School of Law

Staff

Biography
John Morison graduated from University College Cardiff with an LLB in 1979. After teaching in England and Wales, and researching for his PhD on theories of punishment he returned to his home city of Belfast in 1984 to take up the post of Lecturer in the Department of Public Law at Queen's University Belfast. In 1996 he was appointed as Professor of Jurisprudence at Queen's University. His books include The Barrister's World and the Nature of Law (with Philip Leith) (1992) Full text, Reshaping Public Power: Northern Ireland and the British Constitutional Problem (with Stephen Livingstone)(1995), and Crime Community and Locale (with David O'Mahony, Kieran McEvoy and Ray Geary) (2000) and the co-edited essay collections Law, Society and Change (1990), Tall Stories? Reading Law and Literature (1996) Voices, Spaces and Processes in Constitutionalism (2000) and Judges, Transition, and Human Rights (2007). In addition, Professor Morison is author of some thirty or so chapters in various books and more than 50 articles in scholarly journals.

Professor Morison has worked on various empirical projects funded by government and research councils, including the social attitudes survey, a communities crime survey, European election law and recently on public service provision and the modernising government agenda. He is a member of the European Group of Public Law, and of the Curatorium of the European Academy of Public Law and serves on  the Board of the Centre of European Public Law. In this capacity Professor Morison is involved in a number of research projects for the European Commission and others. These include the POROS Project with Law Schools in India and the ALFA II DIKIA II link which extends existing  cooperation with Latin America. He was holder (with Stephen Livingstone) of an ESRC grant within the Devolution and Constitutional Change programme to examine constitutional litigation in the context of the Belfast Agreement. Professor Morison is a Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Constitution Unit within the School of Public Policy at University College London and worked with the Constitution Unit on its ESRC funded project on devolution disputes. In December 2000 John Morison was awarded (along with colleagues in Politics, European Studies and Sociology) a grant of £5 million to establish a new Institute of Governance, Public Policy and Social Research which is now based in the School of Law. He teaches a module on Democracy and Decision-making in Modernised Government within the innovative DGov programme . A former member of the Executive Committee of the UK Socio-Legal Studies Association and a Judge for its Book Prize in 2008, Professor Morison is on the Advisory Board of the Journal of Law and Society and on the Editorial board of Wales Law Journal and is a trustee of the Hamlyn Trust. He is a member of the Peer Review College of the Arts and Humanities Research Council and was a member of Task Force on Resourcing the Voluntary and Community Sector , established by the Department for Social Development in Northern Ireland. Professor Morison was one of the founders of the E-consultation Study Group which brings together experts from government and the private, voluntary and community sectors to explore how e-government can improve democratic participation. Professor Morison has been a speaker at many conferences and meetings in Europe, the USA and South Africa. Professor Morison was a previously a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in London. In 2001-02 he was Visiting Research Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London (supported by a grant from the British Academy) and a research fellow at the Institute of Governance at QUB supported by a grant from the Royal Irish Academy. He is a member of the Higher Education Academy and has been or is currently an external examiner for universities in England, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland. In 2005 Professor Morison was appointed to the Northern Ireland Judicial Appointments Commission . 

Recently he completed a four year term as Head of the School of Law and in 2007-08 he will be on research leave and will take up an occasional  visiting research chair in the Law School at the Universiteit of Utrecht. 

Research
Legal Theory, Constitutional Law and Theory, Democracy, Environmental Justice and Globalisation.

Selected Publications
Judges, Transition, and Human Rights  (Edited by John Morison, K. McEvoy and G. Anthony) 2007 Oxford: Oxford University Press. Xxxii and 567 pp.

“Models of Democracy: From Representation to Participation?” in J. Jowell and D. Oliver eds. The Changing Constitution 6th Edition. Oxford University Press 2007.  Pp. 134-158.

“Towards a New Constitutional Doctrine for Northern Ireland? The Agreement, the Litigation and the Constitutional Future” in P. Carmichael, C. Knox and R. Osbourne eds. Devolution and Constitutional Change in Northern Ireland. The Devolution Series.  Manchester: Manchester University Press (2007). Pp.47-61.

“Governance and Democracy: From e-consultation to e-participation” in S. Flogaitis,
U. Karpen and A. Masucci E-Government and E-Democracy / E-Gouvernement et E-Démocratie.  European Public Law Series Vol LXXXI. London: Esperia 2006   Pp. 221-245.

“Here, There, and (Maybe) Here Again: The Story of Law Making for Post-1998 Northern Ireland” in R. Hazell and R. Rawlings ed. Devolution, Law Making and the Constitution London: Imprint Academic 2005. Pp. 115-192. (with G. Anthony).

“Modernising Government and the e-government revolution: technologies of government and technologies of democracy” in P. Leyland and N. Bamforth (eds.) Public Law in a Multi-Layered Constitution, Oxford: Hart Publishing 2003. Pp.157-188.

Administration
• Head of School, School of Law 2003 - 2007