Dame Lowell Goddard delivers sell-out human rights lecture in Edinburgh

Dame Lowell Goddard, chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (England and Wales) delivered this year’s Macfadyen Lecture entitled “Making Rights Real: the developing role of human rights in the exercise of public law discretion”.

She served as a judge of the High Court of New Zealand from 1995 until her appointment as chair of the inquiry in April 2015. She has considerable experience in the conduct of public inquiries, most recently as chair of a 12 month Inquiry into Police Conduct, Practices, Policies and Procedures Relating to the investigation of child abuse in New Zealand.

She took silk in 1998, became Deputy Solicitor-General for New Zealand in 1992 and was sworn in as a judge of the High Court in November 1995. In 2010, she was elected as an expert member of the United Nations subcommittee for the prevention of torture.

You can read the lecture in full on the Scottish Council of Law Reporting’s website.