Delivering the annual MacDermott Lecture Advocate General Gerard Hogan wrestles with the question of whether judges should expressly take the consequences of their decisions into account when deciding cases or whether they should instead be indifferent as to the result following a detached application of legal principles. In his address AG Hogan draws attention to historical examples of where judges faced personal dilemmas in how to decide difficult cases before then proceeding to perform a thought experiment which consists of looking at four decided cases drawn from both jurisdictions on the island of Ireland and examining how these cases might have been decided if the court could properly have taken the consequences of its decision into account.

The Lecture will be introduced by the Vice Chancellor of Queen's University Professor Ian Greer. It will be followed by comments offered by Lord Chief Justice, Sir Declan Morgan and Professor Emeritus Brice Dickson.

The MacDermott Lecture is delivered annually at Queen’s University Belfast. Lord MacDermott studied at Queen’s in the early years of the twentieth century and went on to pursue a distinguished political and legal career, later returning to Queen’s to teach and to hold the position of pro-vice chancellor. He was Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland from 1951 to 1971.

This event attracts 1.5 CPD points.

A link to this online talk will be issued prior to the event.