Workshop: How Judges Decide

Denis Galligan, Professor of Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford and Director of the FLJS, will open this workshop by commenting on the lecture with the same title ‘How Judges Decide’, given by Justice Robert Sharpe of the Ontario Court of Appeal, in the Leonard Wolfson Auditorium, Wolfson College, the previous evening.

This will be followed by a roundtable discussion of academics and judges, which includes contributions from judges of diverse jurisdiction and traditions, and from academics who have reflected on the wider issues relating to judicial decision-making.

As with the lecture, the workshop will examine the underlying principles, the informal guidelines, the constraints and limitations used by judges. Participants (see below) will consider further the judicial process, the kinds of arguments and reasons that count, the constraints under which they must operate.  The question of how judges decide will be explored from both an academic and legal perspective.

Participants:

Alan Paterson OBE, Professor of Law and Director of the Centre for Professional Legal Studies at the Strathclyde University Law;
Scot Peterson, Bingham Research Fellow in Constitutional Studies and Junior Research Fellow in the Social Sciences, Balliol College, University of Oxford;
Daniel Smilov, Associate Professor at the Political Science Department, University of Sofia, and Programme Director at the Centre for Liberal Strategies, Sofia;
Lindsay Stirton, Professor of Public Law at the University of Susse;
Denis Galligan, Professor of Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford and Director of the Foundaiton for Law, Justice and Society;
Justice Robert J. Sharpe, Ontario Court of Appeal.

Please Note: Lunch will only be provided for invited participants and not for observers of this workshop.

To register, please go to www.fljs.org/events