It seems to be Annual Reports season. TJ has been plugging away at the Annual Report of the Data Protection Commissioner (already mentioned on this blog); Daithí was first with the news about the Annual Report (pdf) of the Information Commissioner (there’s a report in today’s Irish Times (sub req’d)), while her Federal Canadian counterpart (hat tip Slaw) has also just issued a similar annual report (all at a time when their UK counterpart feels (speech pdf | Guardian report) increasingly under threat from government (hat tip MediaPal@LSE)). Leaving these reports to TJ and Daithí­, I’d like to focus on the piece by Michael Dwyer in today’s Irish Times, headlined “Film censor report advocates less restriction, more classification”, concerning the Annual Report (press release (pdf) | Report (pdf)) of the Irish Film Censor’s Office (IFCO). One interesting statistic from the report concerns the numbers of cinema films classified by the office: of 265 features, the biggest category was 15A (95 films, 35% of the total), and only 22 were classified 18 (see this chart from page 11 of the Report):

By way of contrast, a chart on page 15 shows that 9926 videos were classified in 2006. Read the rest of this entry »

Fintan O’Toole makes a strong case in today’s Irish Times (sub req’d) that the leaders’ debates on RTÉ’s Prime Time television programme the week before last (the debates are here and here) were crucial to the outcome of last week’s general election. He is not the only person to have said so; comments to this effect were on the lips of many commentators as the result began to become clear. It is a pity, therefore, that RTÉ did not agree to make the debates available online without restriction so that the video can be lawfully share and reused without infringing RTÉ’s copyright. They were asked to do, and thought about it, but eventually said no (even though Fianna Fáil, of all parties, urged them otherwise). If they had, then online discusson could have put claims like O’Toole’s into the context of clips from the debates. We could only benefit from a this kind of detailed discussion of the turning points of the debate. Imagine if the threads on IrishElection.com, politics.ie, and elsewhere could have been illustrated by such clips. Perhaps next time.

The Roman poet Juvenal asked Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (who will watch the watchers?). In a similar vein, one of Elvis Costello’s more acidic songs of loss is ‘Watching the Detectives’ (lyrics | lyrics with images | YouTube). If Google is the search engine which does (most of) our detecting for us, one of the animating questions of the moment is who is watching the Google detective on our behalf? One answer is provided by Article 29 of Directive 95/46/EC (also here) of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data

This is the EU Data Protection Directive, and it is a major plank in the data protection strand of the EU’s information society policy. Read the rest of this entry »

I can resist everything, Oscar Wilde said, except temptation. And the temptation to post this has proved too great to resist, even though I’ve tried exceedingly hard to do so.

From John Naughton’s Memex:

Quote of the day

Lecturer: What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy?

Class: Zzzzzzzz…..

Lecturer: Oh come on — surely someone knows the difference!

Bored student: I don’t know and I don’t care.

From a talk given by Jeremy Hunt MP at the launch of the Open University’s Ethics Centre.

Via MediaLawProf Blog and Concurring Opinions, I learn of a fascinating symposium (html | pdf) in First Impressions, an online companion to the Michigan Law Review, on Televising the US Supreme Court. The articles wax and wane on the issue. Read the rest of this entry »

Article 16.2 of the Constitution provides

(i) All citizens, and
(ii) such other persons in the State as may be determined by law,
without distinction of sex who have reached the age of eighteen years who are not disqualified by law and comply with the provisions of the law relating to the election of members of Dáil Éireann, shall have the right to vote at an election for members of Dáil Éireann.

The election will be run according to the provisions of the Electoral Act, 1992 (also here) (as amended). Polling stations will be open from 7.30 am to 10.30 pm.

I was thinking about an all-singing all-dancing multi-media extravangnza for this post (cute image, suitable music, YouTube clip, and so on). I would have begun with an oh-so clever introduction about how, after all the debates and the posters etc, it was now down to the business end, the most important part of the process, including a perfectly formed paragraph on the optimum usages of proportional representation by the single transferable vote. I was then going to segue into an aching paen about how the most important right in a democratic polity is the right to participate in the democratic process by voting, locating this in a detailed exegesis of relevant constitutional and statutory provisions (the above are the highlights). And I was going to end with a learned political science discourse on the nature and consequences of the vote for government formation. And it would all have been leavened with knowing quirky quotes about voting, references to pop culture, and thinly veiled political satire. And, the links, the links – it would have been very link heavy, even by the standards of some of my posts.

But in the end, sparing you the reading of these tortured thoughts, I decided to boil it all down to the three words in the title.

Vote, vote, vote!

Universities are increasingly providing aid and advice to lecturers in the practicalities of teaching and lecturing. The Centre for Academic Practice and Student Learning (CAPSL) in Trinity College Dublin (where I work) is a local example of an increasingly prevalent phenomenon, of which the Higher Education Academy (HEA) in the UK and the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI) are exemplars. The HEA even maintains excellent resources for law teachers at the UK Centre for Legal Education (UKCLE). But missing from all of this is a simple, yet comprehensive, primer for the novice law teacher. Now, via Law School Innovation, I learn about Howard Katz and Kevin O’Neill “Strategies and Techniques of Law School Teaching: A Primer for New Teachers”, now available on SSRN. The abstract:

Much has been written about law school teaching. In our view, the contributions of Kent Syverud, Susan Becker, and Douglas Whaley are especially valuable. Why, then, did we bother to write this article? Because most articles focus narrowly on specific teaching techniques or on particular law school courses. Only a few offer general advice to the new teacher. No article, to our knowledge, has ever furnished detailed and comprehensive advice on how to teach a law school course – from choosing a book and designing a syllabus to orchestrating the classroom experience to creating and grading the final exam. That is the aim of this article.

It’s a working paper, so it’s not yet in its final form, but it is nevertheless food for thought and essential reading for law teachers and especially aspiring law teachers everywhere. I wish I’d had it when I was starting out, and I will certainly be going back to it as I design and redesign my courses in the future.

I’ve just read the judgment of Smyth J in Finnegan v J&E Davy [2007] IEHC 18 (26 January 2007). A must read for contract students everywhere, for what it says about duress (”hobson’s choice”), exercising contractual discretion especially in awarding bonuses, and restraint of trade.

Update (21 May 2007): I’ve also just read the judgment of Finlay Geoghegan J in Boliden Tara Mines Limited v Cosgrove & Ors [2007] IEHC 60 (09 March 2007). It too is interesting, in part for what it says (albeit in the context of a pension deed rather than a contract) about construction of documents (applying the leading UK case, which has been approved by the Supreme Court in a case not referred to here, though an earlier decision is), the remedy of rectification, and setting aside for (unilateral) mistake.

Update (25 May 2007): I’ve also read the interesting decision of O’Neill J in Flynn v Dermot Kelly Limited & Anor [2007] IEHC 103 (16 March 2007) on the interplay between, on the one hand, the definitions of “consumer”, “consumer-hire agreement”, and “hirer” in section 2 of the Consumer Credit Act, 1995 (also here), and the implied conditions as to quality and fitness of motor vehicles contained in section 13 of the Sale of Goods and Supply of Services Act, 1980 (also here; restated here (pdf)).