Attorney General delivers Roscoe Lecture
01 March 2007
The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, 'guardian of the public interest', delivered the 63rd Roscoe Lecture in St George's Hall on 28 February.
The Attorney General's appearance in his home town of Liverpool sparked small protests both outside and inside the Hall by the Stop the War Coalition, who dispute his 2003 ruling that the invasion of Iraq was legal.
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Professor David Alton, Chair of LJMU's Foundation for Citizenship, said: "We are a university founded on the values of freedom of speech and encouraging intellectual debate. As an academic institution, it's our duty to enable people to air lawfully held views and engage in open and positive discussions. It is only through such democratic debate that people can reach their own conclusions on where the truth lies."
The auditorium was packed with around 900 people, who were unswayed by the protestors' demands to disrupt the lecture.
Instead they listened intently as Lord Goldsmith said that he disliked the term 'war on terror' instead preferring to view it as a 'war of values'. In order to win this war against extremism, he said, we had to show ourselves to be more fair and more just that the alternative.
He went on to describe the three basic principles that needed to be upheld in a civil society. First, we must respect the rule of law, and fulfil both our domestic and international legal oblations. Second, we must show a commitment to upholding the fundamental values underpinning our democracy, such as right of
habeas corpus and freedom of speech, which are the very liberties that extremists are seeking to destroy. Finally, the law must be impartial and achieve a balance between the rights of individual and that of the state. As a result, he said certain rights, such as the right to a fair trial or the prohibition of torture, were 'non-negotiable'.
Lord Goldsmith QC was appointed on 11 June 2001 as Her Majesty's Attorney General. The Attorney General, assisted by the Solicitor General, is the chief legal adviser to the Government.
Caption: Lord Goldsmith is pictured with Professor E Rex Makin and his wife, Shirley. LJMU's Foundation for Citizenship was established in June 1997 thanks to Professor E Rex Makin and the generous endowment of the May Makin Chair in Citizenship, currently held by Professor the Lord David Alton. The Roscoe Lecture Series is integral to the work of the Foundation, which strives to promote the development of ‘ethical’ students and an ‘ethos’ of citizenship in the wider community.
Click here to download a podcast of the lecture
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