Conscience Conference: Exempting Conscientious Beliefs in UK Law

A significant volume of UK cases have been decided on whether or not individuals with conscientious beliefs (whether or not religious) should be accommodated in the face of legal requirements that contradict their beliefs. The most recent high profile case is the Ashers Baking Case (otherwise known as the Gay Cake case) where the NI Court of Appeal held that a Christian bakery was not entitled to refuse to bake a case embedded with a slogan saying ‘Support Gay Marriage’. This is only one of a series of high profile UK cases. 

Despite this rich case law there is no single monograph in the UK dedicated to tackling the doctrinal and theoretical complexity of this case law. The conference aims to fill this scholarly absence by bringing together high calibre scholars to engage with this case law with the view of publishing the outputs as an edited collection.

The Conscience Conference will have three consecutive sessions with the following schedule:

Welcome and coffee

10.30 - 11.00

Session 1 

11.00 – 12.45

Is there a moral right to conscientious exemption?

Speakers: Julian Rivers, Peter Jones, Cécile Laborde

Lunch 

12.45 - 13.45

Session 2

13.45 – 15.30

How should courts deal with claims of conscience?

Speakers: Yossi Nehushtan, Robert Wintemute, Ian Leigh

Coffee Break

15.30 - 16.00

Session 3

16.00 - 17.45

Doctrinal difficulties in the law of conscience

Speakers: Frank Cranmer, Lucy Vickers, Maleiha Malik

Closing remarks and drinks

17.45 - 18.30