Bingham Lecture 2024 by the Attorney General, Lord Hermer KC
We are delighted to share with you a full lecture text and video of the Attorney General, Lord Hermer KC, giving this year's Bingham Lecture on the subject "The Rule of Law in an Age of Populism".
The lecture took place on 14th October at Gray's Inn Hall and was chaired by Baroness Helena Kennedy of The Shaws LT KC. Both the video and the text of Lord Hermer's lecture are available on our event page, together with links to coverage by the Times, Financial Times and other news outlets, and responses by commentators including Martin Kettle, Joshua Rozenberg, and Sir Jonathan Jones.
The Bingham Centre is proud to have hosted the Attorney General, the UK's senior Law Officer and a member of cabinet, for his first full-length public lecture. Following the July 2024 general election, the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, appointed Richard Hermer KC to this role directly from private practice, where he was head of Matrix chambers.
In his lecture, Lord Hermer discussed the profound linkages between the rule of law, democracy and human rights, and examined threats posed by populists who seek to delegitimise the institutions that are essential for upholding these values. He went on to outline the government's plans for rule of law restoration and resilience in three principal areas: "rebuilding the UK's international rule of law leadership"; "defending and strengthening Parliament's role in upholding the rule of law" and "promoting a rule of law culture".
Readers will find in this lecture a number of specific commitments concerning UK government policy, which range from complying with interim measures of the European Court on Human Rights to reforming the guidance to government lawyers on assessing legal risk. Broad challenges are also identified, such the dangers of excessive reliance on delegated legislation. In this way, Lord Hermer's lecture combines an affirmation of Lord Bingham's rule of law ideals (contrasted with the "thin gruel of a formal conception of 'rule by law") with indications of how he plans to approach the realisation of those ideals in practice.
