The organisers of this year’s Public Law Conference have given more details of the main speakers and topics lined up for the event.

The conference will take place in Dublin for the first time, to coincide with the centenary of Irish independence and the 1922 Constitution.

As of the Decade of Centenaries programme, the conference gala dinner will take place in St Patrick's Hall at Dublin Castle.

Hosted by the Sutherland School of Law, the 2022 theme for this major international event is ‘The Making (and Re-making) of Public Law’.

The July 6-8 conference is co-organised by the Centre for Constitutional Studies at UCD’s Sutherland School of Law, and Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne.  

Administrative law

The three-day conference will focus on administrative, constitutional, and public law in common-law jurisdictions.

The keynote speakers and topics include:

• Prof Sir John Baker (Cambridge, England): 'The Beginnings Of Judicial Review (1558-1640)',
• Prof Carol Harlow (LSE, England) and Prof Richard Rawlings (UCL, England): 'Law and Government: The Place of the People',
• Justice Gerard Hogan (Supreme Court of Ireland): 'Why does Ireland have judicial review of legislation?',
• Dame Siobhan Keegan (Lady Chief Justice of Northern Ireland): 'Justice Devolved: Milestones in Northern Ireland Constitutional Law since 2010',
• Justice Steven Majiedt (Constitutional Court of South Africa): 'The Building of South Africa's Constitution on the Ruins of its Past: the Indigenising of Public Law in post-Apartheid South Africa',
• Justice Sheilah Martin (Supreme Court of Canada): 'Indigenizing Public Law the Canadian Way',
• Prof Janet McLean (Auckland, New Zealand): 'Good Counsel as a Constitutional Imperative',
• Prof Gillian Metzger (Columbia, USA): 'Fear of the State and the Pandemic',
• Justice Brian Murray (Supreme Court of Ireland): 'Private Rights and Public Wrongs',
• Prof Val Napoleon (Victoria, Canada): 'Public Faces: Indigenous Law Today and through the Futuristic Looking Glass',
• Justice Donal O’Donnell (Chief Justice of Ireland): 'The Impact in Irish law of International Trends',
• Prof Kate O’Regan (Director, Bonavero Institute, Oxford, England): 'The remaking of administrative law under South Africa’s democratic Constitution',
• Lord Sales (UK Supreme Court): 'Long waves of constitutional principle in the common law',
• Prof Cheryl Saunders (Melbourne, Australia): 'Beyond the obvious. Insights for public law from experience with the pandemic',
• Prof Neil Walker (Edinburgh, Scotland): 'Populism and Constitutional Renewal',
• Dame Helen Winkelmann (Chief Justice of New Zealand): 'The power of narrative – shaping Aotearoa New Zealand’s public law'.

The conference venue rotates around common-law jurisdictions, and the series is sponsored by Hart Publishing Ltd.

UCD law full professor Eoin Carolan SC is one of the event organisers.

Those interested in attending should consult the conference website.