International Law

Copperfastening the right of journalists to protect sources?

Posted on August 04, 2009
Marie McGonagle, NUI Galway, writes in today’s Irish Times that the judgment in Mahon Tribunal v Keena [2009] IESC 64 (31 July 2009) (also here (pdf)) copperfastens the right of journalists to protect sources (with added links): The vital public watchdog role of the press was upheld by the Supreme Court … That decision, particularly as it [...

Website disclaimers

Posted on August 04, 2009
Following on from my comments about email disclaimers, via TJ and OUT-LAW.com here and here, I learn of the decision of the Court of Appeal in England and Wales in Patchett v Swimming Pool & Allied Trades Association Ltd [2009] EWCA Civ 717 (15 July 2009) on the efficacy of website disclaimers...

Effective Supreme Court advocacy?

Posted on August 03, 2009
Via Simon Fodden on The Court:

So, does Irish law now recognise a journalist source privilege?

Posted on August 02, 2009
As I wrote in my previous post, the Supreme Court in Mahon Tribunal v Keena [2009] IESC 64 (31 July 2009) (also here (pdf)) allowed the appeal against the decision of the High Court in Mahon v Keena [2007] IEHC 348 (23 October 2007). Fennelly J delivered the judgment of the Court, in which Murray [...

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Supreme Court allows journalists? appeal

Posted on July 31, 2009
The Supreme Court has held that two Irish Times journalists can assert a privilege to refuse to answer questions about their sources, reversing the High Court decision in Mahon v Keena [2007] IEHC 348 (23 October 2007). From the Irish Times breaking news website: Court upholds Mahon appeal The Supreme Court has upheld an appeal by [...

Blasphemy: Pluralisation and Content

Posted on July 30, 2009
In The Godfather, Part III, Michael Corleone (played by Al Pacino) laments Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in. I know how he feels (though without the mafia connections, obviously). I had intended yesterday’s post to be my last on blasphemy for some time, but then Eoin Daly, a PhD student in [...

How will the blasphemy offence work?

Posted on July 29, 2009
It’s a pity that Part 5 of the Defamation Act, 2009, relating to blasphemy, has dominated the coverage of the Act at home and abroad, since the legislation does considerably more than that. It is radical modernisation of Ireland’s defamation laws, and is a vast improvement on what had gone before...

Contract law explained?

Posted on July 26, 2009
What my students really think of Contract law, via Courtoons:

Typography for Lawyers

Posted on July 24, 2009
I love this website: Typography for Lawyers. Typography is the visual component of the written word, and even though the legal profession depends heavily on writing, legal typography is often poor. So, Matthew Butterick has started that site as a guide to typography for lawyers - in his view, good typography makes written documents more [...

Monkeys and blasphemy

Posted on July 24, 2009
On the monkeys-and-typewriters principle, I suppose it was inevitable that Kevin Myers would eventually write something with which I would agree. He did, today, in the Irish Independent: I have the right not merely to offend people, but to intend to … The Ahern law on blasphemy must be the first law ever whose instigator is desperately [...

Restitution of overpaid VAT - clouds and silver linings

Posted on July 23, 2009
EU law has thrown up some very abstruse issues, none more so that the compatibility of national VAT regimes with European VAT Directives. Where there has been a charge to tax pursuant to national rules which infringe EU law, then that overpayment of tax can be recovered...

President signs Bills

Posted on July 23, 2009
From the Irish Times breaking news site: President McAleese signs controversial Bills into law President Mary McAleese has this morning signed the Defamation Bill 2006 and the Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill 2009 into law. … Update: from RTÉ news: President signs controversial bills into law; and from the Irish Times: Ahern welcomes Bills’ enactment; see also Belfast Telegraph [...

President?s decision tomorrow

Posted on July 22, 2009
For anyone who is as impatient as I am to find out what President McAleese has decided after her meeting this evening with the Council of State, the RTÉ News website is reporting: The meeting of the Council of State called by the President ended at around 10pm...

Blasphemy provisions clash with Constitution

Posted on July 21, 2009
In today’s Irish Times, a piece by yours truly under the above headline: Blasphemy provisions clash with Constitution The President has very few unconstrained powers, and the Council of State is convened only rarely, but this evening they will all move centre stage, when the Council convenes to advise the President whether to refer two controversial Bills [...

Is Lady Chatterley?s Lover obscene?

