Herbert Smith Freehills Disability Mooting Championship 2021: Grand Final and Panel Discussion

The Herbert Smith Freehills Disability Mooting Championship: Oxford v Cambridge

This prestigious moot court competition, kindly supported by Herbert Smith Freehills, was established by the Oxford Law Faculty to promote the intellectual study of disability and its intersection with domestic and international law. It is designed to showcase the challenges faced by academics and legal practitioners who work in this field. In so doing, it hopes to raise awareness of legal issues facing people with disabilities and the need to increase the representation of disabled people within the legal profession. This year, the moot problem focuses on equality and housing law. 

Grand Final 2021

You are invited to the Grand Final of the HSF Disability Mooting Championship 2021. It will take place online at 3pm GMT on Saturday, 6 November 2021. Watch skilled law students go head to head in this mock court case to debate a legal problem about issues affecting persons with a disability! The talented finalists will showcase the challenges faced by academics and legal practitioners who work in this field. Audience members will have the opportunity to hear the reasoning of these senior judges and witness their interactions with contestants. You can access the Moot Problem here.

The Grand Final will be judged by:

Professor Susan Bright has been teaching at the University of Oxford since 1992, after a period as a solicitor in London and teaching at Essex University. She is also a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Fellow of the South African Research Chair in Property Law, and an academic member of the Chancery Bar Association, Property Bar Association and Property Litigation Association. Sue teaches land law, contract law, regulation, and housing and human rights. Much of her recent and ongoing research is concerned with complexities stemming from multi-owned property. One area she has investigated is environmental performance and the built environment. Her work includes a multi-disciplinary project exploring the challenges in energy upgrades for residential leasehold property (flats). In the commercial sector she has particular expertise on ‘green leases’. During 2014-2016 she was a member of an interdisciplinary team on an EPSRC funded project called Wicked, that examines Energy Management in the Retail Sector. 

Daniel Hudson is a corporate crime and investigations partner at Herbert Smith Freehills with experience in business and human rights. He helps clients with some of their most serious, reputationally important issues that go beyond business as usual. Based in London, he advises and represents corporate, institutional and individual clients on financial crime matters, with a particular focus on corruption, sanctions, fraud, regulatory investigations, insider dealing, money laundering, accounting irregularities and connected disputes. Dan also helps clients on the emerging and growing risk area of business and human rights compliance with international and domestic law standards, including implementing policies and processes in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Dan has significant experience working with clients on internal anti–money laundering and anti-bribery procedures, particularly in relation to the UK Bribery Act as well as on regulatory investigations, due diligence, corruption and sanctions issues. He also advises on internal and external investigations, including those conducted by the UK SFO, FCA, Police, and HMRC. He assists clients acting as witnesses in domestic and foreign criminal proceedings, and represents clients facing prosecution.

Nicholas McBride was formerly a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Currently, he is a Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he is also the Director of Studies in Law. He is the author, with Roderick Bagshaw, of 'Tort Law', now in its 6th edition. He is also the author of the best-selling introduction to studying law, 'Letters to a Law Student'. His publications also include 'Great Debates in Jurisprudence' and 'Key Ideas in Contract Law'.

Panel Discussion 2021

The Grand Final will be followed by a Panel Discussion on the theme: Up to the Challenge? Does the National Disability Strategy do enough to address the twin crises of Climate Change and life post-COVID-19 Pandemic?

Panelists include:

Chair – Kamran Mallick has worked in the voluntary sector for over 20 years and for the last 15 years running user led organisations. He worked for Aspire and as CEO of Action on Disability. Since 2017 he has been CEO of Disability Rights UK. He has served on various boards of 3rd sector organisations and was also a member of Transport for London’s Independent Disability Advisory Group for 3 years. Kamran contracted polio as a child and is a wheelchair user. His experiences at both special and mainstream schools showed him that inclusive education for all children is essential. He is driven to make sure younger disabled people have better opportunities than he did. At Action on Disability, he transformed its youth service to mainstream settings and supporting inclusive activities. He built up a programme of supported internships for young people with learning difficulties, ensuring that they had real opportunities to work. He secured the long-term viability of the charity by negotiating a purpose built office funded by the social housing above. Kamran is listed in the Shaw Trusts 2018 Power 100 list of Britain’s most influential disabled people and made it to the top 10 in their 2020 list. He was the runner up in the Vodafone Diversity Campaigner award 2017 and winner of Celebrating Diversity award from London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham’s in their inaugural Civic Honour awards 2017. He was recognised on Green Park's 2019 BAME 100 Business Leaders index.

Phillip Wilcox has devoted his professional life to analysing the economic, political, and security dynamics between the U.S. and China. He received his M.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California and his B.A. in Government and English from Georgetown University.He was inspired to write The Future is Autonomous: The U.S. and China Race to Develop the Driverless Car after an accident in 2012 left him legally blind. After the accident, he became passionate about autonomous vehicles and their potential safety and commercial benefits. Now he is an advocate for automated technology, hoping to make transportation better and safer for everyone. When he is not writing or speaking on issues related to autonomous vehicles, Phillip loves to study Mandarin Chinese and is a Washington, D.C. sports fan.

