The CAO needs no introduction to the present generation of school-leavers or their parents. Since 1976 it has enabled our institutions of third-level learning to reconcile annually the choices of the hopefuls — more than 60,000 last year — seeking to embark on a chosen career path.
This is how Fennelly J began his judgment for the Supreme Court in Central Applications Office v Minister for Community Rural and Galeltacht Affairs[2010] IESC 32 (13 May 2010). The Court granted a declaration that respondent Minister did not have the power under the Official Languages Act, 2003 (also here) to designate the applicant as a public body subject to obligations imposed by the Act concerning the conduct of its affairs in both official languages. The CAO today publishes its second round of offers of third level places for the forthcoming academic year, and in the inauspicious technical landscape of a Supreme Court appeal, Fennelly J provided an excellent primer on the operations of the Central Applications Office (the CAO; logo, above left):
is a company limited by guarantee and is a non-profit body. It was formed in 1976 and is based in Galway. … The State has no responsibility for its operation. The members of the CAO are the third-level institutions which it serves. Prior to the establishment of the CAO in 1976, there was no centralised system for processing applications from students seeking admission to third level. … The universities … decided to form a single body to process applications. The CAO now has 44 participant Higher Education Institutions …
The process by which the CAO matches applications (from students) and offers (from institutions) is as follows. Each student makes a single application to the CAO early in the year. The student specifies, in order of preference, the preferred colleges and courses of study. Each institution decides on the number of places it will offer in each category and informs the CAO. The CAO relates the student’s application with [that student's] Leaving Certificate results. It then makes an offer to the student on a form described as “offer notice” which specifies the course being offered and the institution offering it. It invites the student to return a part of the form specifying acceptance. …
This is a far more elegant explanation than the one I essayed in an earlier post, in which I went on to explain that grades of the last-admitted candidate to a course can be regarded as the cut-off for qualification for entry to that course, and that these grades can be expressed as a function of points in a range from 0 to 600. In that earlier post, I set out the points levels for entry into various law courses on the basis of the CAO’s first round of offers.
Each year, not all of the CAO’s offers are accepted, with the result that some courses have vacancies. The third level institutions notify the CAO of the vacancies, and it issues a further round of offers. Where the points of the last-admitted candidate on this round are lower than those of the last-admitted candidate in the first round, the CAO also publishes the revised points cut-off. This year, the second round of offers of places was made today, and the points requirements for some law courses were revised accordingly. (Of course, some of these offers will not be accepted, and the third level institutions and the CAO will continue to make further offers as necessary to fill their courses).
In the table below, I set out the final points requirements for law degrees in the various third level institutions. The first number, in bold font, is the final points requirement. Where the points were revised in round 2, the points for round 1 are then set out in regular font, prefaced by “R1:”. Finally, for the sake of completeness, where the course was offered last year, the final points for 2009 are set out in italics in parentheses.
NUI Galway
GY101 Arts 350* R1:355* (355) (depending on subject choice and progression rules, this can lead to a BA in Legal Science)
GY250 Corporate Law385 R1:390 (395)
GY251 Civil Law445 (440)
NUI Maynooth
MH101 Arts 375 (375) (Law within Arts: Law can be studied with other Arts subjects in first year, and students fulfilling the necessary criteria can transfer to one of the law degrees)
MH115 Law (BCL) and Arts450 (465)
MH406 Law and Business450 (450)
Other law courses are also administered through the CAO; and, in the table below, I set out their final points requirements. Again, the first number, in bold font, is the final points requirement; a number in regular font – if any – is the round 1 cut-off; and the final points for last year – if any – are set out in italics in a parenthesis.
These lists follow the order provided by the CAO. The asterisk * means that not all on this points score were offered places, whilst AQA means all qualified applicants were offered places.
… In my experience, we do this as well as is humanly possible within the constraints of the system — and it is time-consuming. … The key is to have principles and criteria, not rules. … .