Posted on July 21, 2009
No, at least so far as the law is concerned. But after its initial publication in 1928, it was not until the 1960s that litigation in the US and the UK allowed it to become generally available. An op-ed by Fred Kaplan in the today’s New York Times, entitled The Day Obscenity Became Art, (with [...

Impossible research

Posted on July 19, 2009
An acerbic view of academic research, via the ever-wonderful Piled Higher and Deeper:

Tory Island and Unjust Enrichment - continued

Posted on July 18, 2009
I wrote in April about the case brought by film-maker Neville Presho, whose holiday home on Tory Island had disappeared in his absence, replaced by a car park for an adjacent hotel. At that stage, Mr Justice Murphy suggested that there may be a restitution claim for the hotel?s use of the site as a [...

Another twist in the tale of the Defamation Bill

Posted on July 17, 2009
The saga of the Defamation Bill, 2006 is not over yet. Article 26 of Bunreacht na hÉireann (the Irish Constitution) allows the President, after consultation with Council of State, to refer a Bill to the Supreme Court for a determination of its constitutionality...

Seeing justice done?

Posted on July 16, 2009
As the slow march towards a new Supreme Court for the UK nears its destination, the Times has a piece about its newly refurbished premises: The United Kingdom?s new Supreme Court will open its doors for business on October 1, with the first inbuilt facilities in Britain for broadcasting in court...

New Open Source Law Journal

Posted on July 15, 2009
The European Legal Network, a professional network of legal experts facilitated by the Freedom Task Force which promotes free software licensing as part of the work of the Free Software Foundation Europe, has just announced the launch of the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review...

Legal Alchemy

Posted on July 13, 2009
Albie Sachs is a remarkable man. His official bio begins On turning six, during World War II, Albie Sachs received a card from his father expressing the wish that he would grow up to be a soldier in the fight for liberation. He began that fight as a seventeen year old law student; as a lawyer, [...

Traffic Data Retention, Irish-style, returns to the legislative agenda

Posted on July 13, 2009
The Communications (Retention of Data) Bill 2009, published last week, has caused a bit of a stir in this morning’s newspapers. It will give effect to EU Data Retention Directive 2006/24/EC of 15 March 2006 (blogged here) which recently survived challenge by the Irish Government in the European Court of Justice, and it will replace [...

So am I?

Posted on July 12, 2009
Via Peter Black’s Freedom to Differ blog, I came across this video from the Society for Geek Advancement:

The template for journalism?

Posted on July 11, 2009
A Leader in today’s Irish Times welcomes the passing of the Defamation Bill, 2006, and argues that it will set an appropriate template for the practice of journalism in Ireland: The template for journalism The Defamation Bill has concluded its passage through the Oireachtas, with a few deserved wobbly moments on blasphemy, and now awaits the signature [...

Defamation Bill passed by the Seanad

Posted on July 10, 2009
Having been passed by the Dáil (lower house of parliament) earlier this week, today’s papers are full of the news that the Defamation Bill, 2006 was passed yesterday by the Seanad (upper house of parliament) (the full debate is here); all that is now required for it to become law is the signature of the [...

Pleading defamation defences

Posted on July 09, 2009
In a recent post, I discussed newspaper reports of a recent High Court case in which Quinn Insurance Group lost a High Court bid to strike out parts of the Sunday Tribune?s defence to forthcoming libel proceedings taken against it by the insurance company; and I promised to return to the case as soon as [...

Criminal lawyers on justice and injustice

Posted on July 08, 2009

Defamation Bill passed by the Dáil

Posted on July 08, 2009
As recently prefigured on this blog, the Government has indeed used the legislative guillotine to force through their final amendments to the Defamation Bill, 2006. According to the RTÉ news website: Libel law revisions pass the Dáil The legislation to revise the country’s libel laws has been passed in the Dáil and will now go to the [...

Sympathy for the devil?

Posted on July 05, 2009
No, it’s not about a Rolling Stones song, or a Jean-Luc Goddard movie, but instead, in another sign of the times, it’s a cartoon about lawyers from the wonderful Non Sequitur cartoon strip: The box on the top left corner says: Why unemployed lawyers have trouble getting sympathy...

Putting blasphemy in its box

Posted on July 04, 2009
As I have said before on this site, the best reason for freedom of expression is commentary like this, from the always-incisive Martyn Turner in the Irish Times on Friday (03 July 2009) (click on the image for the full-size version from the Irish Times website):

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