March 2017 European Court Judge to Speak at NUI Galway

NUI Galway’s School of Law Annual Distinguished Lecture 2017 will be delivered by Judge Síofra O’Leary of the European Court of Human Rights. The lecture, ‘A Tale of Two Cities: the Protection of Fundamental Rights in Strasbourg and Luxembourg’, will be chaired by Ms Justice Iseult O’Malley of the Irish Supreme Court and take place on Friday, 31 March at 8pm in the Aula Maxima, NUI Galway.

The lecture is held annually to mark the end of the academic year and to bid farewell to final year Law students and provide an opportunity for them to be introduced to members of the NUI Galway Law School alumni community as they embark on the next stage of their careers.

Announcing this year’s event, Professor Donncha O’Connell, Head of NUI Galway’s School of Law, said: “Judge Síofra O’Leary is an immensely distinguished jurist of great international standing whose lecture will, I am certain, be of tremendous interest to our students and alumni. It is also a great honour for the School of Law to have Ms Justice Iseult O’Malley of the Irish Supreme Court – a person with strong family links to Galway – as chairperson for this event.”

In July 2015 Síofra O'Leary was sworn in as a Judge at the European Court of Human Rights. Prior to joining the European Court of Human Rights, Judge O’Leary worked for 18 years at the Court of Justice of the European Union. She was a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges, Assistant Director for the Centre of European Legal Studies at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Emmanuel College. She was previously a Visiting Fellow at the Faculty of Law, University College Dublin, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cádiz, Spain and a Research Associate at the Institute for Public Policy Research in London.

In the past, the annual lecture has been delivered by: Professor Christopher McCrudden of Oxford University, Baroness Brenda Hale of the UK Supreme Court with Ms. Justice Catherine McGuinness of the Irish Supreme Court, Judge John T. Noonan of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Professor Neil Walker of Edinburgh University and Mr. Justice Nial Fennelly of the Irish Supreme Court, Sir Declan Morgan, the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland and Professor Nicholas Canny.

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