The Statutes of a unversity constitute its basic law. For example, when the Charter of Elizabeth, dated 3 March 1592, founded Trinity College Dublin as the mother of a University, it afforded the College the power to adopt and amend Statutes to regulate its internal affairs. In the restatement of TCD’s Statutes which come into force today, the Preamble sets out some values and aspirations to inform and underpin their interpretation and application. Among those values, the College
Affirms its rights and responsibilities to preserve and promote academic freedom, tenure, and freedom of expression, [and]
Recognises the corresponding commitment of its members to pursue with integrity the highest standards in teaching and learning, and in research and scholarship, …
I have already looked at the principle of academic freedom in Irishlaw in an earlier post on this blog; in this post I want to look at the concomitant principle of academic tenure, using the relevant provisions of TCD’s Statutes as a guide; and in a future post, I will look at the extent to which it is currently protected as a matter of Irish law.
Broadly speaking, academic tenure is the right of a full-time academic not to be arbitrarily dismissed. It is one of the means by which the principle of academic freedom is secured. Intellectual autonomy and academic freedom are central to academic research and scholarship, and the protections afforded by academic tenure allow academics to investigate unfashionable, controversial, or distasteful topics or dissent from received wisdom, and to teach and pubish their honest conculsions, without fear of external pressures (for example, from university donors, vociferous critics, or government) or internal censure. In one famous example, critics of the 19th century American progressive leader RichardEly accused him of socialism and sought to have himremoved as an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The attempt failed, and a plaque on the campus proclaims:
Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.
The protections afforded by tenure and academic freedom are necessary for any university committed to the pursuit of knowledge in a democratic society. All of this means, for example, that I cannot be dismissed if my teaching or scholarship is controversial. Thus, if my academic work challenges your conception relating, say, to freedom of expression, then your proper response is to make the contrary academic arguments, and not to seek to censor me or have me fired. The right not to be arbitrarily dismissed if my scholarship is controversial re-inforces my academic freedom to pursue that scholarship. More generally, it allows academic experts to engage in important public debate and to speak truth to power, without fear of retaliation: think, for example, of the many academic economists who have criticised government financial policy of late, or the many academic historians and archaeologists who have criticised public infrastructural policy.
For these kinds of reasons, the Statutes of Trinity College Dublin expressly protect academic freedom in the following terms:
… to preserve and promote the traditional principles of academic freedom and to provide security against arbitrary dismissal, the principle of tenure guarantees that the employment of permanent, full-time members of the academic staff shall not be terminated, except
(a) in the case of a non-continuation of a contract during the course of or at the end of a period of probation, if any,
(b) by resignation or retirement,
(c) through discharge of the contract by operation of law, or
(d) pursuant to the procedures set out in the Division on Conduct.
Board may, in a Schedule, apply the principle of tenure to other categories of academic staff, on terms consistent with their contracts of employment.
Of course, this is not an absolute protection. As the Preamble to TCD’s Statutes makes clear, academic freedom and tenure carry with them a corresponding commitment on the part of academics to pursue their work with integrity. Moreover, as the detailed provision immediately above makes clear, tenure provides security against arbitrary dismissal, but does not preclude dismissal for legitimate disciplinary reasons pursuant to the disciplinary procedures set out in the Statutes. Furthermore, tenure only protects academics in respect of matters within their contracts of academic employment. Nor is it available willy-nilly: universities have clear criteria for the appointment to a position carrying tenure.
