The Neill Law Lecture

This Lecture is a major occasion for law in All Souls College and in Oxford. The Lecture was established in 1997 –alongside the Neill Concert– to honour Patrick Neill, Lord Neill of Bladen. In 2012, it became an annual event.

Lord Neill played a leading part in the development of All Souls through the second half of the 20th century, as Fellow from 1950 to 1977 and then as Warden, 1977-1995, before serving the University as Vice-Chancellor, 1985-1989.

1997 - Harry Kenneth Woolf: Judicial Review: the tensions between the Executive & the Judiciary

1999 - Lord Hoffmann: Europe and the question of sovereignty

2002 - Lord Steyn: The case for a Supreme Court

2004 - Lord Bingham: The Alabama Claims

2006 - Michael Beloff: Paying Judges, why, who, whom, how much

2008 - Lord Hope of Craighead: From Clova to Godmanchester –Public Rights over Private Land

2010 - Baroness Hale: Justice for the Jains: Remedies for Bad Administration

2012 - Sir John Baker: The legal history nobody knows

2013 - Lord Hoffmann: The separation of powers, shadow and substance

2014 - Lady Justice Arden: An English Judge in Europe

2015 - Baroness Helena Kennedy: Securing justice in a complex world

2016 - Sir Stephen Sedley: Law as history

2017 - Lord Neuberger: Twenty years a judge: reflections and refractions

2018 - Lord Justice Sales: Legalism in constitutional law - judging in a democracy

2019 - Professor Catherine Barnard: A red, white and blue Brexit

2022 - Lord Reed: Time present & time past: legal development & legal tradition in the Common Law

2023 - Lord Burrows: Seven Lessons from Inside the UK Supreme Court

2024 – Lady Rose of Colmworth: “The Sordid Controversies of Litigants”? Why and When Facts Matter