cearta.ie – Page 37 – the Irish for rights

Last Friday, 6 March 2015, at 3pm, in Regent House, Trinity College Dublin, David Neuberger (Baron Neuberger of Abbotsbury), President of the UK Supreme Court, delivered the A&L Goodbody-sponsored Inaugural Address of the 81st Session of the Dublin University Law Society. His theme was the relationship between politics and law. There are photos from the event here.

He began by saying that a highlight for him, last year, was to attend the State Banquet hosted by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle for the State Visit to the UK of the President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins. Although relations between our two islands have not always been happy, we must never forget our shared history, for at least two reasons. First, we should be able to learn from the past, from mistakes and right decisions. Second, history is the context for present institutions and traditions. But even if we must never forget our history, we should never be its prisoners. Hence, for him, any change in the way in which we are governed, any change to the legislature, executive or judiciary, should harmonise with our current institutions and traditions. Innovators should be like new writers on a soap opera, adding new stories in the context of what has gone before (I pause parenthetically to observe that this reminds me of Ronald Dworkin’s theory in Law’s Empire of precedent as chain-novel, as an aspect of his more general theory of “law as integrity”).…

Regulating Emerging Technologies: A Challenge for Law, a Challenge for Ethics, a Challenge for Everyone

4 March, 2015

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| Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops, Privacy, Regulation

Professor Roger Brownsword will deliver a public lecture on

Regulating Emerging Technologies: A Challenge for Law, a Challenge for Ethics, a Challenge for Everyone

in the Trinity Long Room Hub, on Wednesday 11 March 2015 at 6:30pm.

In this public lecture, organised by the Confederal School of Religions, Peace Studies and Theology, the School of Law, and the Ethics and Privacy Working Group of the ADAPT centre, at Trinity College Dublin, Professor Brownsword will consider the regulation of emerging technologies. In particular, they are not easily regulated: getting the regulatory environment right is a considerable challenge. Legal frameworks tend to lose connection with their technological targets; even when connected, laws are often relatively ineffective; and ethicists are unable to agree on the interpretation and application of respect for human rights and human dignity as the measure of regulatory legitimacy. At the same time, new technologies insinuate themselves into the regulatory environment as tools that promise greater effectiveness. In a context of rapid technological change coupled with deep regulatory uncertainty, it will be suggested that the priorities are to safeguard the integrity of the infrastructure for human life, to preserve the conditions in which communities with moral aspirations may flourish, and to encourage broader and more inclusive debates about the social licence to be given to modern technologies.…

Privacy Paradigm – Towards a Creative Commons for Privacy

3 March, 201524 November, 2015

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| Copyright, Privacy

I’ve recently given two presentations about the internet and privacy, the first a fortnight ago in UCD at the Student Legal Convention, and the second last week in WIT. My theme, both times, was the decline of privacy online, and what we can do about it, not only from regulation by Data Protection Commissioners to individual court cases, but also from protecting our own privacy to respecting the privacy of others. In the latter context, I called for a Creative Commons for Privacy and I suggested that it might be called Privacy Paradigm (but if you have a better idea, please let me know). In this post, I want to tease out what a Privacy Paradigm, a Creative Commons for Privacy, might look like and what it could do.

If the analogy is to Creative Commons, the first question must be: what does Creative Commons do? Have a look at the column on the right, and scroll down a bit to the box headed “Licence”. You’ll see a badge with three icons and some short-hand; and you’ll see accompanying text which explains that this blog is “licensed under a Creative Commons … License”. By these means, I signal not only that you may re-use my content, but also the conditions under which you may do so.…

There’s an adjective for #Gryzzl on “Parks and Recreation” – it’s dysagurian

16 February, 201519 August, 2019

| 4 Comments

| Cinema, television and theatre, Dysaguria, Press Council, Privacy

The mockumentary-style tv comedy series Parks and Recreation, according to Wikipedia, is “an American comedy on the NBC television network, starring Amy Poehler as Leslie Knope, a perky, mid-level bureaucrat in the parks department of Pawnee, a fictional town in Indiana”. According to IMDB, the series relates the “absurd antics of an Indiana town’s public officials as they pursue sundry projects to make their city a better place”. In Ireland, at least one season has been shown RTÉ Two; and in the UK, three seasons have been shown on BBC4. Alert: so, for Irish and UK readers of the blog who are fans of the show (and the Daily Edge recently gave 7 reasons why we should be), the remainder of this post is a great big spoiler.

