Ex-Attorney General will be a visiting professor at Goldsmiths
Ex-political heavyweight Dominic Grieve QC is to become a visiting professor in law at Goldsmiths, University of London, it was announced today.
Grieve, the former Attorney General, is a public law specialist at Temple Garden Chambers in London. He studied history at the University of Oxford and completed his legal studies at the Polytechnic of Central London, now the University of Westminster. He was called to the bar in 1980 and took silk in 2008.
The prominent Remainer held the role of Attorney General between 2010 and 2014, at which point he was dismissed by the then Prime Minister David Cameron as part of a cabinet reshuffle. He was replaced by Jeremy Wright.
Grieve was ejected from the Conservative Party last year after he backed a bill to try to stop a no-deal Brexit. He stood as an independent in Beaconsfield at the 2019 general election, but lost to Conservative candidate Joy Morrissey.
“The different national approaches over the laws and regulations needed to tackle COVID-19 highlight the practical difficulties of balancing the needs of states for information and control with the privacy and civil liberties of individuals”, Grieve said. “As with previous debates around anti-terror legislation, quarantining, compulsory face coverings and the sharing of personal data through contact tracing apps raise questions to which there are no easy answers.”
Grieve added:
“It was therefore a particular pleasure to be offered at this time a Visiting Professorship at Goldsmiths with its long history of radical thinking. I am very much looking forward to joining its innovative new law programme and discussing this and a wide range of other issues with Goldsmiths students at a time when understanding the impact of legal and political decisions on the rights of the individual has never been more important.”
His appointment coincides with the launch of Goldsmith’s new undergraduate LLB with politics and human rights.
This qualifying law degree, Goldsmith says, enables students to obtain their LLB while also “immersing themselves in the study of politics, with a focus on modern threats to democracy and human rights, and the interactions between law and politics required to effectively counter these threats at the local, national, and global level”.