Critics argue that it can shield malingering or incompetent faculty and reduce intellectual diversity; that it is a financially unsustainablebad deal for universities; and that it is intellectually indefensible in its own terms – in particular, its aims can best be achieved by a much narrower rule in academic contracts of employment barring dismissal for viewpoint-related reasons. Moreover – and paradoxically – where it typically comes late in an academic career structure, it can hamstring younger academics anxious not to rock the boat before they attain the holy grail of tenure. As Erin O’Connor puts it on one of my favourite blogs, Critical Mass:
Increasingly, tenure is revealed to be (to have become) an unsustainable system of privilege whose time has passed. When the AAUP and the AFT and others demand the restoration of tenure, they reveal themselves as impractical, anachronistic dinosaurs. Tenure as we have known it is done. There’s no going back. And that is not a bad thing. … [The alternative is to create] enough job security to enable intellectuals to comfortably take on the long-term teaching and research projects that yield great value for all of us, but can’t be completed, or even adequately tracked, on a year-to-year basis. We’re also talking about not having so much job security that accountability, incentives, and flexibility go out the window. …
Against criticisms of this sort, there are two Irishblogs devoted to the defence of tenure. On both sides of the argument, there is much overblown rhetoric. When it is stripped away, it becomes clear that many criticisms are misplaced, since they typically denounce a straw man, overstate the financial costs, or propose inadequate alternatives. Take the straw man; the criticisms usually assume that tenure amounts to an absolute guarantee of employment until retirement age. Stated in such unqualified terms, it is easy to knock it down. In fact, tenure is much more limited than that: it is a protection against arbitrary dismissal, and thus functions as a guarantee of employment until retirement age if and only if academics act with integrity, observe the ethical requirements that the system demands, and fulfill the terms of their contracts of employment. It does not protect malingering or incompetent academics, or those who seek to thwart efforts to increase alternative viewpoints being taught, since – by definition – they are not acting ethically, with integrity, or performing their contractual obligations.
Furthermore, financial or economic criticisms often fail to account for the fact that the intellectual autonomy afforded by academic freedom and the job security afforded by tenure are significant employment benefits, without which universities would have to offer higher salaries to attract talented scholars. (For example, academic freedom and tenure are often cited as compensation for salaries that are typically much lower than those available in the private sector; but even in disciplines where there is no private sector, academic freedom and tenure contribute strongly to faculty retention in the face of competition from other universities). Moreover, the prospect of tenure tends to provide an incentive to junior faculty to produce scholarship of the highest quality, and aspects of an individual university’s tenure rules which paradoxically work the other way can – and should – be revised.
Nor do possible alternatives provide sufficient protection: the fact that a provision barring dismissal for political reasons can be inserted in a contract of employment does not mean that it must be in every (or indeed, in any) case; and the fact that a university does insert such a clause now as a matter of course does not mean that it cannot change policy in the future. On the other hand, setting it out in university Statutes creates a generally applicable right that is not susceptible to shifting fashions in policy.
This is not to say that the conception of tenure cannot develop into something more nuanced or flexible. But an argument for evolution and flexibility is just that; it is not an argument for abolition; and it should not be over-pressed, lest profound societal, democratic and academic benefits be unjustifiably lost.
It is important then that universities respect the principle of academic tenure, and not dilute or undercut it by an ever-increasing casualization of teaching, an over-reliance on fixed-term and unrenewed contracts, and a lackof support for those who do not (yet) have tenure. It is even more important that universities defend twin principles of tenure and academic freedom against external threats. This is why institutional commitment to these principles in a university’s statutes cannot be overstated: it demonstrates that the unversity believes that tenure and academic freedom are fundamental to its mission. For these reasons, I am delighted that TCD’s new Statutes place these principles at the heart of the values and aspirations stated in the Premable, and protect them in detail in the text itself.
By way of supplement, I see that 15 Lambton Quay records the final publication of New Zealand’s uniform style guide. I blogged about it at the proposal stage here. Up until now, Law schools, law firms, publishers and courts have been using their own idiosyncratic and confusing styles when referring to legal material. Now, New Zealand’s six law schools, three main legal publishers, major law reviews, and a number of courts, including the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal, have adopted the guide this year. From the 15 Lambton Quay website [with added links]:
The Guide was launched by Justice John McGrath. A uniform guide has been a long time coming! .. The new guide is the result of the combined efforts of many across the profession. Justice Chambers of the Court of Appeal spearheaded the project … The guide was only made possible through generous funding from the New Zealand Law Foundation. …
A web-based version of the guide has been made available on the New Zealand law Foundation’s website. In my earlier post, by reference to the New Zealand rugby team, I proposed, not quite tongue in cheek, that since the dominant US style is the Bluebook, perhaps we should call the New Zealand style guide the All Black Book. This is even more likely now that it has been published with an All Black cover, above left.
