Professor Elizabeth Palmer

Biography

Before joining Essex in 1991, Ellie Palmer had extensive experience as a commercial lawyer. She plays a key role in undergraduate and postgraduate commercial law subjects in the School. However for the past ten years much of her research has been in the area of public law including administrative law, especially judicial review, comparative constitutions, UK public law/human rights and international human rights, especially socio-economic rights. Her leading monograph Judicial Review Socio-economic Rights and the Human Rights Act (Hart) was reprinted in paperback in 2009. From 2006-2010 Ellie Palmer was a Trustee of the Children’s Legal Centre based at Essex. From 2004-2008 she was legal expert on the Commissioning Panel for the ESRC Public Services Program. She has acted as legal consultant to leading human rights practitioners and NGO’s, including the Democratic Audit, Amnesty UK, British Institute of Human Rights, Interights and the Rowntree Foundation. In 2007 she participated in the Second UK High Level Dialogue on an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (OP-ICESCR) convened by Amnesty International-UK. In the same year she gave written evidence to the Parliamentary Joint Committee of Human Rights on a new bill of rights for the United Kingdom. She has recently provided FCO Human Rights and Democracy training for UCL Centre for Inernational Co urts and Tribunals. In 2010 she was appointed to an EHRC Expert Advisory Group to review the protection of socio-economic rights in the United Kingdom. Ellie Palmer's research is broadly concerned with issues of state responsibility for the protection of health and welfare needs in post-welfare democracies. The main focus of her work is in the United Kingdom and mainland Europe. She has a particular interest in the use of international human rights standards to protect socially marginalized vulnerable adults and children living in poverty. She is currently Director of an ESRC funded Seminar Series: Access to Justice in an Age of Austerity 2011-2012. She is also collaborating in a Nuffield Project ‘The value of Judicial Review’ directed by Professor Maurice Sunkin, School of Law University of Essex.