The Rule of Law in Crisis: Public Lecture by Judge Sir Howard Morrison

The Centre for Criminal Law and Criminal Justice is delighted to welcome you to our next seminar, The Rule of Law in Crisis. This lecture explores the mounting pressures facing the rule of law in periods of profound political and constitutional stress. It examines how political antagonism fuels attacks on judicial independence, including attempts to delegitimise courts through accusations of partisan “lawfare.” 

The session will also consider the expanding use of executive power—such as unwarranted pardons—and how such practices undermine accountability, ethical standards in public life, and long‑standing constitutional norms. Finally, it analyses the growing tendency of political actors to blur or distort concepts of sovereignty in order to evade scrutiny, and reflects on what these developments mean for the resilience of the rule of law in democratic societies.

Sir Howard Morrison KC was the UK judge at both the United Nations International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia where he was a trial judge in the case of Radovan Karadzic and the International Criminal Court where he was President of the Appeals Division.  

He is an honorary Professor of International Law at Warwick, Leicester and Northumbria Universities and a Senior Fellow of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at Cambridge University.  Since leaving the ICC he was appointed the UK Independent Advisor to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General and President of the Court of Appeal of the British Indian Ocean Territories. He trains counter-terrorism judges in the Middle East and is a law of armed conflict advisor at the Ministry of Defence.

This event will be held in hybrid format.
You are warmly invited to join us in person in the Hogan Lovells Lecture Theatre, Palatine Centre (PCL048).

If you are unable to attend in person, you may join online via the following link:
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