Professor Maurice Sunkin

Biography

Maurice Sunkin KC (Hon) is Professor of Public Law and Socio-Legal Studies in the School of Law; Co Director of the Law School's Constitutional and Administrative Justice Initiative; an Associate Member of Landmark Chambers, London; and a member of the Administrative Justice Council. Maurice served as General Editor of the journal Public Law for ten years until December 2020 and continues to sit on its Editorial Committee. He is also a member of the ESRC's Peer Review College; the Academic Panel advising on the evaluation of the government's programme of court and tribunal reforms; and the Eastern Region's Advisory Group on Counter Terrorism. He has served as Legal Adviser to the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution; assisted the Equality and Human Rights Commission; and was a Trustee, and management committee member, of the Public Law Project between 2000-11. Maurice's principal areas of research concern the use and effects of judicial review; the dynamics of public law and human rights litigation; the impact of litigation and judicial decisions on public bodies and the quality of public services; and wider issues of administrative justice. In this context with funding from the Nuffield Foundation he helped establish the UK Administrative Institute (UKAJI). Maurice also has research interests in big data and human rights and was Principal Investigator, and later Co Director, of the £6m ESRC project on Big Data and Human Rights based at Essex. His research on this project principally concerned oversight of surveillance. Maurice has also worked on the constitutional status and powers of the Victims' Commissioner for England and Wales and his research with The Law Society of England and Wales informed its response to the government's programme of judicial review reform and the deliberations of the Independent Review of Administrative Law established in August 2020. Maurice's past university posts include: Director of Research in the School of Law (2007-14); Dean of the School of Law (2006-07); Dean of the Faculty of Law and Management (2006-7); University of Essex Appeals Officer/Ombudsman (2002-04); and Head of the Department of Law (1997-2000). Before coming to Essex in 1989 he taught at the then Polytechnic of the South Bank where he was Head of School of Law (1981-3). In 2018 Queen Elizabeth 11 appointed him QC Honoris Causa in recognition of his "major contribution to the law of England and Wales outside of practice in the courts having in particular pioneered an empirical approach to the law and undertaken leading studies of the use, operation and effects of judicial review."

Qualifications

• LLB London University,

• LLM London University,

• PhD Essex University,

• Barrister Middle Temple,