Open and Shut Cases – the need for an open mind in Law

The need for judges, lawyers, law students and the general public alike, to keep an open mind in legal affairs, will be highlighted by OU Professor Simon Lee in his Open University inaugural lecture on Thursday 4 May 2017.

In Open and Shut Cases, Simon Lee, Professor of Law and Director of Citizenship and Governance Research at The Open University, will consider examples where much of the media and the public mistakenly assume that cases are open and shut. He will address recent examples from law, sport, literature and university life, from accusations of plagiarism and cheating to political U-turns, right up to the recent attack on Westminster.

Much of the inspiration for his inaugural is drawn from the case of John v Rees [1970], where Sir Robert Megarry was deciding a case about a Labour Party meeting in 1968 which had been abandoned in disorder. In fact, the title of the talk is based on the quote below:

As everybody who has anything to do with the law well knows, the path of the law is strewn with examples of open and shut cases which, somehow, were not; of unanswerable charges which, in the event, were completely answered; of inexplicable conduct which was fully explained; of fixed and unalterable determinations that, by discussion, suffered a change.

Megarry J
John v Rees [1970] Ch 345, 402.

He will look at the latest research in the USA on how judges think, then  reflect on Allan Bloom’s challenging book, The Closing of the American Mind from 1987 and the battle-cries of ‘post-truth’ and ‘fake news’ in 2017. He will conclude by encouraging open-mindedness in the decades to come:

Find out more about Citizenship and Governance research at the OU.

For more information about the event including the event programme, please visit the Openminds website.

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