Seminar - The Use and Abuse of Private Enforcement – Beyond (the) Horizon
Professor Kit Barker, Professor of Law at TC Beirne School of Law, The University of Queensland
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Abstract
Since Blackstone, conventional thinking has had it that our public laws (in particular, our criminal laws) protect public interests and that their enforcement is therefore the responsibility of the state alone, not that of private citizens. Whatever the assumption, there have always been exceptions and these exceptions carry both risk and reward. Far from decreasing in recent years, the use of private enforcement techniques is visibly on the increase across a wide band of public laws in a variety of jurisdictions.
In this Kirby seminar, Professor Kit Barker will consider the ‘risk-to-reward’ ratio of private enforcement in the light of several case-studies drawn from the United States and the United Kingdom, where the use of private enforcement has burgeoned in response to economic and political factors.??One of these case studies – The Horizon Post Office Scandal - tells such a catastrophic story of false conviction and abuse of private prosecutorial power that it has led to calls for the total abolition of the residual liberty of citizens to initiate criminal claims that still exists in England and in most Australian jurisdictions.
Kit Barker joined the TC Beirne School of Law in 2006. He was educated at Exeter College, Oxford, where he graduated with first class honours (in 1988) and subsequently completed the BCL (with distinction) in 1991. He was admitted to the Middle Temple Inn of Court as a Harmsworth Scholar and to the Bar of England and Wales in 1990. He is interested in private law but specialises in the law of torts and unjust enrichment law and the law's doctrine, philosophical foundations and remedies. More recently, his work has explored the interface between private law and public law and public policy, with a focus on the tortious liability of government, misfeasance in public office and the use of private enforcement techniques in public law.