Sir Peter Gross with Professor Soyer (Director of the IISTL) and Professor Elwen Evans QC (Executive Dean PVC, Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences). Professor Evans QC delivered the “Vote of Thanks” at the end of the lecture.
This year, Swansea’s Institute of International Shipping and Trade Law is celebrating its twentieth anniversary.
From a small but ambitious three-person operation under its founder Professor Rhidian D Thomas in 2000, it has now developed into a leading European research centre specialising in commercial and maritime law. Its current 18 academic and practitioner members are dedicated to education, training, fostering relations between academics and practitioners worldwide, and delivering cutting edge research.
A major part of the celebration was the 2020 Institute lecture that took place on December 7th. For this, the Institute was delighted to host Sir Peter Gross, recently retired from the Court of Appeal having previously been a doyen of the commercial Bar, now active as an arbitrator at his old chambers Twenty Essex, and just appointed to lead the government’s commission on the operation of the Human Rights Act.
The subject of the lecture, appropriately and indeed very topically, was The Judiciary Today – The Least Dangerous Branch; the result, a masterly, wide-ranging and extraordinarily well-informed analysis of the delicate balance between the legislative, executive and judicial branches. The event, delivered remotely owing to the ongoing contagion, was as a major contribution to the ongoing discussion of the place of the English judiciary, not only in the UK polity itself (both pre and post-Brexit), but in the legal world outside the UK.
We are grateful for all friends and colleagues who joined us in a virtual environment on 7th December to celebrate our Anniversary. We are confident that the next two decades of the IISTL will be even brighter than its first two!
For those who missed the lecture you can download a copy of the transcript here.