Bar Conference 2007
Saturday November 3
Royal Lancaster Hotel, London

Sir Sydney Kentridge, QC, Dominic Grieve, MP, Shadow Attorney-General, and Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, are among the line-up of top speakers billed for this year’s conference.

Sir Sydney will give the keynote address at the one-day event where the theme throughout will be human rights and there will be a special video address from Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

More than 500 barristers are expected to attend the day which will open with an open-forum debate on whether the Human Rights Act should be repealed.

The debate, moderated by Danny Shaw, home affairs correspondent with BBC Radio 4, will feature panellists Dominic Grieve, MP; the columnist and author Melanie Phillips; Shami Chakrabarti and Hugh Tomlinson, QC, of Matrix Chambers.

A range of specialist sessions — one of which includes Cherie Booth, QC — spans such topics as privacy and freedom of expression; commercial lawyers and human rights; and human rights and divorce: Have the Rights of Wives Gone too Far?

Others are: International Tribunals: Justice or a Propaganda Exercise?; Freedom of the Individual or the Prevention of Serious Crime: Do We Have to Choose? and Family, Property and the Love Rat: The Proposed Law on Cohabitation, Expropriation of Property and Human Rights.

Catherine Addy, chairman of the Bar conference organising board, said that the theme of human rights would run through all sessions, adding: “The substantial contributions made by Sir Sydney Kentridge, QC, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu are revered both within and beyond the Bar and add significant value to the conference.”

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