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MASTER CLASS ON PROVOCATION BY SIR IVAN LAWRENCE QC

Monday 24 August 2009

On 5 August the Ian Fairbairn Lecture Hall was packed to capacity as students queued to get a seat at the Master Class on Provocation.

Sir Ivan Lawrence QC, Clarendon Chambers, Temple, Master Bencher Inner Temple, and Visiting Professor in Law, who has defended many charged with murder, lectured on the subject of provocation to a captivated audience of over 120 students. Sir Ivan outlined the facts and the law in the recent appeal case of R v Scaife (Dimple) (2009) EWCA Crim 1398, in which he represented the appellant. Staff and students were also treated to a veritable tour de force of the history of the law on provocation from Lesbini (1914) through Camplin (1978) to Smith (2001), in which Sir Ivan identified the two trajectories of legal thought on the development of the characteristics of the reasonable man and also on the question of whether the capacity for self-control is variable or fixed. The position, following the Privy Council in Holley (2005), is now that the capacity for self-control is fixed.

Sir Ivan's lecture challenged even the most able criminal minds in the audience. Sir Ivan criticised the fact that the Privy Council decision in Holley which has been taken to overrule Smith is in his submission a move unconstitutional. The Court of Appeal in Scaife however was not persuaded. Buckingham's audience were much persuaded but they were not passive recipients and put some interrogating questions to the master on self-defence and accident and also on conceptual problems within the law on provocation.

The evening was hosted by the Student Law Society, who, in the tradition of the Inns of Court, demonstrated that good legal conversation and good fellowship are furthered by providing good food and wine. The audience were not disappointed on any count.

Report by Professor Susan Edwards; photographs by Samantha Edgecombe