Conference on Anglo-Japanese Law held in Tokyo from 30 September to 2 October 1997. The programme was organised by the University of Tsukuba, Murdoch University and the IALS. The IALS, building upon the close ties that it has enjoyed for many years with Japan, inaugurated this initiative in comparative law last year when it organised the first conference in Cambridge. This year the programme focused on the reform of business law, but seen very much in the context of international trade. The principal speakers from the UK included Mrs Justice Arden; Mr Justice Mance; Professor David Hayton and Dr Mads Andenas (both of Kings College London); Dr Chizu Nakajima, of the City University Business School; and Professor Barry Rider. The proceedings of this conference will also be published in due course by Kluwer Law International. ® Research Fellows Successful forum by Audrey Stephenson-Burton The Institute held a one-day forum entitled Reporting Financial Crime: Complex Cases in A Media Age on Tuesday 21 October. This interdisciplinary conference had its origins in some research that I have been working on in this area for O several years now. I have always felt that the media aspect of financial crime had been grossly overlooked, to the detriment of both the civil and criminal justice systems. The 1990s has been referred to as the decade in which financial crime has become one of the biggest growth industries. In such a climate media reportage becomes increasingly important. Former Lord Chief Justice Taylor, a great man, greatly concerned about the topic of media reportage of crime and legal matters said this: 'It is healthy that the media and through them the ordinary citizen should observe closely and critically how public institutions and services are run. In regard to the courts, it is beneficial not onlyjor the public but Jbr the judges themselves that they should be open to criticism. The legal 17
process should no longer be seen as so specialised and esoteric as to be beyond the comprehension and criticism of non-lawyers. 'But, although public awareness and scrutiny of the judiciary is a healthy development, there is another modern trend which does not marry so well with the growth of critical comment. As personal and political expectations have risen, people have become more determined to realise them. If things do not go their way, they are not prepared, as ourjorbears often were, to accept disappointment philosophically.' The forum I hosted at the Institute tackled these very issues, from the perspectives of the defence lawyer, the journalist, the press officer and the academician. Questions surrounding whether the press lends or subtracts legitimacy to the justice system have rarely been more important than in the case of recent financial debacles. Indeed, one of the publicly stated reasons for the very existence of the Serious Fraud Office, as cited by the Roskill Committee, was that a new system was needed; the public had lost faith in the criminal justice system's ability to successfully mete out justice to white collar criminals. Lord Roskill felt that in view of the committee's evidence, the public was justified, again highlighting that overused dictum 'Justice must not only be done but be seen to be done'. The Institute's forum was greatly aided by the presentations by two defence lawyers, Stephen Pollard of Kingsley Napley and Keith Oliver of Peters and Peters. Representing Nick Leeson and Kevin Maxwell, respectively, these solicitors added much to the debate on the media role in the administration of justice. As the Barings and Maxwell cases \vere the most high profile of this genre, much was learned about the. at times uneasy alliance, at O ' ' j times utterly combative relationship between the defence team and the press. That the press plays a crucial role in the public's understanding of the process of justice cannot be ignored. Any defendant's solicitor not aware of the press issues puts their client at great risk. These two attorneys set out candidly and clearly their difficulties in forging a case for their client in the seemingly never-ending gaze of the national media. Even disclosing the realities of what can occur when the solicitor him or herself becomes grist for the media's mill: 'In the good old days you merely said that you were not permitted to talk to journalists. To communicate was a professional offence. Now all that has changed. We are instructed to be media Jriendly'. Richard Ferguson QC, 'Trial by Media', The Inner Temple Yearbook 1 996/7. The strength of the forum however, lay in its interdisciplinary approach. Journalists and press officers too, had their 'day in court'. Speakers and participants included Dan Atkinson, Michael Ricks, Paul Halloran, James O'Donahue, Michael Gillard and John Mason. This distinguished group expounded the difficulties within which journalists and press officers work, reviewing the nature of the modern media and how it works. Academics too, as participants and speakers, added to the debate. Professor Michael Levi, Dr Howard Tumber, Dr Ralph Negrine and Barbara Spalek lent their analyses on issues as varied as media selectivity, the differences between tabloid and broadsheet coverage, and agenda building in the press. The forum was incredibly lively, with views strongly held and vigorously defended. The conference papers will be available at a later date in a comprehensive publication* on the topic of Media Reporting of Financial Crime. ® Audrey Stephenson-Burton Research Fellow in Banking Regulation &^_Financial Crime Centre for Corporate Law & Practice Two more public lectures in The Company Lawyer lecture series were held at the IALS during O October. Marian Pell, ' a partner in Herbert Smith and a leading expert in insurance company law and practice, gave a lecture entitled Demutualisation and Company Law. This provided some fascinating insights into the commercial drivers behind the recent wave of building society and life office demutualisation and the role that company law has played in these transactions. Tim Herrington, a partner in Clifford Chance and Chairman of the Law Society Company Law Committee, gave a lecture entitled What is an OEIC? Why are Research Students they interesting for company lawyers? He provided a legal and functional definition of an open-ended investment company and drew out some features of the special purpose corporate code for OEICs, provided by Treasury and SIB Regulations, that are of particular interest for company lawyers. The Senior Research Fellow in Company Law at the CCLP, Joanna Gray, has also been involved over the past month in formulating the Law Society Company Law Committee's response to the Securities and Futures Authority's Board Notice 439 on the Responsibilities of Senior Executive Officers. @ 18 Those who are involved in legal research, particularly postgraduate law students, tend to be familiar with the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies. The Institute is a unique place which offers a range of services for legal education at the postgraduate level and is a venue for research students throughout the O University of London. For me, however, as a research student attached to the Institute, it is more than a place of occasional research, seminars, workshops and conferences; it is the home where I have spent an important part of my life.
Page 1: Institute News Recent events The In

News and events listing - Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?