Conor Casey

Conor Casey is a Senior Lecturer in Public Law & Legal Theory and Director of Postgraduate Research at the School of Law, University of Surrey. In 2025, he will be a visiting scholar at Campion Hall, University of Oxford. He previously served as a Lecturer at the University of Liverpool and a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.

Conor completed his legal education with an LLB at Trinity College, Dublin, an LLM at Yale Law School, and a PhD at Trinity College, Dublin. He is also a non-practising barrister, having been called to the Irish Bar in 2020.

Dr. Casey's research specializes in administrative law, constitutional law, and legal theory. His current research interests include studying the influence of government lawyers on law and policymaking, the influence of natural law theory in public law thought and practice, and the relationship between the political executive and permanent civil service. He is currently writing a monograph for Hart's Studies in Constitutional Law series titled "Government Lawyers in the United Kingdom: Between Law and Politics." His work intersects with natural law tradition, public law theory, and comparative constitutional law, with a particular focus on Irish, UK, and US constitutional systems.

Dr. Casey's scholarly work has had significant practical impact, being cited by courts, practitioners, and policymakers across multiple jurisdictions. His research has been cited by the Attorney General for England and Wales, the Lord Chancellor, the Shadow Attorney General, the House of Commons Library, and various courts including the Irish Superior Courts and the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

• Senior Fellow at the Judicial Power Project, Policy Exchange
• Editor and co-founder of The New Digest, a legal theory/natural law blog
• Co-editor of the Dublin University Law Journal
• Fellow of the Legal Chamber of the Copernican Academy

As Director of Postgraduate Research, Dr. Casey supervises advanced legal research. He currently supervises Mr. Jonathan Cockfield on "Human nature, virtues and viewpoints in natural law jurisprudence." His expertise has led to numerous advisory roles, including providing evidence to the House of Lords Constitution Committee, advising the Irish Government's independent Housing Commission, the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Assisted Dying, and the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing. In 2021, he co-authored an Irish Human Rights & Equality Commission report analyzing the Irish State's response to the COVID-19 crisis from a human rights and rule of law perspective.

Dr. Casey is actively engaged with the public legal discourse, regularly contributing to media outlets such as the Spectator, the Daily Express, the Irish Times, and the Washington Post. He is a co-founder of The New Digest, which provides a forum for short essays on law, politics, political theology, post liberalism, and the common good.