judges – cearta.ie

Women in plain sight in the law: Síofra O’Leary, Catherine McGuinness, Frances Kyle & Averil Deverell – updated

19 September, 202223 January, 2024

Síofra O’Leary (pictured right) has been elected President of the European Court of Human Rights (press release), and will take up office on 1 November 2022. She has been a judge of the Court since 2 July 2015, a President of a Section since 1 January 2020, and Vice-President of the Court since 2 January 2022. She will be the first female President of the Court. Congratulations, Judge O’Leary!

On this blog, I’ve already noted female-majority panels in the Irish Supreme Court. Since then – and as well as from Judge O’Leary’s elevation – there have been three interesting similar developments.

First, the Court of Appeal has made history as the first court in the Republic to have a majority of female judges: it now has has nine women and eight men. More generally, women comprise 42 per cent of the Irish judiciary.

Second, a portrait by Miseon Lee, of former Supreme Court judge Catherine McGuinness, has been unveiled at the National Gallery of Ireland. Dr Mark Coen of the UCD Sutherland School of Law was the driving force behind the portrait, which was donated to the nation by Dublin law firm Matheson LLP.

Third, a portrait (pictured left) by Emma Stroude, of Frances Kyle and Averil Deverell, the first female barristers to be called to the Bar in Ireland, has been unveiled at the Honorable Society of Kings Inns (RTÉ news, via YouTube).…

Judges, judging, and the use of academic sources

28 October, 20218 November, 2021

| 2 Comments

| Irish Supreme Court, judges

Next Saturday, 6 November 2021, the third annual conference of the Irish Supreme Court Review will take place online, hosted by the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin and supported by Pinsent Masons. Papers delivered at the conference will reflect major themes in the work of the court and its leading cases in the 2020-2021 legal year. The event will take place online through Zoom. As these papers comment on the work of the Supreme Court, it may be that the Supreme Court will in turn comment on some of these papers.

Lord Burrows (pictured right), a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, has something to say about that. Last May, he gave a paper to the Annual Conference of Judges of the Superior Courts in Ireland. It was entitled “Judgment-Writing: A Personal Perspective” (pdf). It updates and complements a paper of his from 2013, written when he was Professor of the Law of England in the University of Oxford, entitled “Judgment-Writing: An Academic Perspective” (SSRN). Both papers are very interesting, and the shift in focus from academic to judge is especially so. One paragraph particularly caught my eye (see the 2021 paper at [4](iii) p6; compare the 2013 paper at [3](iii) p5):

… I think a little more time ought to be spent in judgments, at least involving difficult questions of law, placing the judgment in its wider legal context.

…

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a h-anam dilís

19 September, 2020

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| judges, US Supreme Court

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Open justice and civil jurisdiction, in the Courts Bill 2013

20 March, 201320 March, 2013

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| Irish Law, judges, Open Justice

The Department of Justice yesterday published the Courts Bill, 2013, which has two main aims. The first is to increase the monetary limit of the jurisdiction of the District and Circuit Courts in civil matters. The second is to allow the press some limited access to family law proceedings.

At present, pursuant to the Courts Act, 1991 (also here), the limit for the District Court is €6,384 (formerly £5,000), and this Bill would raise it to €15,000; and the limit for the Circuit Court is €38,092 (formerly £30,000) and this Bill would raise it to €60,000 for personal injury actions and €75,000 for all other civil claims. This is long overdue, as it will mean that cases can now be heard in more appropriate courts; in particular, matters appropriate to the Circuit Court need no longer be commenced in the High Court. In such cases, there will be simplified procedures and reduced costs. I think this is an entirely sensible idea, but I have two comments. First, section 16 of the Courts Act, 1991 (also here) provides a power by which the government may by order vary these limits without recourse to primary legislation; and I hope that this power is used in future to ensure that the District and Circuit Court limits keep pace with inflation.…

