Freedom, Law & Justice

In the 50th series of Hamlyn Lectures, Lord Justice Sedley reconsiders the themes of freedom, law and justice, echoing the subject of the first Hamlyn Lectures by Lord Denning in 1949.

The first chapter develops the idea, inherited from the conflicts of the seventeenth century, that a free society - one governed by principle and by law - is a necessary condition of personal freedom.

The chapter on Public Power and Private Power argues for a new rapprochement of public and private law; in the light of the Human Rights Act it examines as a common theme the control of abuses and power.

The final chapter considers some problems of equality - in particular the differences between formal and substantive equality - in the search for justice.