Cambridge Pro Bono Project

The Cambridge Pro Bono Project (CPP) is delighted to welcome Sir Jeffrey Jowell KCMG QC, Barrister at Blackstone Chambers; Emeritus Professor at UCL who spoke on the topic 'Is the UK Constitution Fit For Purpose?'.

For more information about the Cambridge Pro Bono Project, see https://www.cpp.law.cam.ac.uk

Speaker: Professor Saul Lehrfreund MBE, Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of The Death Penalty Project

The Death Penalty Project is an international legal action charity based at Simons Muirhead & Burton LLP. It aims to use the law to protect prisoners facing execution and achieve fairer and more human justice systems around the world. Saul Lehrfreund MBE has dedicated his career to representing prisoners facing the death penalty in criminal and constitutional proceedings around the world and before human rights courts and other international bodies. He has also participated in expert delegations to Japan, China, Taiwan and India focusing on criminal justice reforms and the potential for restriction and abolition of the death penalty. Saul Lehrfreund MBE is a leading authority on capital punishment and international human rights law and has published and lectured extensively on these topics.

The video featured in the presentation is available at https://deathpenaltyproject.org/knowledge/failed-justice-innocent-on-death-row/

For more information about the Cambridge Pro Bono Project see https://www.cpp.law.cam.ac.uk

Speaker: Adam Wagner, Doughty Street Chambers

The coronavirus pandemic has driven liberal democracies to forfeit individual liberties of citizens in benefit of the collective well-being of society, thereby giving new colours to fundamental debates long entrenched in the human rights movement worldwide. In the UK, the most relevant corollary of the current crisis for the domestic legal sphere is that the provisions of the Human Rights Act (1998), much attacked by conservative leaders in the past decade, will from now on be discussed in a new light. From anti-vaxxers' freedom of choice to the government's enactment of confusing laws and beyond, the human rights dimensions of the COVID-19 crisis are multiple and far-reaching.

To discuss the most salient human rights aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK, the CPP has invited the leading human rights barrister Adam Wagner to participate in our new (virtual) Speaker Series. Adam Wagner is a member of Doughty Street Chambers and has been appointed as Specialist Adviser to the Joint Committee on Human Rights new Inquiry into the government’s Covid-19 response. He will be giving a talk for 40 minutes and the remaining 20 minutes of the webinar will be dedicated to Q&A.

For more information about the Cambridge Pro Bono Project see: https://www.cpp.law.cam.ac.uk/

The Cambridge Pro Bono Project (CPP) hosted this lecture in the CPP Colloquium Series, supported by the Centre for Public Law. The lecture was given by Professor John Corvino, at the Faculty of Law on 20 November 2017. He spoke about 'Conscience, Religious Accommodations, and Religious Exemptions'.

The presentation for this lecture is available at:

https://resources.law.cam.ac.uk/documents/Cambridge_Public_Lecture_Corvino_20_11_2017.pdf

John Corvino is Professor of Philosophy and the incoming Dean of the Irvin D. Reid Honors College at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He is the author of numerous articles, as well as three books from Oxford University Press: Debating Same-Sex Marriage (with Maggie Gallagher, 2012), What's Wrong with Homosexuality? (2013), and Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination (with Ryan T. Anderson and Sherif Girgis, 2017). He has lectured at over 250 campuses on topics of sexuality, marriage, and ethics. Read more at www.johncorvino.com.

For more information on the Cambridge Pro Bono Project see https://www.cpp.law.cam.ac.uk/

The Cambridge Pro Bono Project (CPP) hosted this lecture in the CPP Colloquium Series, supported by the Centre for Public Law. The lecture was given by Martha Spurrier, Director of Liberty, at the Faculty of Law on 14 November 2017. She spoke about 'Human Rights and Access to Justice in a Post-Brexit World'.

Martha joined Liberty as Director in May 2016. She arrived from Doughty Street Chambers, where she specialised in defending access to justice and the rights of women, children and disabled people. In 2015 Martha co-founded the ‘Act for the Act’ campaign, which put posters on trains, buses and billboards across the country telling the stories of men, women and children who had used the Human Rights Act when things went wrong in their lives. Martha was previously a lawyer at the mental health charity, Mind, and at the Public Law Project.

For more information on the Cambridge Pro Bono Project see https://www.cpp.law.cam.ac.uk/

On 9 March 2017 the Cambridge Pro Bono Project (CPP) hosted Jason Brickhill to speak on the topic '(Democratic) Politics by Other Means: Public Interest Litigation in South Africa'.

He spoke about his experiences using law as an instrument of justice for the vulnerable and marginalised, including poor, homeless and landless people, at the Legal Resources Centre, South Africa's largest public interest, human rights law clinic.

Jason has been an advocate at the Johannesburg Bar and was formerly the director of the Constitutional Litigation Unit, Legal Resources Centre (South Africa). He is currently a DPhil Candidate at Oxford, where his research focuses on public interest litigation in South Africa.

On 22 February 2017 the Cambridge Pro Bono Project Colloquium Series hosted a talk by Shauneen Lambe, Executive Director and Co-Founder of Just for Kids Law, giving a talk on her experiences, entitled "Using law as a tool to bring about social change". She discussed her work representing people on death row in the USA, and Just for Kids Law's campaigns and legal challenges which have changed laws and policy in education, youth justice and community care.

Shauneen is a barrister in England and Wales and an attorney in Louisiana, USA, where she represented people facing the death penalty. In 1999 she helped establish the charity Reprieve, remaining on the board until 2006.

In 2006 Shauneen and Aika Stephenson set up Just for Kids Law, a charity that provides 360 degree support and legal representation to vulnerable children and young people in the UK and drives systemic change. In 2015 Shauneen was made an Eisenhower Fellow. She is also a World Economic Forum ‘Young Global Leader,’ and one of NESTA/The Observer’s ‘Britain’s New Radicals.’ She was chosen as a Shackleton Leader in 2011 and an Ashoka Fellow in 2012. Shauneen was shortlisted for Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year and Liberty’s Human Rights Lawyer of the Year.

On 6 February 2017 the Cambridge Pro Bono Project Colloquium Series hosted a talk by Colin Yeo, immigration barrister at Garden Court Chambers, and founding editor of the Free Movement blog - the UK's main immigration law blog.

The talk reviewed some of the great results that have been achieved through immigration litigation, for individuals but also for classes or groups of migrants. Colin then considered some bad results of cause lawyering in immigration law and asks whether litigating immigration issues actually shows respect for and therefore legitimises those laws.

This talk came at a fascinating time given the most major cause-lawyering case of its time, the Article 50 case (Miller v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union), has just been handed down by the UK Supreme Court.

Ivan Hare delivered a lecture as a guest of the Cambridge Pro Bono Project on Wednesday 23 November 2016 at the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge.

Ivan Hare, barrister at Blackstone Chambers, specialises in freedom of speech, and the line between that and hate speech. He has appeared in these cases in Strasbourg and the top UK courts. In this lecture he shared his experiences at the coal face in this controversial and crucially important area.

For more information about the Cambridge Pro Bono Project please refer to the website at https://www.cpp.law.cam.ac.uk/

On 3 March 2014, Judge Nicholas Forwood delivered a lecture entitled "Protecting Individual Rights: Role of the General Court of Justice of the EU" as a guest of the Cambridge University Students' Pro Bono Society. Judge Forwood is the British judge in the General Court of Justice of the European Union, and spoke about how this institution can protect individual rights and about the recent developments in the area of European Human Rights law.