cearta.ie – Page 154 – the Irish for rights

On 10 December 1947, the UN General Assembly (resolution 217 A (III) (pdf)) adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after a long drafting process. Since 1950, by way of commemoration of that event, that date has been International Human Rights Day. That makes today the sixtieth anniversary of the UDHR, and the day upon which the UN begins a year-long commemoration of the Declaration, with events planned throughout the year. The UDHR is now available in over 360 languages including Irish, making it the most translated document in the world. According to the UN’s Human Rights Day website:

Th[e] theme for 2008, â€œDignity and justice for all of us,â€? reinforces the vision of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) as a commitment to universal dignity and justice. It is not a luxury or a wish-list.

…

The Future of Irish Legal Education

10 December, 200710 February, 2009

| 4 Comments

| Law, Legal Education, Universities

And so to my Alma Mater, University College Cork (UCC), where the Faculty of Law hosted the second annual Legal Education Symposium last Friday. This year’s event, organised by Dr Fidelma White and Mr Gerard Murphy and again generously sponsored by Dillon Eustace Solicitors, had a decidedly transatlantic flavo(u)r, with of course a good deal of Cork relish as well.

The venue was UCC’s handsome 19th century Aula Maxima (pictured above left), and the delegates were welcomed in a characteristically witty and incisive speech by Dermot Gleeson, SC (former Attorney General, current Chairman of the Governing Body of UCC, and quondam lecturer in the UCC Law Faculty). He shared with us some thoughts on the various-interlinkages between the academy, practice, and the bench. He said that the best superior court judge since independence was Seamus Henchy (something I have long also believed), in part because Gleeson likes the way Henchy wrote, which Gleeson speculated may be in part because Henchy was a law professor in UCD before he went to the bench. He concluded by expressing his skepiticism about the instant transferability the science model of PhDs to Irish law, a matter to which I will return below.…

Recent Developments in Media Law and Regulation

7 December, 200716 January, 2009

| 3 Comments

| Defamation, Freedom of Expression

The School of Law, Trinity College Dublin, will host a conference on the above theme on Thursday, 17 January 2008 next. Full details here. This conference offers an excellent opportunity for legal practitioners, journalists, editors and anyone with an interest in the Irish media to keep up to date with the many significant developments that have occurred in the last 12 months. Many of the questions to be discussed on the day have already featured on this blog, and the speakers will include my colleagues Dr Eoin Carolan and Dr Neville Cox, Prof John Horgan (the recently-appointed Press Ombudsman), solicitors Karyn Harty and Paula Mullooly, and barrister Luá¡n Ó Braonáin SC.…

Seeing Green on Blaphemy

5 December, 20075 April, 2011

| 4 Comments

| Blasphemy, Cinema, television and theatre, Defamation Bill 2006, Freedom of Expression

Jerry Springer - The Opera, with a red line through it; from BBC website. On the day when the teacher convicted of blasphemy in the Sudan for allowing a class of young children to name a teddy bear Mohammed is pardoned and allowed to return home (BBC | Irish Times (sub req’d)) comes news of another relevant case. It has one of those very-legal looking, but uninformative, English case-name titles: R (on the application of Green) v The City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court [2007] EWHC 2785 (Admin) (05 December 2007), but for all that the title is uninformative, the judgment itself is significant. For the Green who made the application is Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice (their website sees A Nation in Pain and A Government in Rebellion, and therefore perceives A Need For Jesus, and A Need For Prayer); and the reason he was seeking judicial review of the City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court was that a judge in that court refused to allow Green to commence a private prosecution for blasphemy arising out of the BBC’s broadcast of Jerry Springer – The Opera. The Daily Telegraph said of it at the time:

It’s filthy, it’s funny, it’s brilliantly original and, taken all in all, about as much fun as you are likely to have with your clothes on.