In the US, most law journals are run and edited by law students; every law school publishes its flagship law review; and many publish specialist journals as well. Outside the US, most lawjournals are run and edited by law faculty, and published by legal publishers. Moreover, outside the US, whilst student-edited journals publishing articles written by students are not uncommon, student-edited journals in the US sense, publishing articles written by academics, have been slow to take hold.
They aim to constitute a valuable academic resource providing a platform for discussion and debate by publishing novel scholarship that will have an immediate and lasting impact on the legal community in Ireland and abroad. They invite articles from academics, professionals and students of law or related disciplines; and they stress that, while each issue might have articles focused on Irish law, the journal’s remit is international, and submissions are welcome on all areas of the law irrespective of national boundaries.
They say that submissions should conform to the benighted Bluebook style. This is a very great mistake. Whilst almost (but not quite) ubiquitous in the US, it has gained little traction elsewhere, simply because it is ugly and unwieldy. There are many better alternatives, such as the Oxford Standard for Citation Of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA). Indeed, at the Fourth Legal Education Symposium, Larry Donnelly and Rónán Kennedy of NUI Galway talked about the development of an Irish legal style guide as part of the Legal Writing project they are developing with Elaine Fahey (DIT) and Jennifer Schweppe (UL); and the Irish Law Journal might even break new ground by adopting that guide (unless it is too like the Bluebook, in which case my reservations about that apply!).
That caveat aside, this is an excellent venture that deserves to prosper. I look forward to the first volume and to a thriving future.
Many things about Ireland bemuse visitors to our shores. Two of the most difficult to explain are our electoral system and the programme by which third level places are allocated. I’ll leave the former to other election anoraks for the time being, but the latter is much in the news this week, so I’ll try to give a simple account of how it works.
The Central Applications Office (logo, above left) processes all applications to first year undergraduate courses in the country’s various third level institutions. In early summer, students at the end of their secondary (high) school careers sit a state examination, and the results are published in early August. During the course of that final year, most of the students will have filled in a list of their preferred third level courses and returned it to the CAO. In mid-August, the CAO assign university places to students based on their exam results.
Allocation of places is simply a function of demand and supply. A third level institution will inform the CAO of the number of places in a given course, and the CAO’s computer will allot places on the course to the highest qualified applicants who had applied for that course. The grades of the last-admitted candidate can be regarded as the cut-off for qualification for entry to that course.
In the final state exam, each letter grade is assigned a level of points (eg, an A1 is worth 100 points, a C3 is worth 60 points, etc). The CAO takes each candidate’s best 6 grades to calculate the points total of each candidate (eg, a candidate who got six A1s is will have 600 points, a candidate who got six C3s will have 360 points, etc). Hence, the grades of the last-admitted candidate on a course can be represented in terms of these points, and the entry requirement for any given third-level course in any given year can be represented in terms of points.
Scaled up across every applicant for every third-level course, it is clear that the CAO system is a significant undertaking. This year, the first round of offers of places in third level institutions was made yesterday, and the cut-off points levels for their various law degree offerings were as follows:
NUI Maynooth
MH101 Arts 375 (Law within Arts: Law can be studied with other Arts subjects in first year, and students fulfilling the necessary criteria can transfer to one of the law degrees)
MH115 Law (BCL) and Arts 450
MH406 Law and Business 450
This list follows the order provided by the CAO. The asterisk * means that not all on this points score were offered places, whilst AQA means all qualified applicants were offered places.
