Now, now; less of your cynicism about members of the Oireachtas (Irish Parliament) never working (or only working six or fifteen hours a week). The Ceann Comhairle (the Speaker of the lower house of the Irish Parliament) today launched A Brief Guide to How Your Parliament Works to explain how Dáil Éireann (the lower house of Parliament), Seanad Éireann (the soon-to-be-abolished upper house) and the Oireachtas (Parliament) Committees work. The guide has been awarded the Plain English Mark by the National Adult Literacy Agency for its accessibility, and if anyone reads it, the guide will certainly make the workings of the Dáil and Seanad more accessible (update: here’s an Irish Times report of the launch). It’s all of a piece with the slow move towards modernity on the part of a sclerotic Oireachtas. The venerable Oireachtas Report (whose late night tv slot was a time when only drunks and insomniacs are awake) has been supplemented by online broadcast of Oireachtas proceedings and – this week – by a dedicated Oireachtas TV channel on an Irish cable tv service.

The Ceann Comhairle gave an interview about this to the John Murray Show on RTÉ Radio 1, and the hoary old chestnut of proper attire for members of the Dáil and Seanad inevitably came up. But it was not the most news-worthy example of the issue this week. The BBC reported yesterday that, in the UK, Mike Weatherley (Conservative MP for Hove and Portslade) failed in his attempt to get the permission of the Speaker of the House of Commons to fulfill his pledge to his constituents to wear his Iron Maiden T-shirt in the House of Commons (at least he didn’t try to wear a Sex Pistols T-shirt to court). In his maiden speech, he had said:

… I perhaps bring something new to the House in the form of my huge passion for rock and heavy metal. A few years ago I rashly pledged that I would be the first Member to wear an Iron Maiden T-shirt in the Chamber, so, Mr Deputy Speaker, I may be in touch soon to see how I can deliver that promise without breaking too many rules. …

Whatever about Maiden promises in maiden speeches, it’s a pity that we won’t get to see the following image on BBC Parliament any time soon:

It would certainly have brightened up the viewing for any drunks and insomniacs who had happened upon the broadcast!

Sir Robert Megarry, by Anthony Morris, via the Royal Society of Portrait Painters website

At the beginning of the current legal year, Irish judges broke with three centuries of tradition, and ceased wearing wigs in court. On 13 October last, the Minister for Justice issued a press release stating that he had signed into law two new Statutory Instruments to make the wearing of ceremonial wigs optional in the courts. The Statutory Instruments came into force the following day, 14 October, just in time for the new legal term (Irish Times, here, here, and here). The making of the SIs was duly gazetted in Iris Oifigúil on 18 October (see (2011) 83 Iris Oifigúil 1417; pdf). Hence, the Circuit Court Rules (Judges Robes) 2011 (SI No 523 of 2011) and the Rules of the Superior Courts (Robes of Bench) 2011 (SI No 524 of 2011) dispensed with the requirement that judges wear ceremonial wigs in court. However, it is only this week, a full three weeks since the Minister’s press release, that the full text of the SIs became available online. (As I have asked many times before on this blog, why does it take so long for such important legal information as cases, SIs, and Acts, to be made generally available online?). Both SIs provide that:

A Judge shall not be required to wear a wig of a ceremonial type during [Court] sittings.

This is not quite a full abolition of the wig, as it does not prevent a judge who wishes to do so from wearing one. The development has been explained as part of a move to modernise the courts, though it has also been explained as an austerity move. Either way, the question arises: with wigs gone, will a revamp of judicial gowns be far behind?

So much for the bench. As for the bar, section 49 of the Courts and Court Officers Act, 1995 removed the requirement that advocates wear a wig in court, and section 117 of the Legal Services Regulation Bill, 2011 proposes to amend section 49 to include gowns as well, as follows:

A legal practitioner when appearing in any court shall not be required to wear a wig or a robe of the kind heretofore worn or any other wig or robe of a ceremonial type.

As with judicial wigs, this would make the wearing or not of wigs and gowns an issue for individual practitioners. In any event, formal attire isn’t always necessary in court. For example, in St Edmundsbury and Ipswich Diocesan Board of Finance v Clark [1973] Ch 323, Megarry J (pictured above) arranged a mock funeral in Iken in Suffolk to test how easy it would be to carry a coffin along an alleged right of way, and directed that neither he, nor the Registrar, nor counsel would be robed for the occasion:

Robes are convenient in normal circumstances as an indication of the functions of those engaged in the proceedings, and as enhancing the formality and dignity of a grave occasion. … But robes are not essential, … Jurisdiction is neither conferred not excluded by mere matters of attire or locality … ([1973] Ch 323, 333).

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In Isn’t it funny, how a bear likes honey?, I considered the conviction of a Macedonian bear for theft of honey and criminal damage to a beekeeper’s hives; and in Are some goats more equal than others? I noted that a goat was being held on suspicion of committing an armed robbery in Nigeria. Now I find another story in the same vein:

Bugs and Beasts Before the Law

Murderous pigs sent to the gallows, sparrows prosecuted for chattering in Church, a gang of thieving rats let off on a wholly technical acquittal – theoretical psychologist and author Nicholas Humphrey explores the strange world of medieval animal trials.

