Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Annual Report 2009-10
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UNIVERSITY OF LONDON SCHOOL OF ADVANCED STUDY Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Annual Report 2009-10 Chairman of the Advisory Council of the Institute The Rt Hon Lord Hope of Craighead KT Director Professor A Sherr, LLB, PhD, Solicitor Librarian and Associate Director Mr J R Winterton, BA, LLB, MCLIP Administrator Mr W Fitzmaurice, BSc CHARLES CLORE HOUSE I 17 RUSSELL SQUARE LONDON WC1B 5DR Tel: 020 7862 5800 Fax: 020 7862 5850 Email: [email protected] Web: ials.sas.ac.uk Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Annual Report 2010 Preface It gives me great pleasure once again to provide these introductory words to the Annual Report of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies. The past academic year has provided further evidence of the high esteem in which the Institute and its staff members are held. Prestigious awards have been won by the Institute’s Librarian Jules Winterton (Wildy-BIALL Librarian of the Year) and by Information Systems Manager Steve Whittle (Wallace Breem Memorial Award). The awards were testament both to the leadership provided by these individuals, and to the culture of innovation and legal expertise at the Institute. Further confirmation of the levels of high regard for the Institute’s work can be found in the results of the internal resource allocation undertaken during this academic year. It saw a marked increase in HEFCE funding being allotted to the Institute’s non-library activities for the 2010-11 year. This was due in particular to high outputs in activities of ‘esteem’. Furthermore, we have reason to think that the recent problems in the method of funding allocation to the Institute’s Library have, for the present, been more or less resolved. It was a year of consolidation for the Institute’s Masters courses, two of which were in only their second year. Academic standards remained impressively high, with each course continuing to recruit students from professional backgrounds who were already respected in their fields of work. The Institute was not immune from the effects of the economic climate. Student numbers for some courses were lower than might have been hoped, with many potential students failing to secure the funding that they required. Such effects have been felt across the Higher Education Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Annual Report 2010 sector and this, along with a low funding allocation and the soaring cost of materials for the Library, led to a deficit of £230,000 in the Institute’s combined accounts. Events offered at the Institute in this year included a Sir William Dale Memorial Lecture by Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty, on ‘Repentance at Leisure: the Politics of Legislation and Law of Unintended Consequence’. I was able to attend the opening session in this year’s W G Hart Legal Workshop, which was on the topic of ‘Comparative Perspectives on Constitutions’. I was impressed by the high quality of the contributions by the participants and by the work that had been put into this event by the organisers. The events programme was complemented by the work of the Institute’s Research Programmes in Corporate Law, in Financial Crime, in Comparative EU Law and in Legal Education and the Legal Profession. Many lectures and seminars were organised in these areas of academic interest and, with an increasing number of research students enrolling for study, there is a real sense of a legal research community. This bodes well for the future of the Institute. I offer my warmest congratulations to all at IALS for their hard work. I am particularly grateful to the Director, Avrom Sherr, and to Jules Winterton, the Librarian and Associate Director, and I look forward to further developments and achievements under their leadership in the coming year. Lord Hope of Craighead KT Chair – Advisory Council Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Annual Report 2010 Contents Introduction 1 National Law Library and Research Services 4 Research Services 5 Information Resources 8 Information Systems 10 Research Facilitation Projects 12 National & International Professional Activities 14 Research 17 Financial Services Law and Regulation Project 17 Legal Education and the Legal Profession 19 Sir William Dale Centre for Legislative Studies 21 Fellowships 22 Seminars, Conferences, Public Lectures and Workshops 23 LLM in Advanced Legislative Studies 25 MA in Taxation 25 LLM in International Corporate Governance, Financial Regulation and Economic Law 26 Postgraduate Research Programmes 27 Short Courses and Research Training 27 Publications 28 Society for Advanced Legal Studies 29 Appendices 31 (I) Seminars, Public Lectures, Conferences 31 (II) W G Hart Legal Workshop 2009 39 (III) Advisory Council of the Institute 43 (IV) Staff of the Institute 45 (V) Research Services: Statistics 52 (VI) Institute Membership: Statistics 56 (VII) Information Resources: Statistics 62 (VIII) Overseas Visitors 2009/10 65 (IX) Income and Expenditure Account 2009/10 72 Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Annual Report 2010 Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Annual Report 2010 Introduction This was a year of prizes and awards especially recognising the importance of the Library of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies as a treasure for legal researchers nationally and internationally, and also noting the important contributions of the Librarian and other members of the Institute’s great Library and Library services. It was also a year of consolidation for issues of administration and integration with the School of Advanced Study and the University of London. In this regard the interregnum of Professor Mike Edwards as Acting Dean provided an important period of reflection on the progress of the School of Advanced Study; and the arrival of Professor Roger Kain as incoming Dean and Chief Executive of the School of Advanced Study secured a more academically based approach to the work to be undertaken in the School and particularly in relation to the forthcoming HEFCE Review of 2013. Jules Winterton, Associate Director of the Institute and Librarian received the Wildy – BIALL Librarian of the Year Award. This acts as a major record of his personal achievement both at the Institute and as President of the International Association of Law Librarians (it will be recalled that the Library itself had received the Halsbury’s Award for best academic law library in 2009). Steve Whittle, IALS Information Systems Manager received the Wallace Breem Memorial Award. Both were presented at the Annual Conference of the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians in June 2010 and these awards are addressed more fully in the Library Section of the Annual Report. They are due recognition for the excellence achieved in the Institute’s legal research Library. These indices of recognition externally have unfortunately not always been reflected in relation to the internal allocation of the Special Funding from HEFCE by the School of Advanced Study to the IALS Library. Although this reduction in allocation has been remedied for succeeding years, it is a stark reminder of the differences in vision between the previous internal workings of the School of Advanced Study’s allocation system and the high regard in which the Institute is held within its research community. Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Annual Report 2010 • 1 Russell Square Gardens With three courses at Masters Degree level now bedded in to the work of the Institute, we have a larger body of students and researchers present within the Institute as our own academic community. A more collegial attitude towards the work of the Institute is reflected in the new student body. The Institute is beginning to grow its own PhD applicants through these Masters programmes and the first of these students are now being accepted at PhD level. The Institute retains its approach to the subject matter covered in further degree courses and in PhDs, attempting to fill gaps and work in areas otherwise not covered by the law faculties within the University of London. The Institute’s substantial events programme included our work with the University of Cambridge Centre for International Documentation on Economic and Organised Crime in September of 2009, and the Institute worked with Sandpiper Partners and PricewaterhouseCoopers to produce the 8th Annual Corporate Accountability Conference in December 2009. 2 • Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Annual Report 2010 Events ranged from a Symposium on the History of Intellectual Property Law to an afternoon on European Criminal Law and Human Rights and an excellent WG Hart Workshop on Comparative Perspectives on Constitutions. Some events were packed out to the rafters, including Shami Chakrabarti (the Director of Liberty) talking on ‘Repentance at Leisure: the Politics of Legislation and Law of Unintended Consequence’. The Sir William Dale Centre for Legislative Studies continued its summer course for legal drafters and legal officers, funded by Commonwealth Governments, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the UK Department for International Development and the Commonwealth Secretariat. Twenty six students from the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico attended the Centre’s summer course on EU law and a Special Issue of the European Journal of Law Reform was published in memory of Sir William Dale. The Institute’s Research Programmes in Corporate Law, in Financial Crime, in Comparative EU Law and in Legal Education and the Legal Profession all continued with solid achievements. The Institute’s events calendar show a series of lectures and seminars in each of these areas, Institute staff and fellows published in these areas during the year and further funding was granted for the projects on the Independent Peer Review of Legal Aid Competence, work on online dispute resolution and further digitisation of legal research. The Institute was joined towards the end of the year by Will Fitzmaurice, our new Administrator. There were immediate achievements in the administration and organisation of the Institute and its ability to report in accordance with the bureaucratic needs of the School of Advanced Study.