Public Law in a Troubled Era: A Tribute to Professor Patrick Birkinshaw

Public Law in a Troubled Era is a compendium of edited essays wherein many of the world’s leading public lawyers draw on examples from the United Kingdom, European States, and the European Union (EU) to explore the alarming tensions unleashed as Europe is rocked by Brexit, the war between nations on the EU border, and the worldwide phenomenon of populist resistance to globalised forces and liberal democratic aspirations. Public law, which examines relations between governments and institutions and individuals, has, in recent years, become deeply disturbed by an erosion of the rule of law, notably in some of the world’s most professedly democratic nations.

The book is dedicated to Professor Patrick Birkinshaw, who until his retirement was Director of the Institute of European Public Law and Professor of Public Law at the University of Hull and widely respected as a leading authority on public law. With a focus on public law and European public law jurisprudence with hugely important global ramifications, the contributions continue his work and crucially deal with the new and troubling shape of the law–politics relationship. The essays examine these developments under four headings:

• Law in a World Turned Upside/Down, with essays on (e.g.) Brexit, the denial of human rights and the rule of law in Hungary, climate change governance
• Law and Politics: A Shifting Boundary?, showing how advances in the courts have prompted reaction to curtail judicial review and human rights protection, especially evident in the fading mirage of fair trial rights and administration on the EU periphery
• Law’s Promise, specifying real achievements in the way of reform and higher levels of security for individuals, and
• New Bearings, exploring initiatives and emerging problems, including reform of judicial review, the European Banking Law, digitalization of public administration, and institutional interactions with the Chinese 1982 Constitution

The book brings together leading university professors, public officials and judges, all experts in their respective fields. All are concerned with a central role for law in the process of governance.

This unrivalled volume penetrates the contradictions, uncertainties, and insecurities that plague this topic of worldwide interest and debate, and will prove invaluable to practitioners, public administrators, jurists, judges and legal academics everywhere. It will also be of interest to political scientists and politicians. In its completely original and innovative discussions of the changes taking place at the interface of law and politics, and of how law can enhance certainty and reliability in governance, this book provides a most detailed and insightful analysis of the new bearings in public law in Europe and worldwide.