… A few years ago I lighted on a book, first published in 1906, with the surprising title The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals [pdf] by E.P.Evans, author of Animal Symbolism in Ecclesiastical Architecture, Bugs and Beasts before the Law, etc., etc. The frontispiece showed an engraving of a pig, dressed up in a jacket and breeches, being strung up on a gallows in the market square of a town in Normandy in 1386; the pig had been formally tried and convicted of murder by the local court. … All over Europe, throughout the middle-ages and right on into the 19th century, animals were, as it turns out, tried for human crimes. Dogs, pigs, cows, rats and even flies and caterpillars were arraigned in court on charges ranging from murder to obscenity. The trials were conducted with full ceremony: evidence was heard on both sides, witnesses were called, and in many cases the accused animal was granted a form of legal aid — a lawyer being appointed at the tax-payer’s expense to conduct the animal’s defence. …

The modified quote in the title is from Catullus (translation here). The image is from today’s Telegraph (update: but is now becoming controversial).

The MultiText Project in History is an innovative educational project, undertaken by the History Department, University College Cork, to provide resources for students of Modern Irish History at all levels. The following arresting image is available on their website:

MultiText’s source for the image is the Weekly Freeman for 25 February 1882, and they comment that “the unequal nature of the landlord/tenant relationship was a major cause of the land war” (a period of civil unrest in rural Ireland in the latter half of the nineteenth century, ultimately defused by a series of Land Acts between 1870 and 1903).

The image shows an unhappy tenant seated at a table, unwillingly signing a lease. Under the table can be seen a notice to increase rent and a notice to quit. At the top are two inset images, one of John Bull, the other of a destitute family heading for the workhouse. The tenant is surrounded by three grim-looking men. One has a bill for outstanding rent in his pocket, and he is brandishing an eviction decree. Another brandishes a cudgel of some sort. The third is stabbing his finger at the lease.

The caption along the bottom reads: Freedom of Contract – In Ireland.

The Bible tells Christians that ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God’ (Matthew 4:4). The aphorism is echoed in the title and plot of Vladimir Dudintsev’s anti-Stalist novel Not by Bread Alone. Now it is the main title of a recent book about the importance of higher education in developing modern societies built upon the fundamental values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law: Sjur Bergan Not by bread alone (Council of Europe higher education series No 17; 2011). Public debate often assumes that the only purpose of higher education is to prepare gradutes for employment, and this view feeds back into third-level entry requirements and second-level curricula. Hence, we see an increasing focus on “training” (rather than educating) graduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (with attendant risks to the arts, humanities, and social sciences). This third-level policy brings a concommitant focus at second-level on bonus CAO points for maths generating calls for bonus points for science and a compulsory leaving certificate science course (perhaps to the detriment of the study of foreign languages; and quite how this stands with the Minster for Education’s stated aim of moving away from the CAO points culture is unclear).

To be sure, preparing graduates for employment is indeed an important purpose of higher education; but, as this book emphasises, it is not the only one. As the editor put it in an earlier publication, as man does not live by bread alone, human existence is about more than work, and higher educuation should be directed to every facet of human existence, and in particular to sustaining the values of the kind of society in which we desire to live. This argument is at the heart of Not by bread alone; from the abstract:

Not by bread alone gathers essays on higher education … [which] spell out a view of higher education as a key factor in developing modern societies built on the fundamental Council of Europe values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law. …

To fulfil its role, higher education needs to prepare for citizenship as well as for employment, for personal development as well as for the development of a broad knowledge base. … We also need to take a close look at how the public responsibility for higher education and research can best be exercised in a society with many actors, all of which have their own legitimate agendas. In this situation, public authorities have an overall responsibility for coherent education policies.

Contents include essays on

• Higher education governance and democratic participation: the university and democratic culture
• Democracy: institutions, laws, culture and the role of higher education
• Higher education between market and values
• Safeguarding ethics and values in higher education: a shared responsibility
• Higher education as a “public good and public responsibility”: what does it mean?
• Public responsibility and institutional autonomy: where is the balance?
• Academic freedom and institutional autonomy: impact on international students
• Institutional autonomy between myth and responsibility
• Reflections on ranking in Europe.

This books therefore stands as an important corrective to the rather instrumentalist views sweeping european higher education at present.

As I’ve said before on this blog, Being Five is one of my favourite fun blogs. Here’s a recent cartoon strip called Pensive:

Being Five is a comic strip about a kid named Georgie who blogs using voice recognition software (since he can’t read or write yet).

In the first panel, he says: “People are getting to know me by reading my blog! They’re realising that I’m a very deep, pensive, philosophical, insightful little fella!” (Just like I hope readers of this blog regard me).

In the second panel, Georgie is startled by a voice (presumably his mother’s, from downstairs) calling “Georgie, I baked cookies”.

In the third panel, Georgie repsonds manically: “COOKIES!” (At this point, I deny all similarities).

On yesterday’s date, 13 April, Handel’s Messiah had its world premiere in Neal’s Music Hall on Fishamble Street in Dublin in 1742. Weather permitting, Our Lady’s Choral Society now annually perform Messiah on Fishamble Street on this date. For example, see this wonderful slide show on the Irish Times site of last year’s performance by Our Lady’s Choral Society and the National Sinfonia conducted by Proinnsías Ó Duinn, and there is far more coverage on the choir’s website. The Irish Times slides are accompanied by a soundtrack of their performance of the second half of the Hallelujah Chorus (from “and He shall reign”, rather than the better-known first half – their full recording of Messiah can be purchased here). Here are reports from the Irish Times of yesterday’s performance, and here is a wonderful flash-mob performance of the Hallelujah chorus in full, performed by the UCC Campus Chorus in Áras na Mac Léinn, UCC.

On the same date, the year after Messiah’s premiere, Thomas Jefferson was born; in 1829, the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 (10 Geo IV c.7) received Royal Assent; in 1900, Thomas Butts, inventor of scrabble, was born; in 1939, Seamus Heaney, Nobel Prize-winning poet, was born; and in 1963, Garry Kasparov, world chess champion turned politican, was born.