Earlier this month Professor Graham Gee, Head of School and Professor of Public Law, delivered a lecture entitled 'What is Judicial Independence? Some Common Mistakes about Judges, Law and Politics' at Policy Exchange, one of the UK’s leading think tanks.
I feel very honoured to speak from this stage, and to do so under the auspices of the Policy Exchange's Judicial Power Project.
Professor Graham Gee
In the lecture, Professor Gee argued that the tradition of judicial independence in the UK is much more robust than many judges and lawyers assume, with this due in large part to the deep-rooted and broad-based commitment to independent courts shared by politicians which spans the ideological spectrum.
Professor Gee spoke at the beginning of his keynote speech about the , a project that aims to look into the rise in judicial power and address the problem of judicial overreach. He then moved on to state that 'This evening, I want to move away from the project's central critique of the excesses of judicial power, towards instead its commitment to judicial independence.'
Attending the lecture were many senior judges and politicians, including the Lord Chief Justice, members of the UK Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal, and the Attorney General. Lord Hodge, Deputy President of the Supreme Court, delivered the vote of thanks.
You can watch the lecture on Policy Exchange's Youtube channel .