Speakers

Tom Lewis Director of Centre for Conflict, Rights and Justice Nottingham Trent University, United Kingdom

Tom Lewis is a Reader in Law at Nottingham Law School, Nottingham Trent University, United Kingdom where he has taught since 1997. He read law and history at the University of Oxford before going on to qualify and practise as a solicitor. He is currently Director of Nottingham Law School’s Centre for Conflict, Rights and Justice and recently took over as Director of Research for the School. His research interests are in the fields of constitutional law, human rights, freedom of expression and freedom of religion, on which he has written extensively.

From activism to self-restraint: The strange case of the European Court’s volte-face on broadcasting bans on political advertising

This talk will examine the European Court of Human Right’s case law concerning political advertising bans in the broadcast media and, in particular, the judgment of the Grand Chamber in Animal Defenders International v United Kingdom in which the Court reversed its usual strict approach in relation to bans on forms of political expression. This new approach, it will be argued, gives rise to some serious problems, not least in respect of the Court’s classification of the UK’s blanket prohibition as a ‘general measure’ attracting a lower standard of review than has been the case hitherto.