Some stuff I’ve come across online recently has reminded me of the New York indie rock band, VampireWeekend, not only the high-profile controversy over the “frustrating” lawsuit against them by a model who claims that they did not have her permission to use an image of her on their “Contra” album cover, but also the lyrics of their 2008 single “Oxford Comma” (pictured left; see background | lyrics | music | YouTube). The Oxford comma is an optional comma before the word ‘and’ at the end of a list; in the song, it’s a metaphor for unnecessary pretention in interpersonal relationships; and in its grammatical meaning it has recently been the focus of discussion by pedants, geeks, and drafters.
Pedants
The Oxford comma (aka the Harvard comma or the Serial comma) is the comma in a list that goes before the “and” or “or” that precedes the last item in the list. In the title to this post, it’s the comma between “geeks” and “and”. In such a straightforward setting, using it ornot is more a matter of individual preference than grammatical necessity; and there are many people whose preference is to use it. However, there are times when it is absolutely crucial:
… the important thing about it, though, regardless of its name, is that it looks like any ordinary comma, and, for the most part, acts like any ordinary comma, except that this comma, plain as it is, does something extraordinary–it guards against the ridiculous. … what if a young lady places an ad in the ‘Personals’ to tell us that she enjoys dining out, long hikes in the woods, holding hands and playing the guitar. I play the guitar, and let me assure you, it is difficult to hold hands and play the guitar.
In this example, the absence of the Oxford comma leads to an ambiguity which its presence would avoid. Where items in a list are equal, they sould be treated equally, and thus separated by a comma. The comma may reflect the cadences of the spoken word; it may be necessary in computer programming; it is often simply more natural to use it. For all these reasons – as the title to the post implies – I prefer to use it. It will rarely be ambiguous, and it will usually be more accurate.
… use of the serial comma expands the possibilities for communicating nuance of meaning, and is therefore an unmitigated Good Thing. The classic illustration is this:
(a) “The woods are lovely, dark and deep”
versus
(b) “The woods are lovely, dark, and deep”
In the first edition of Frost’s Collected Poems, that line (from “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”) was printed as in (a), but it was corrected in subsequent editions. The point is that the two lines have different meanings — in the first, the woods are lovely; “dark and deep” then becomes a descriptor or illustration of that loveliness. In the second, the woods have three separate characteristics: they’re lovely, they’re dark, and they’re deep. …
In this way, it becomes clear that insistence upon the Oxford comma is not a matter of pretention or pedantry, but of accuracy and necessity.
Drafters
Though the absence of the comma is often comic, it can equally well have serious consequences. Accuracy matters. Roger Casement is said to have been hanged on a comma in the Treason Act. A current case against Chrysler in the US, for US$16,000 in damages and US$124,894.02 in legal fees, turns on the presence of a comma. More than Can$2m wereatstakein a disputebetween Rogers Communications Inc and Aliant Inc before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. The contract was signed in English and French; its English draft provided it that
shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.
The CRTC originally held that, based on the rules of punctuation, the comma in question allows for the termination of the contract at any time, without cause, upon one-year’s written notice. However, having compared the French draft, which provided that the contract “demeure en vigueur pour une période de cinq ans, à partir de la date de la signature et il est subséquemment renouvelé pour des périodes successives de cinq années, à moins d’un préavis écrit de résiliation à l’autre partie un an avant l’expiration du contrat” (emphasis added), it then held that termination can only occur upon notice one year prior to the end of the initial five-year term or one year prior to the end of a renewed five-year term.
… the question for the contract drafter is not how to make sense of a dispute but how to avoid dispute in the first place.
The simplest approach would be always to use the serial comma in a simple list of three or more items. It’s very unlikely that you’d find yourself in a situation where a serial comma creates ambiguity rather than resolves it.
Even if Vampire Weekend don’t care about the Oxford Comma, lawyers – whether pedants, geeks, or drafters – most definitely should.
In the US, most 
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