Quinns and Gowns – Contempt and Respect

6 November, 20124 February, 2013

| 2 Comments

| contempt of court, Court dress, Irish cases, Irish Law, Irish Society, judges

A little late (because of the rebuild and ongoing redesign of the blog, on which all comments are gratefully appreciated) I want to focus on a busy week for the Irish Supreme Court. The week before last, not only did the Court have its full roster of hearings and judgments, but the judges of the Court also made a small piece of history by stepping out in new gowns. At the beginning of the last judicial year, the wearing of wigs by judges became optional, and most have since abandoned the horsehair. At the time, I posed the question, with wigs gone, whether a revamp of judicial gowns would be far behind. It wasn’t. As Dearbhail McDonald reports, fashion designer Louise Kennedy has designed new, simplified, judicial gowns. They were commissioned in 2009, but put on hold in 2010 for financial reasons, and have now been introduced at least at the level of the Supreme Court (more coverage: Irish Times | Sunday Business Post | theJournal.ie). As Dearbhail wrote (with added links):

New gunas for judges — now for real reform

… The new European style robes are more than a costume change — they mark a major (long overdue) symbolic break with the English tradition.

…

YouTube, Facebook, and the responsibilities of intermediary gatekeepers

18 September, 201217 April, 2016

| 4 Comments

| Censorship, Cyberlaw, Digital Rights, Freedom of Expression, judges, law school

In my previous post, I argued that, as a matter of principle, the controversial American anti-Islamic video should not be censored. The most obvious form of censorship comes from government action, such as legislation banning speech, but that does not arise in this case. Less obvious, but no less insidious, was the White House request to Google to re-consider whether the video breached YouTube rules. This was not a formal ban, and Google declined to take the video down in the US, but it did block access to it in in Egypt and Libya. This raises two important questions about the structure of free speech. First, in the online world, where most of us access the internet through a range of intermediaries, government censorship does not necessarily need to target the disfavoured speech; it need only target the intermediaries. Very few US companies would feel able to decline a request like that from the White House, and Google are to be commended for standing firm in those circumstances. Second, these intermediaries now have a great deal of practical power over online expression – not only can they be co-opted by government as agents of state censorship, but they also have the capacity to act as censors in their own rights, as Google did in their unilateral action to block access in the Middle East.…

McMahon on Judging

4 February, 20127 November, 2012

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| Irish Law, judges

I spent a lot of today at the Law Student Colloquium which I mentioned in my previous post; and it was a great deal of fun. The day culminated with the First Annual Brian Lenihan Memorial Address, delivered by former academic and retired judge Bryan McMahon (above left), on the topic of

Judging.

He told us that a judge has a front row seat in the theatre of life; and, in his characteristically erudite and witty speech (citing all the great legal philosophers, including Groucho Marx, Maurice Chevalier, and Joe Duffy), he gave a wonderful review of the dramas, comedies and tragedies that have played out in his courtrooms. It was, he said, all very different from the jurisprudence of judging with which he was concerned as an academic, and yet he brought all his academic rigour to bear on the analysis of his twelve years on the bench, during which he said he sat in every county in Ireland.

The heart of his discourse was a discussion of judicial attributes. The essential traits include courtesy, patience, knowledge of the law, the ability to listen, the ability to make a decision, and the ability to give reasons for those decisions.…

The Council of State and the recusal of judges

9 January, 20127 November, 2012

| 7 Comments

| Irish Supreme Court, judges, US Supreme Court

Two very different stories in the media over the last few days have coalesced in my mind over the weekend. The first story is the announcement by the President of seven appointments to the Council of State. The second is the debate in the US about the recusal of Supreme Court Justices from forthcoming challenges to health care legislation.

The Council of State is established by Article 31 of the Constitution, and its primary role is “to aid and counsel the President”. The first meeting was convened by President Douglas Hyde on 8 January 1940, and a large painting of the event (pictured above left) by Simon Coleman hangs in Áras an Uachtaráin, in a reception room now called the Council of State Room. At the end of last week, the recently-elected President Michael D Higgins announced the appointment of Michael Farrell, Deirdre Heenan, Catherine McGuinness, Ruairí McKiernan, Sally Mulready, Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh, and Gerard Quinn to the Council.

Among the specific functions ascribed to the Council by the Constitution, Article 26.1.1 provides that the President may, after consultation with the Council of State, refer a Bill to the Supreme Court to determine whether the Bill is constitutional or not.…