Oration for Lady Hale on the occasion of her receipt of an Honorary Fellowship at the University of Bristol in July 2017

Written and orated by Prof Joanne Conaghan, Professor of Law and Head of School (University of Bristol Law School).

In July 2017, the University of Bristol awarded an Honorary Fellowhip to its former Chancellor the Rt. Hon. the Baroness Hale of Richmond, DBE. Professor Joanne Conaghan, Head of the University of Bristol Law School, had the honour of writing the Oration for Lady Hale.

In her Oration, Professor Conaghan stresses the many strengths and achievements of Lady Hale in a career dedicated to the law as it applies to those most vulnerable, such as in the areas of mental health and family law, and to combat inequality, in particular on the basis of gender. Lady Hale’s achievements are indeed particularly remarkable due to the unequal society she lived in through her early years; a society which she is shaping and pushing for transformation, very soon from the seat of the President of the Supreme Court, to which she has been appointed.

The full text of the oration is now reproduced here as a token of the values that the University of Bristol Law School, as a community, strives to foster. (more…)