Professor Andrew Burrows becomes President of the Society of Legal Scholars

Associated people

Professor Andrew Burrows, Professor of the Law of England becomes the elected president of the Society of Legal Scholars on the 1st of October for the academic year 2015-16.

The Society of Legal Scholars have released a statement in which Professor Burrows talks about his presidency:

“There are two issues of wide public interest that I would like to focus on at the start of my Presidential year.”

“The first is the woeful decline in the quality of legislation in this country. We now have an ever-increasing quantity of legislation that is so unclear and complex that, in some areas, even lawyers and judges struggle to work out what the law is.[1] So, for example, Part 1 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, which comes into force on October 1, 2015, aims to set out the contractual rights of consumers in a simple and clear form. But that commendable central purpose has been defeated by the drafting which is the antithesis of clarity. To give another recent example, this time in delegated legislation, the law on when interest starts to run on an unpaid commercial debt has recently been amended by the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Amendment) Regulations 2015. The drafting is needlessly and mind-blowingly complex such that even most qualified lawyers will need a long time, and a clear head, to understand what is laid down.”  

“The second is to draw attention to the rich variety of important legal research that is being carried out in the university law schools of the UK and Ireland. So to take my own law school in Oxford as an example, ongoing and recent legal research undertaken ranges from the traditional analysis of the latest court judgements and legislation, through to assessments of the government’s increases in court fees and cuts to legal aid, through to projects on the value of mounted police units in the UK, the assessment of violence by adolescents to parents, and a worldwide study of the use of the death penalty. [2]  The vitality and range of the legal research in the UK and Ireland can further be seen from the events organised by members of the SLS and supported from its funds.[3] Much of the modern legal research has a global dimension. So, for example, the winner of the 2015 Peter Birks book prize[4] was an in-depth study of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation: The OIC, the UN, and Counter-Terrorism Law-Making by Katja Samuel of the University of Reading (Hart Publishing).”  

 

 

 

[1] It is unlikely to be a coincidence that in recent years the Office of Parliamentary Counsel has been subjected to cuts which, as I understand it, have led to about half  of the (16 or so) senior Parliamentary Counsel leaving the Office.

[3] Eg ‘Incentivising Innovation and Higher Standards in Regulation and Liability Relating to Medicines’ organised by Professor Richard Goldberg and Professor Shaun Pattinson held at Durham Law School (March 2015); ‘Europe’s Shared Burden: Collective Responsibility for Migrants at Sea’ to be held at University College Dublin, 9-10 October, 2015 (organised by Dr Richard Collins).  

[4] This is an annual award given by the Society of Legal Scholars in memory of Professor Peter Birks, a former President of the Society.

The Society of Legal Scholars was founded in 1908 and it currently has around 3000 members. The society is supported by its patrons, who include professional firms, organisations and legal publishers.