…

Article XIX

2 December, 2007

| 2 Comments

| Freedom of Expression

According to this page, the image on the left

is an exact copy of the cover of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was placed in the Cornerstone of the United Nations Headquarters Building by Trygve Lie, Secretary-General of the United Nations, at the time of the Cornerstone Ceremony which was held at 12 noon, October 24th, 1949, at a special meeting of the Fourth Regular Session of the General Assembly, at the Headquarters site on 42d Street, New York.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly at its 183rd meeting, held in Paris on 10 December, 1948 (and that date has ever since been Human Rights Day). Article 19 of the Declaration provides:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; the right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.

Taking its name from this text, ARTICLE 19 is an international human rights organisation which defends and promotes freedom of expression and freedom of information all over the world. ARTICLE 19 believes that the full enjoyment of this right is the most potent force to achieve individual freedoms, strengthen democracy, and pre-empt repression, conflict, war and genocide.…

Libel Tourism – Two Footnotes

30 November, 200716 November, 2015

| 2 Comments

| Defamation, Libel tourism, libel tourism

Further to my earlier post on libel tourism, I’ve recently come across two interesting footnotes.

First, there is a rather pointed short film, called The Libel Tourist, about Rachel Ehrenfeld’s legal travails with Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz here and here (YouTube) (hat tip: the always excellent Critical Mass; also Overlawyered and Reason).

Second, Mahfouz’s own website proudly proclaims:

Ireland

Q: Do the family have Irish citizenship?

A: In 1990, Khalid Bin Mahfouz availed himself of the opportunity under the laws of the Republic of Ireland to obtain Irish citizenship for himself and other members of his family.

Yikes!…

Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom

28 November, 200722 June, 2009

| 2 Comments

| Academic Freedom, Freedom of Expression, Universities

A little while ago, Brian Tamanaha on Balkinization raised the question of what is the right response where professors insult in class; his post began as follows [with some added links]:

The November issue of National Jurist has an article about a recent spate of law professors getting into trouble for comments inside or outside of the classroom that apparently offended students. According to the article, a Wisconsin professor made comments about Hmong men [IHT] in the context of discussing cultural practices that might be invoked as a defense against criminal charges. A Quinnipiac professor sent an email to students on his distribution list that â€œderidedâ€? them â€œfor their concepts of how poor people and ethnic minorities are represented within the American legal systemâ€? [Quinnipiac Chronicle]. A John Marshall professor was reprimanded for asking a Jewish student â€œwhether his religious training contributed to Jews passing the bar at higher rates than African Americansâ€? [De Paul]. The article did not mention the most recent example of such controversy, involving a professor at Connecticut who showed a film in class, pausing at a scene that offended a few of the students [Law.com].

I was reminded of this as I listened last night to Dean Rod Smolla‘s Inaugural Lecture at WLU (poster above) on

Freedom of Expression and Religion on the Modern Campus: Academic Freedom at Public and private Universities

His basic theme was that First Amendment doctrine is capable of explaining and guiding the development of the principles of academic freedom in the modern American university.…

The Court of Appeal in Ontario gets in on the act

27 November, 20076 December, 2007

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| Defamation

I have already discussed on this blog the decision of the Irish High Court in Leech v Independent Newspapers [2007] IEHC 223 (27 June 2007) which all but copperfastened the defence of reasonable publication (or responsible journalism in the public interest) to libel actions at Irish law. Now, in Cusson v Quan [2007] ONCA 771 (13 November 2007) (also here), in a case concerning an article in the Ottawa Citizen, the Court of Appeal in Ontario has allowed Canada to begin to get in on the act too. Joe Rayment saw this coming last January (also here). Now battle lines are being drawn, with Andrew Scott weighing in with an excellent post in favour of this development on MediaPal@LSE, and Mark McQueen contributing an equally impressive critique against it. Fagstein says that in Canada, the libel chill is warming slightly (with interesting further links; see also Cavanagh Williams | Editor & Publisher). Two paragraphs of Sharpe JA’s judgment in particular are worth focussing on. …