AC Grayling, Baroness Onora O’Neill, Robert Hazell CBE head line-up for restaging of Putney Debates for the Brexit age

The Oxford Foundation for Law, Justice and Society, in association with Oxford University Law Faculty, is restaging the historic Putney Debates for the Brexit age, 370 years after the original Putney Debates ushered in a new democratic order.

The Putney Debates 2017: Constitutional Crisis in the UK will be held at the site of the original Putney Debates, St Mary’s Church in Putney, on 2–3 February 2017. The debate will address the fall-out from the EU Referendum and the ongoing constitutional conflict between government, the legislature, and the judiciary as the government seeks to challenge the High Court ruling that it must consult Parliament before triggering Article 50 to leave the EU.


St Mary's Church

Renowned philosophers AC Grayling and Baroness Onora O’Neill; Robert Hazell CBE, founder of the Constitution Unit at UCL; and Anthony Barnett, founder of openDemocracy, will head a line-up of leading figures from the law, politics, business, and civil society.



In keeping with the original Putney Debates, there will also be a select number of places for members of the public who submit short video presentations to info@fljs.org. Participants will speak briefly on the constitutional issues facing the country and offer their vision for future directions, before the debate is opened up to questions from the audience.

The Debate is convened by Professor Denis Galligan, Director at the Foundation for Law, Justice and Society and Professor of Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford. Describing the inspiration for the event, he said:

“Parallels between the original Putney Debates—convened when England was emerging from Civil War, government had practically ceased, and social and political chaos prevailed—and the situation after the 2016 referendum are striking.

Government has been toppled, a new leadership has emerged, and the two main parties are in a state of internecine warfare. Parliamentarians do not understand how to reconcile their duty to act for the common good and the result of the referendum. The people are divided and the four nations comprising the United Kingdom are at odds.”

Now more than ever, it is time to re-stage the Putney Debates for the twenty-first century, to bring together a wide selection of citizens from diverse backgrounds and disciplines to debate the constitutional challenges that confront us today.

The Putney Debates 2017 will question the centuries old anomaly that the UK has no formally agreed written Constitution, and be a landmark event in the debate over the UK’s constitutional settlement.

To see the list of participants, find out more, and book tickets, visit www.putneydebates2017.co.uk or email info@fljs.org.

December 8, 2016