The Lammy plan to eliminate half of U.K. criminal jury trials has provoked a rebellion among many lawmakers. Recent Palestine Action cases highlight the jury’s moral role, with several “perverse verdicts” acquitting activists despite clear evidence. Yet those charged with the lesser offence of “supporting” PA have been denied a jury trial and the chance of acquittal.

Compared with U.S. constitutional protections, including impartial juries, vicinage rules, challenges to biased pools, and post‑trial juror inquiry—the U.K. system appears increasingly problematic. In this lecture, Professor Clive Stafford Smith makes the case for stronger jury protections.

This lecture was recorded by Clive Stafford Smith on the 17th of September 2026

Clive Stafford Smith JD OBE is a dual UK-US national, the founder and director of the Justice League a non-profit human rights training centre focused on fostering the next generation of advocates.

He was the Senior Prefect at Radley College, where he studied maths and science; then a Morehead Scholar at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), where he took a degree in Politics; and a Stone Merit Scholar each of his three years at Columbia Law School, graduating in 1984.

He previously founded and directed the legal action charities Louisiana Capital Assistance Center (1993 in New Orleans) and Reprieve (1999 in London). Since 1984 he has tried many capital cases, and helped to represent over 400 people facing execution in the US and elsewhere. He also brought the first challenge to Guantánamo Bay, where he has secured the release of 87 detainees, and continues to assist the remaining 15. In all five of the cases he has helped bring to the U.S. Supreme Court the petitioner has prevailed.

He has recently taken on the case of Aafia Siddiqui, the woman who has most suffered from the US rendition-to-torture program – abducted with her three children. He continues to work on capital cases in the US, including a Post-Mortem Project where he is investigating the claims of innocence of 184 people executed since 1977.

Clive has published a number of books including Bad Men (2008, describing work in Guantánamo) and Injustice (2012, on the capital case of Kris Maharaj), both of which were short-listed for the Orwell Prize; and most recently The Far Side of the Moon (2023), deconstructing the parallel lives of his father and a client Larry Lonchar, both of whom were labelled Bipolar. He has many other publications, including manuals for the defence of capital cases, and law review articles about aspects of capital defence. He has worked on many films and documentaries, starting with Fourteen Days In May (1987), recently ranked as one of the top BBC documentaries of all time.

While continuing his litigation practice, Clive teaches part time at Bristol Law School as well as running a summer programme for 35 students in Dorset, his home. He has received all kinds of awards in recognition of his work, including an OBE by Queen Elizabeth II for “services to humanity” in 2000. He has been a member of the Louisiana State Bar since 1984.

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/myth-jury

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This lecture was recorded by Daniel Susskind on the 23nd of September 2026

Dr Daniel Susskind is a writer and economist. He explores the impact of technology, and particularly AI, on work and society. He is the Mercers’ School Memorial Professor of Business at Gresham College. He is also a Digital Fellow at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University, an Associate Member of the Economics Department at Oxford University, and a Research Professor at King’s College London. He is a member of the UK Government’s Expert Panel on AI and the Future of Work.

His new book, Growth: A Reckoning (2024), was chosen by President Obama as one of his ‘Favourite Books of 2024’ and was a runner-up for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year 2024. He is also the author of A World Without Work (2020), described by The New York Times as "required reading for any potential presidential candidate thinking about the economy of the future” and a runner-up for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year 2020, and co-author of the best-selling book, The Future of the Professions (2015). His TED Talk, on the future of work, has been viewed more than 1.7 million times.

His next book, What Should My Children Do? How to Flourish in the Age of AI, will be published in 2026. And his first novel, The Basilisk Stare, will be published in 2027.

Previously he worked in various roles in the British Government – in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, in the Policy Unit in 10 Downing Street, and in the Cabinet Office. He was a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard University.

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/future-creativity


Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham College's mission, please consider making a donation: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today

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Our expanding Universe only makes sense if, early on, it expanded rapidly in a period of cosmic inflation. In this lecture, we consider the evidence for this apparently arbitrary idea, and asks whether we are on the brink of finding inflation’s signature in our observation.

As the story moves from theorist's blackboards to desert observatories, and from the cosmos’s first moments to the far future, we question the nature of the Universe, its eventual fate and even the form of scientific enquiry itself.

This lecture was recorded by Chris Lintott on the 23rd of September 2026

Professor Chris Lintott is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford, and a Research Fellow at New College.

Having been educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge and University College London, his research now ranges from understanding how galaxies form and evolve, to using machine learning to find the most unusual things in the Universe, to predicting the properties of visiting interstellar asteroids. He was the founder of the Zooniverse citizen science platform, which provides opportunities for more than two million online volunteers to contribute to scientific research, and which was the topic of his first book, 'The Crowd and the Cosmos’. His latest book is ‘Our Accidental Universe’.

Professor Lintott is best known for presenting the BBC's long-running Sky at Night program, and as an accomplished lecturer. Away from work, he cooks, suffers through being a fan of Torquay United and Somerset cricket, and spends time with a rescued lurcher, Mr Max. He can often be found at the helm of Oxford’s science comedy night, ‘Huh, That’s Funny’.

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/cosmology-mad

Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham College's mission, please consider making a donation: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today

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