Posted by The Law School
23 October 2024Professor Richard Moorhead, Professor of Law and Professional Ethics, will deliver this year’s lecture series which dates back to the 1940’s. Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Denning presented the first lecture, ‘Freedom under the Law’ at the University of London in 1949.
However, these lectures are very much rooted in the south west, created from the legacy of Emma Warburton Hamlyn. Her father had been a solicitor in the Torbay area and while she was not involved in the legal profession, she was widely read on the subject. After her death, her will requested that her monies be used to ‘share a greater understanding of the law among everyday people’.
Professor of Law and Legal History, Chantal Stebbings has written about the Hamlyn legacy.
Sir Alfred Denning’s opening remarks in the first lecture, “as the Hamlyn Trust bids me, to speak, as it were, to the common people of England and to further amongst them the knowledge of their laws, so that they may realise their privileges and likewise their responsibilities.”
Many eminent people have since been invited by the Hamlyn Trust to present the lectures including Sir Patrick Devlin, Baroness Wooton, Sir Leslie Scarman, Dame Brenda Hale and Jack Straw. You can see the full list on our webpage here. This year the three lectures will be held at University of Exeter, University of Leeds and UCL.
‘Frail Professionalism: Lawyers’ ethics after the Post Office and other cases’.
This lecture will consider what drives good lawyers towards ethical blunders. Traditional notions of lawyers’ ethics, ideas such as fearlessness, zeal and Cab Rank neutrality, will be examined, as will the human frailties that all humans, even – perhaps especially – lawyers, face. We will consider how such ideas can drive lawyers towards disaster. Examples will be taken from the Post Office Scandal but also elsewhere. I will suggest traditional notions of ethics are flawed; that rather than protect the rule of law, they render it vulnerable.
Professor Moorhead