National

Professor Paul Cartledge conducted a webinar on “Ten Things You Should Know About Democracy in Ancient Greece” on Tuesday 17 November as part of HAL’s Rhodes Online webinar series.

Professor Paul Cartledge FSA, FRSA, is a Senior Research Fellow of Clare College Cambridge and the recently retired inaugural A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge University.

He has provided a summary of his webinar presentation:

“The past is a foreign country – the ancient Athenians did democratic justice differently there. As regards the law and governance, they had no truck with our cherished notion of the separation of powers. As regards litigation, they dispensed with a State Prosecutor, didn’t distinguish between criminal and civil cases, and believed in the efficacy and validity of mass juries of at least 201 citizens aged over 30, all selected by lot and paid a small compensation for their days of – democratic, political – service. Sometimes the law was an ass, sometimes the Athenian popular juries were asses. But by and large the system worked well enough – for them – for almost two centuries. What can we – or should – we learn from them?”

Professor Cartledge is an Honorary Citizen of Sparta, Greece, and holds the Gold Cross of the Order of Honour awarded by the President of Greece.

Professor Cartledge has single-authored some 15 books, most recently ‘Democracy: A Life’ (OUP, New York & Oxford), which was shortlisted for the Runciman Award and the London Hellenic Prize.

He has co-authored, edited and co-edited altogether some 30 books. He sits on the editorial boards of several scholarly journals and co-edits the ‘Key Themes in Ancient History’ monograph series for the Cambridge University Press (28 volumes so far), which he co-founded and to which he contributed his own ‘Ancient Greek Political Thought in Practice’ (2009).

The Right Hon Lady Arden, Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, and The Hon Justice James Edelman jointly held a webinar on 15 October 2020.

The webinar, the third in the Rhodes Online series, contrasted the High Court of Australia with the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.

The Right Hon Lady Arden of Heswall DBE

Mary Howarth Arden, Lady Arden of Heswall, became a Justice of the Supreme Court in October 2018.

Lady Arden grew up in Liverpool. She read law at Girton College Cambridge and Harvard Law School. Called to the Bar in 1971, she became a Queen’s Counsel in 1986 and served as Attorney General of the Duchy of Lancaster between 1991 and 1993.

She served on the Court of Appeal of England and Wales from 2000 to 2018. Her judicial career began in 1993 when she was appointed to the High Court of Justice of England and Wales as the first woman judge assigned to the Chancery Division.

Alongside her judicial experience, she has written extensively on how the law keeps pace with social change. Her two-volume book ‘Shaping Tomorrow’s Law’ was published in 2015. It drew strongly on her knowledge of law reform, which she began to develop while serving as Chairman of the Law Commission of England and Wales from 1996 to 1999.

Between 2005 and September 2018, Lady Arden was Judge in Charge, Head of International Judicial Relations of England and Wales.

She organised bilateral exchanges between the senior Judiciary of the UK and the judiciaries of leading national and supranational courts overseas. She became a Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in 2011, and is an ad hoc UK judge of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

The Hon Justice James Edelman

Justice Edelman was appointed to the High Court of Australia in January 2017. From 2015 until the time of his appointment he was a judge of the Federal Court of Australia.

From 2011 until 2015 he was a judge of the Supreme Court of Western Australia. He previously practised as a barrister at the chambers of Mr Malcolm McCusker QC in Western Australia from 2001-2011 in the areas of criminal law and commercial law and at One Essex Court Chambers from 2008-2011 in commercial law.

He was a Fellow of Keble College, Oxford from 2005, and Professor of the Law of Obligations at the University of Oxford from 2008 until 2011.

The second in HAL’s Rhodes Online Webinar series features Baroness Helena Kennedy and Professor Peter Greste in conversation on Democracy, the Rule of Law and Media Freedom.

It can be replayed in the video player above.

Baroness Helena Kennedy QC is currently Director of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI), and Professor Peter Greste is an award-winning foreign correspondent who spent 25 years working for the BBC, Reuters and Al Jazeera.

Justice Emilios Kyrou, Judge of Appeal of the Supreme Court of Victoria, delivered a webinar on “A Lawyer’s Duty of Confidence” on Thursday 20 August.

It was the first event in the Rhodes Online webinar series, featuring eminent jurists and scholars from Australia and abroad.

Justice Kyrou’s paper can be downloaded here, and a video of his presentation can be seen above.

Justice Kyrou was appointed as Judge of Appeal of the Supreme Court of Victoria in July 2014 after serving as a trial Judge since May 2008.

Prior to his judicial appointment, Justice Kyrou was a senior litigation partner in the international legal firm that is now known as King & Wood Mallesons.

His Honour is the second practising solicitor to be appointed directly as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria since it was established in 1852.

He is also the only Greek-born Justice of a superior court in Australia.

Justice Kyrou was an inaugural member of the Judicial Council on Cultural Diversity. He is the Patron of the Australian Greek Welfare Society and the Victorian Patron of the Hellenic Australian Lawyers Association.