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Three recent judgments in the Court of Human Rights illustrate the increasing importance of the concept of “journalistic responsibility” in defamation cases considered from the perspective of the right to freedom of expression.  Where a publication deals with a matter of proper public concern a court must to consider these issues of responsibility and there will be a breach of Article 10 if it fails to do so.  On the other hand, even if a journalistic takes proper steps to investigate the truth of a story, damages for defamation may still be appropriate if the publisher misrepresents the facts which have been established.

Check out the blog Droit et Cinema, a French site devoted to the subject of law and film. One post discusses the fascinating film Commis d’office (2009), based on the novel by attorney Hannelore Cayre (she also directed).

Richard H. McAdams, University of Chicago Law School, has published Vengance, Complicity and Criminal Law in Othello, in Shakespeare and the Law: A Conversation Among Disciplines and Professions (Martha Nussbaum and Richard Streier eds.; University of Chicago Press, 2012). Here is the abstract.

Criminal law offers an interesting frame for examining Othello, while the play offers an interesting thought experiment for law.

Seán Patrick Donlan, University of Limerick, has published Remembering: Legal Hybridity and Legal History in the Comparative Law Review, June 2011. Here is the abstract.

An interest in contemporary, comparative legal and normative hybridity, or, “legal pluralism,” around the globe has become increasingly common. But the hybridity of our own Western past, and the significance of this fact, is too often ignored.As part of a wider project on, “hybridity and diffusion,” the mixtures and movements of state law and other norms, this article contributes to the process of ‘remembering’ this past. It does so to better prepare comparatists for the challenges of the present.

The 2011 Act essentially provides that good Samaritans will not be personally liable for anything done while assisting someone ill, injured or in danger. Volunteers will be similarly protected from liability when carrying out volunteer work. Of course, there are exceptions and, for example, the protection from liability is lost in the case of malice or gross negligence.

The changes do not introduce into Irish law a duty to intervene. This is in line with the recommendations of the Law Reform Commission, who concluded that, in Irish society, the duty to intervene was of a moral rather than legal quality and essentially should remain that way.