At the end of series 6, Pawnee thinks they’ve struck gold when Gryzzl, an internet company marketing itself as “the cloud for your cloud”, sets up in town. But, in the farewell series 7, all is not well between Leslie and Gryzzl. …

Universities (Development and Innovation) (Amendment) Bill 2015 – IV – Staff, Pensions, Innovation and IP

6 February, 201525 February, 2021

| 5 Comments

| Copyright, CRC12 / CRC13, Universities

This is the fourth and final post in a series on Senator Seán Barrett‘s Private Members’ Bill, the Universities (Development and Innovation) (Amendment) Bill 2015, which was discussed last week in the Seanad (earlier posts are here, here and here).

Section 7 of the Bill relates to some staff issues. In particular, section 7(1)-(2) would have solved some of the problems associated with the interpretation of section 25(8)(b) of the Universities Act, 1997 (also here) in the Supreme Court in Fanning v UCC [2005] IEHC 264 (24 June 2005), aff’d [2008] IESC 59 (28 October 2008).…

Universities (Development and Innovation) (Amendment) Bill 2015 – III – Funding & remuneration

5 February, 201522 July, 2017

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| Universities

This is the third in a series of posts on Senator Seán Barrett‘s Private Members’ Bill, the Universities (Development and Innovation) (Amendment) Bill 2015, which was discussed last week in the Seanad (earlier posts are here and here). Senator Barrett is pictured left, with one of his research assistants, Ursula Ní Choill, to whom, with Dr Charles Larkin, his other research assistant, he paid very warm tribute at the start of the Second Stage debate. Section 6 of the Bill relates to university funding. This section dealt principally with rates, scales or ranges of remuneration; and a wide definition of remuneration was provided in section 2(1) of the Bill (indeed, this definition would have been wider than the references in section 25 of the Universities Act, 1997 (also here) or the definition provided in the Heads of a Universities (Amendment) Bill, 2012 (pdf)).…

Universities (Development and Innovation) (Amendment) Bill 2015 – II – Tenure

4 February, 201511 March, 2015

| 5 Comments

| Tenure, Universities

This is the second in a series of posts on Senator Seán Barrett‘s Private Members’ Bill, the Universities (Development and Innovation) (Amendment) Bill 2015, which was discussed last week in the Seanad (the first post is here). Section 5 of the Bill provides a definition of “academic tenure”. As the Explanatory Memorandum explains

… the protections afforded by academic tenure allow academics to investigate unfashionable, controversial, or distasteful topics or dissent from received wisdom, and to teach and publish their honest conclusions, without fear of external pressures (for example, from university donors, vociferous critics, or government) or internal censure (for example, by means of suspension or dismissal).

…

Universities (Development and Innovation) (Amendment) Bill 2015 – I – Introduction

3 February, 201511 March, 2015

| 6 Comments

| Universities

Senator Seán Barrett, in conjunction with Senator Feargal Quinn and Senator David Norris, introduced the Universities (Development and Innovation) (Amendment) Bill 2015 as a Private Members’ Bill in the Seanad, and it was debated last week. It is an interesting and important Bill (full disclosure: I advised Seán in some of the drafting). It is relatively short, consisting of 10 sections and one Schedule, largely presented as a series of amendments to the Universities Act, 1997 (also here). But it is ambitious (see the full text here (pdf)). And had it prospered, it would have enacted some very important ideas and policies which would have put the development of Irish universities on a sound footing for quite some time to come. In this post, and the next three, I want to look at some of the issues raised by the Bill.

This Bill is Senator Barrett’s second run at university structures. His first, the Higher Education and Research (Consolidation and Improvement) Bill 2014, was introduced in the Seanad and had its Second Reading on 2 April last. It was discussed in detail at the time by Prof Steve Hedley (UCC) (here, here, here, here, and here), and Senator Barrett responded to those posts here.…