Read pupil Shiv's write up from the Law Society event that took place on Monday
On Monday 21 September, the Charterhouse Law Society was fortunate enough to host Mr Michael Mansfield QC for a talk. Pupils from Broadwater School, Godalming College, Farnborough College, and The Portsmouth Academy Trust were in attendance as well as Charterhouse pupils.
Mr Michael Mansfield is a world-renowned barrister and the Head of Chambers at Nexus Chambers. He is dubbed 'The King of Human Rights' by The Legal 500. He represented Mohamed - al Fayed in the inquest into the deaths of Dodi - al Fayed and Diana, Princess of Wales. Mansfield has also represented those wrongfully convicted in the IRA Guildford and Birmingham pub bombings as well as the family of Stephen Lawrence, a black British teenager murdered in a racially motivated attack. He is also the Founder of Silence of Suicide, a suicide prevention charity.
Mr Mansfield's talk was labelled 'A Brief Encounter' and began with the subject of how the law has changed. He said that 'the way we live, the way we work and the way we relate all are going to be governed by how we respect nature; and at the root of this is rebellion'. He then went on to discuss how the coronavirus pandemic is impacting the law as 'there are very few live trials' and how the chance that we might see a jury again in person might be very small. He outlined that although this is his opinion, more and more people are starting to think like this.
Later in the talk he told an inspiring story about never giving up. Mansfield's mother was wrongfully accused of a parking offence when he was a boy, and his mother was so outraged by this she went to court to defend herself. This was unheard off at the time 'because usually people didn't question what the police said'. Mansfield's father was disabled and what the policeman who put the parking ticket on the car did not realise, and that later an eye-witness was able to testify to, was that the father was in the passenger seat of the car at the time so they were in fact parked legally.
