Damages and Human Rights shortlisted for Peter Birks Prize

Associate Professor Jason N. E. Varuhas’s book, Damages and Human Rights (Hart Publishing 2016), has been shortlisted by the UK Society of Legal Scholars for the Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship for 2016.

Each year the Society offers two prizes for outstanding published books by scholars in their early careers. The prizes will be presented at the annual dinner of the Society at the Annual Conference which this year is held in Oxford on 7 September.

The shortlisting of Dr Varuhas’s book for the Birks Prize follows on from his book being cited by the UK Supreme Court in its recent judgment in Lee-Hirons v. Secretary of State for Justice [2016] UKSC 46 at [46].

Damages and Human Rights was formally launched last week by Justice Stephen Gageler of the High Court of Australia and Melbourne Law School’s Laureate Professor Cheryl Saunders at an event held at Melbourne Law School and hosted by the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies. In addition a number of events have been organised around the common law world to mark the book’s publication. In May a roundtable discussion of the book was held at the Université de Montreal in Canada, and in June Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, hosted a panel discussion of the book.

A further panel discussion will be held at the Society of Legal Scholars Annual Conference later this year, featuring Professor Carol Harlow (LSE), Professor Christopher Forsyth (Cambridge) and Professor Robert Stevens (Oxford).