cearta.ie – Page 170 – the Irish for rights

| Law

For various reasons, the question in the title has come up several times today. As a first thought, it seems to me that the Preamble to a Constitution sets out some general aspirational sentiments about the nature of the polity being created by that Constitution. It is a general statement which introduces the document and its purposes, ambitions, principles, and commitments, and thereby serves to explain its raison d’etre. In modern American parlance, it’s where the polity puts ‘the vision thing‘ for its members and others to find. Such broad brush strokes are inappropriate for binding text, but, because it is an expression of the polity’s vision, it is a useful aid for guiding the interpretation of the text which follows. Famously, the Preamble to the US Constitution does this in a single sentence. That to the Irish Constitution is a little longer.

So, my question is this: is the above paragraph a fair summary of what constitutional preambles do, or not?…

Dublin Legal Workshop this week [was: ‘next week’]

30 March, 200716 January, 2009

| No Comments

| Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops

This ~~Next~~ week, there are not one but two sessions in the Dublin Legal Workshop series.

First up: the evening stream of the Dublin Legal Workshop is meant largely as a forum for external speakers to share ideas in Trinity. In this stream, at update: 6.30pm (and not 6.00pm as earlier announced) next Tuesday evening, 3 April 2007, in Room 11 of the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin (map here), Andrea Martin, solicitor and media law specialist (who has already featured on this blog), will give a talk entitled:

â€œRight of Reply – a Workable Proposition for the Media?â€?

Second: the afternoon stream of the Dublin Legal Workshop is meant largely as a forum for work in progress by the postgraduate research students and academic staff of the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin. In this stream, at 1.00pm next Wednesday afternoon, 4 April 2007, in the Law School’s library, Des Ryan, a research student, tutor, and part-time lecturer in the Law School (pictured left), will present a paper entitled:

â€œTort Law, Public Authorities, Rights and Wrongsâ€?.

If you are interested, please do come along. They should each be enjoyable and informative presentations.…

The Treatment of Suretyships in the EU: Unhappy Families?

30 March, 200723 March, 2009

| 3 Comments

| Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops, Contract, Restitution

All families are happy in the same fashion,
and each family is unhappy in its own way.

Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
in Anna Karenina (1875-1877)

Banks lend money; but they are averse to the risks of this lending, so they usually require security for the money they lend. One form of security is to get another, creditworthy, person to agree to pay the loan if the borrower fails to do so. This arrangement is called a suretyship, and the person who undertakes to pay if the borrower does not is called a surety.

Do sureties need protection from the borrowers or lenders? For example, if a husband and wife have interests in the family home, and the wife agrees to secure a loan to her husband against her interest in the family home, does a vulnerable wife need protection either from an overbearing husband or an unscrupulous bank here? …

“The right of a free press to communicate information without let or restraint is intrinsic to a free and democratic society”

29 March, 200723 September, 2016

| 7 Comments

| Freedom of Expression, Irish Law, Irish Society, Media and Communications, prior restraint

I have recently commented on this blog that the right to freedom of expression Article 40.6.1(i) has finally got some teeth!?. That process continued today in the Supreme Court, where Fennelly J uttered the line used as the title to this post. …

Fair Use – Recalibrating the balance in Fair Dealing

27 March, 20073 June, 2017

| 17 Comments

| Copyright, Fair use, Irish Law, James Joyce, Politics

This is a call to arms; or at least, a call for legislation which would radically recast EU copyright law.

Intellectual property law and policy are all about innovation, both encouraging it and protecting its fruits. But these are potentially opposing, perhaps even incompatible, goals: if we reward one innovator with a monopoly over the fruits of the innovation, prohibiting others’ use of those fruits, then we risk preventing the next round of innovation. The challenge to law-makers is to strike the an appropriate balance between reward and innovation, by pitching the length of the monopoly at the right level, both in the breadth of its coverage and the length of its term, beyond which others might also use it.

The story of copyright provides a good example of this dilemma. …

Refunding unincurred airport taxes and charges

26 March, 200715 November, 2010

| 8 Comments

| Airline charges, Consumer, Contract, Restitution

A payment made on a basis which fails can be recovered. So, if I pay for cigarettes, and the price includes an amount for a tax which is subsequently found unconstitutional, the basis for that excess amount has failed, and I can recover the tax amount that wasn’t due (see Roxborough v Rothmans of Pall Mall Australia Limited (2001) 208 CLR 516; [2001] HCA 68 (6 December 2001)). It follows that if I book to travel with an airline, and pay their fee plus taxes and charges, but if I then don’t travel, so that the charges are not incurred and the taxes are not due, the basis for those taxes and charges has failed, and I ought to be able to recover them. If the contract between me and the airline contains clauses making them irrecoverable, (or, what amounts to the same thing, imposing disproportionately high administration fees) such clauses are almost certainly unenforceable (on foot of the European Communities (Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts) Regulations, 1995 (S.I. No. 27 of 1995), the English equivalent of which have recently been applied by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) against an airline’s terms and conditions).

These musings are prompted by the following story in the Price Watch column in today’s Irish Times (sub req’d):

No guaranteed refund if you don’t take your Ryanair flight

…

“You can’t fire me; I’ve got tenure!”

25 March, 200722 May, 2010

| 5 Comments

| Academic Freedom, Cinema, television and theatre, Politics, Tenure, Universities

Last night, MGM movies showed the 1984 movie Teachers, about a lawyer who sued her high school for graduating an illiterate pupil. It starred JoBeth Williams as the lawyer; Nick Nolte as the idealistic but frustrated and jaded ageing hippie teacher; and Judd Hirsch as the pragmatic head teacher just trying to get through with the pupils he’s got (for a more recent, also iconic, role, see here (DaithÃ)). A fine supporting cast included Ralph Macchio (‘wax on, wax off‘) as the tough kid Nolte was trying to reach; Laura Dern as the kid Nolte helps to have an abortion after another teacher gets her pregnant; and Morgan Freeman (with an extraordinary hairstyle almost as much a member of the cast in its own right as Kevin Costner‘s in Robin Hood. Prince of Thieves) as the school’s lawyer. There is a perceptive review here. Among the many Hollywood-sardonicisms in the script, the large, underfunded high school is named for John F Kennedy; and the illiterate graduate (whom we never meet) is called John Calvin(!). The case settled (JoBeth Williams’ boss, William Hill (in the key scene, he is world-weary, wearing a waistcoat, and sitting behind a desk – for all the world as he would appear in TV’s Law & Order) did the deal, much against her wishes).…