On 7-13 July 2024, the University of Kent and MEMS will be hosting the 17th International Congress of Medieval Canon Law. Meeting every four years, the ICMCL brings together more than 200 medievalists, legal specialists and scholars in related fields, constituting the premier academic conference in the field of medieval canon law.
As part of the week-long proceedings, there will be a public lecture given by Kenneth Pennington, Professor of Ecclesiastical and Legal History Emeritus at the Catholic University of America, on ‘The Tyranny of Law’:
‘For over two thousand years ancient Roman and pre-modern European jurists recognized that human law must have limits placed upon it to protect those who lived under its authority. The jurists curtailed the power and authority of law by establishing “rules of law,” “regulae iuris” that protected people from the strict, arbitrary, and rigid enforcement of man-made law (positive law). The legal systems of the modern nation states have completely abandoned principles and norms like the “regulae iuris.” Jurists and politicians interpret “the rule of law” to be a concept that generally means the strict adherence to the mandates and commands of the rules produced by legislative bodies of the nation states. Consequently, millions of people who live in the modern nation states have been deprived of rights and freedoms that are fundamental for their human existence.’
This lecture (which is in-person only) will take place at 18.00 on Wednesday 10 July 2024 in Sibson Lecture Theatre 3. All welcome! For more information, please visit www.icmcl2024.org.