St Mary's Explores Gender as Judicial Virtue

St Mary’s University, Twickenham will host the latest lecture in its Centre for Law and Culture lecture series, on Thursday 4^th December. Prof Leslie J Moran, Professor in the Law School at Birkbeck College, University of London will present the lecture titled ‘What’s Mr Kipling’s Bakewell Tarts got to do with it? Performing Gender as a Judicial Virtue in the Theatre of Justice’. The topic stems from the recent ‘swearing-in’ ceremony for Lady Justice Macur, British Judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. During the course of the ceremony a box of ‘Mr Kipling’s Bakewell Tarts’ was presented to the Lord Chief Justice. The lecture provides an opportunity to examine the gendered nature of the judiciary as an institution. What role did this confectionary play in the gendering of judicial virtues staged through the swearing in ceremony? How are we to make sense of the gendering effects of the laughter in response to the appearance of ‘Mr Kipling’s Bakewell Tarts’? In answering these questions the lecture engages Prof Moran’s previous work on the formation of legitimate judicial authority through the analysis of written texts and visual images. It also takes his work on judicial images in a new direction, providing an opportunity to reflect on what the study of ‘live performances’ adds to our understanding of judicial image making. The event is free and public, but please contact thomas.giddens@stmarys.ac.uk to register your attendance.