This year, Coventry Law School is celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Coventry Law Journal. To mark the occasion, the Journal’s editors organised a special conference – ‘Legal Landmarks in the Life of the Coventry Law Journal’ – on 30 September and 1 October. The premise of the conference was for authors to revisit their past contributions to the journal, reflect on why they wrote about it at the time, what has changed since then, and its relevance in 2021.
The first panel of the conference considered public law, individual rights, and the constitution. The session commenced with discussion of constitutional issues and reform, before proceeding to consider thorny questions of individual rights and civil liberties. In addition to contributions from current law school staff the session heard from Dr Chris Monaghan from the University of Worcester and Dr Ben Stanford from Liverpool John Moores University. This was followed by a session on criminal law and sentencing, with papers drawing from scholarly research as well as professional criminal law practice. Visiting contributors included Coventry Law School’s former Professor of Law, Barry Mitchell; Rona Epstein; and Nicola Monaghan.
Thursday afternoon featured a panel on private and commercial law, which ranged from English private law to international trade. We were pleased to be joined by regular contributor and recently retired solicitor Laurence Vick, and Professor Sukhninder Panesar from Wolverhampton University.
The session closed with the first of our two keynote addresses, in which Editor-in-Chief Dr Steve Foster reflected on 25 Years of the Coventry Law Journal.
On Friday morning we were joined online from Australia by Professor Michael Adams for the second of our keynote addresses on the Value of Comparative Legal Scholarship. Professor Adams gave a brilliant lecture which was of particular value to postgraduate students considering their LLM dissertations.
Our first panel of the day was on international and comparative law. In addition to contributions in the room Professor Wahab Edbewole very kindly ‘Zoomed-in’ from Nigeria. Our final session of the conference was chaired by Professor Nigel Duncan, in which we reflected on legal education and publishing.
Over the course of the two days we were joined by over 150 different attendees at various points, which underscored the enduring value of the Coventry Law Journal to students, academics, and the wider world. In-house law journals are a lot of work, and dozens have come and gone in the UK over the years, so to have published two issues per year for 25 years really is a significant achievement.
A journal is only as good as its next issue, however, and we are committed to ensuring its future. Anyone interested in contributing to future issues should contact the Editor-in-Chief Dr Steve Foster.
The Coventry Law Journal is available on Westlaw.