Jumoke Abdullahi joined the Inclusion London team in August 2020. She has a background in media and communications and is passionate about social justice in her professional and personal life. As the Media and Communications Officer, she looks after Inclusion London’s social media channels and much more. Outside of her work in a Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisation, Jumoke co-founded The Triple Cripples community and platform. Frustrated with the lack of representation and unaddressed discrimination faced by Black and non-Black People of Colour living with disabilities, each and every day. With a focus on Women, Femmes & Non-Binary folks; Jumoke co-created the platform to increase visibility & highlight the narratives of these “invisible populations, within an invisible population” Owing to her personal and professional background, Jumoke gives special consideration to those that are multiply marginalised and is relentless in her pursuit to transform the outcomes of those here and yet to come!

Jane Hatton is a disabled social entrepreneur, TEDx Speaker and author. She founded the award-winning social enterprise Evenbreak in 2011. Widely published in inclusive recruitment, including “A Dozen Brilliant Reasons to Employ Disabled People” (2017) and “A Dozen Great Ways to Recruit Disabled People” (2020), she is on the executive board of the Recruitment Industry Disability Initiative, a Patron of Arkbound Foundation and a Trustee of Action on Disability and Development International. Winning a number of inclusion awards, she was 7th on the Shaw Trust Power 100 ‘Britain’s Most Influential Disabled People’ list in 2019.

Dr Deborah Fenney is a Senior Researcher at The King’s Fund. She has a particular interest in health inequalities and is currently working on a project to explore what good partnership working between disabled people and health and care systems looks like. Her other recent research topics include the role of directors of public health during the Covid-19 pandemic; the NHS’s role in tackling poverty; the delivery of health and care services for people who sleep rough; and transitions to adulthood for young people with learning disabilities. Deborah also holds a PhD in sociology and social policy from the University of Leeds, which explored inequalities in disabled people’s access to sustainable lifestyles. She investigated the relationships between disabled people’s experiences and sustainability- and disability-focused policies at local, national and EU levels, and brought a disability studies perspective to several sustainability literatures which had previously neglected disability issues.

Dr Sasha Kosanic is the Lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University and a Physical geographer by training who uses an interdisciplinary approach (mixed-method approaches) to answer complex questions on climate change impacts (local and regional scales) on biodiversity and societies. She finished her PhD at the University of Exeter (UK), where her research focused on investigating local climate change and its impacts on biodiversity in West Cornwall. She used biodiversity historical records (i.e. Herbarium data) to analyse changes in plant species distribution across West Cornwall and to provide answers on how we can use Ellenberg values to detect species sensitivity to climate and environmental change. Her recent research focus is on climate change impacts on ecosystem services (ES) and nature contributions to people (NCP), and in particular, she is interested in how these changes impact vulnerable communities (e.g. disabled, indigenous populations, children and elderly). She also works on understanding the relationships between multiple inequalities in order to incorporate this into policies and achieve Agenda 2030. Sasha is very passionate about inclusive education and promoting better inclusion of disabled students and researchers into STEM fields. Only such inclusion can erase current misconceptions and change demographics in Academia.

Dr Kay Inckle is Campaigns and Policy Manager at Wheels for Wellbeing (@Wheels4Well), a disabled people’s cycling organisation which campaigns for and provides access to cycling for disabled people based on an ethos of mobility justice. Kay’s background is in social science with a focus on critical and intersectional approaches to disability and mental health. She has published widely, including recent papers on disabled cyclists (2019 Disabled Cyclists and the Deficit Model of Disability https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/6513/5468; 2020 Disability, Cycling and Health: Impacts and (Missed) Opportunities in Public Health https://www.sjdr.se/articles/10.16993/sjdr.695/). She also writes fiction and is an avid handcyclist and environmentalist. You can find her on twitter @KayInckle. 

Professor Peter Beresford OBE is Visiting Professor at the University of East Anglia and Co-Chair of Shaping Our Lives https://www.shapingourlives.org.uk, the national disabled people’s and service users’ organization and network. He is also Emeritus Professor at Brunel University London and the University of Essex. He is a longterm user of mental health services and has a longstanding background of involvement in issues of disability and participation as writer, researcher, activist and teacher. His latest books are Participatory Ideology (Policy Press, 2021) and The Routledge International Handbook of Mad Studies (2021 forthcoming).

Timetable

• 3.00pm: The Grand Final of the Herbert Smith Freehills Disability Mooting Championship: Oxford v Cambridge
• 4.15pm: Short Break
• 4.30pm: Panel Discussion on: ‘Up to the Challenge? Does the National Disability Strategy do enough to address the twin crises of Climate Change and life post-COVID-19 Pandemic?'
• 6pm: Announcement of 2021 Mooting Champions
• 6.30pm: Event Ends

Click here to download the full programme.

The Law Faculty and Organising Committee are grateful for the generous support and enthusiasm provided by Herbert Smith Freehills and their Ability Network.