Category: Freedom of Expression

Academic freedom under threat?

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| Academic Freedom, Freedom of Expression, Universities

Two recent Oxbridge stories caught my eye. First, Daithí has a characteristically perceptive and wide-ranging post on a demand by students in Oxford for the dismissal of Prof David Coleman because of his (unpopular) connections with Migration Watch. The whole point of academic freedom (DHI | Human Rights Watch | wikipedia) is the right to think unpopular thoughts. They can be wrong, or wrongheaded – many, if not most, ideas fall into this category. But the fundamental cornerstone of academic enquiry is that they can be thought. Once articulated, they can be met, and their wrongness or wrongheadedness demonstrated. Student Action for Refugees (STAR) would do better to counter Migration Watch in debate and argument, and thus to persuade those still open to persuasion, than shrilly to seek Prof Coleman’s dismissal and in the process potentially turn off the persuadeble middle ground.

Second, in Cambridge, the boot is on the other foot. Legal Scribbles reports (following on from an earlier post) that students have been questioned under caution by the police on suspicion of having committed an offence contrary to s5 of the Public Order Act 1986, for having published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.…

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Senator Norris and the Defamation Bill

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| Defamation, Freedom of Expression, Media and Communications

Senator NorrisThe Defamation Bill, 2006 (Department of Justice | Oireachtas (pdf)) is currently being debated in the Seanad (Senate). The system of giving a Bill various readings (BBC | wikipedia) refers to an ancient practice in the House of Commons by which a Bill would actually be read out, first when it was introduced (the first reading), again whilst it was being debated (the second reading), and finally in its form for enactment after amendment (the third reading). More recently, a further stage, a committee stage, is often interposed between second and third readings: if the second reading debates the general principles of a Bill, then the detailed section-by-section scrutiny will take place at committee stage. Bills are usually initiated in the Dáil (lower House), and then reviewed in the Seanad, but the Government has in the last few years demonstrated a tendency to introduce Bills in the Seanad first, often for the purposes of detailed consideration and debate before being sent to the Dáil. The reason for this system of various readings of Bills in both Houses of the Oireachtas (ie, the Parliament) is to allow Bills to be publicly scrutinized and debated, and the Defamation Bill is currently undergoing that process with a detailed committee stage in the Seanad in which Senator David Norris (Ind, representing the University of Dublin (Trinity College); pictured left; website | blog) has made several energetic interventions – in the process, he has made one excellent point and one wrong-headed one.…

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Defamation Bill in the Seanad, or, where are the ISPs?

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| Defamation, Defamation Bill 2006, Freedom of Expression, Media and Communications

Seanad chamberThe Defamation Bill, 2006 (Department of Justice | Oireachtas (pdf)) was introduced in the Seanad (Senate; pictured left) on 7 July 2006, and its passage through the Houses of the Oireachtas (Parliament) can be followed here. The second reading began on 6 December 2006 with a set-piece debate, of rather predictable if occasionally interesting speeches, which rather got lost in the coverage of that day’s Budget; and the committee stage continued on 20 and 28 February 2007 with some conventional skirmishing and the occasional grand-standing set-piece battle. The terms of the Bill were outlined briefly in my previous post, so I’d like in this post and the next to turn to a consideration of some of the comments made on the Bill during the Seanad debates so far.

Senator Joanna Tuffy (Labour) (website | blog) suggested an amendment to the Bill to protect those, such as secretaries, who type letters on behalf of others, so that if the letter turns out to be defamatory, the plaintiff has to sue the author not the secretary (see 186 Seanad Debates cols 288-290 (20 February 2007); html | pdf). …

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Defamation Bill slopes towards enactment

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| Defamation, Freedom of Expression, Media and Communications

Cathaoirleach's BellThe Defamation Bill, 2006 (Department of Justice | Oireachtas (pdf)) was before the Seanad again during the week. In my next post, I’ll consider some of the points made during that debate; in this post, by way of background, I want to set out the Bill’s main provisions. It aims to modernise Irish defamation law, and it is certainly an advance on what is there now. However, it is still ungenerous, and it remains to be seen whether its passage through the Houses of the Oireachtas will improve it (or, God help us, not!).…

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Ducks, potatoes, blockheads

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| Freedom of Expression, Media and Communications

This week’s Economist has a short report (subscription required) to the effect that:

Poland’s governing Law and Justice party is suing the country’s former president, Lech Walesa, for defamation. Mr Walesa called the current incumbent, Lech Kaczynski [official Polish Presidency site (in English) | his own site (in Polish)], a “blockhead” in a row over a report on alleged criminal activity and Russian influence in the country’s now disbanded military-intelligence service.

…

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Independent Broadcasting

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| Competition Law, Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops, Freedom of Expression, Media and Communications

david-mcmunn.jpg Irish broadcasting regulation is undergoing a significant change, what with the Department of Communications review of the Television Without Frontiers Directive as part of the EU Commission‘s proposals for a new Audio Visual Media Services Directive and the Department’s Digital Terrestrial Television trial and its attendant Broadcasting (Amendment) Bill, 2006 (see press releases: BCI; Department). A central plank of all of these changes is the Broadcasting Bill, 2006, and the audience at the Dublin Legal Workshop last week were treated to a discussion of its strengths and weaknesses by David McMunn (pictured above left) Director of Government, Regulatory and Legal Affairs for TV3.

Establishing a commercial broadcast sector in competition with RTE in Ireland must have seemed a slow process. …

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A Cry for Help? Freedom of Expression and Unenumerated Rights in the Irish Constitution

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| Freedom of Expression

Cover of Irish ConstitutionI have agreed to give a paper at a forthcoming conference on the 70th anniversary of the Irish Constitution. The main focus of the session in which my paper will be given is unenumerated rights in the Constitution; and the main focus of my paper will be on speech rights. Other papers in the session are likely to focus on unenumerated rights generally and on privacy in particular. Against this background, I think the theme my of paper will be that unenumerated rights which the courts have spelled out of things mentioned on the face of the constitution are capable of being pernicious, illegitimately preventing the proper development of the text itself. …

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Blowins and Invasion of Privacy

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| Freedom of Expression, Irish Society, Privacy

A Dublin family, the Grays, who moved to Ballybunion, Co Kerry, under the Rural Resettlement Programme, discovered the hard way just how confidential garda (police) records can be (or not). After their nephew had been released from prison, having served a sentence for rape, they took him in for a while. The local gardaí leaked this to the local media, and the wonderful welcoming people of Kerry not only shunned the family, but the public mood turned so nastily against the family that they suffered mental distress, anxiety and personal injury, and eventually had to leave their rural idyll. The Irish Times website reports that, in the High Court today, the family succeeded in their action for invasion of privacy against the state.

As TJ McIntyre points out, this is not the first time that the gardai have leaked information to the press and been found to have invaded privacy as a result. This raises a great number of issues, not only about privacy, but also about freedom of expression, and journalists’ sources.…

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