The last Irish case on criminal libel

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| criminal libel, ECHR, Freedom of Expression, Irish Law, Irish Society

Star logoYesterday’s Irish Times reminds me of an interesting High Court judgment handed down early in the Summer. It’s called Dennehy v Independent Star Ltd trading as The Irish Daily Star Newspaper [2009] IEHC 458 (28 May 2009) and it concerns an attempt to bring a prosecution for criminal libel. Section 8 of the Defamation Act, 1961 (also here) provides

No criminal prosecution shall be commenced against any proprietor, publisher, editor or any person responsible for the publication of a newspaper for any libel published therein without the order of a Judge of the High Court sitting in camera being first had and obtained, and every application for such order shall be made on notice to the person accused, who shall have an opportunity of being heard against the application.

When the Defamation Act, 2009 (pdf) comes into effect in the new year, section 4 will repeal the 1961 Act and section 35 will abolish the common law crime of criminal or defamatory libel (the UK is soon to follow this lead). So, the Dennehy is likely to be last Irish case concerning this ancient crime. But the case also looks to the future, as one of the arguments made on behalf of the applicants was founded upon the European Convention of Human Rights, and the reasons why that argument failed are quite striking.…

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Defamation and the Constitution

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| Defamation, Defamation Act 2009, ECHR, Freedom of Expression, Irish Law

Coat of Arms, Ireland (the image on the cover of the Constitution) via Wikipedia“Predictions are difficult, especially about the future.” I have seen this variously attributed to Neils Bohr, Sam Goldwyn, and Yogi Berra. Whoever said it, it contains a grain of truth: when it comes to the future, all we can do is speculate. In my paper for last Saturday’s conference on Recent developments in Irish Defamation Law, I speculated on the prospect that the Defamation Act, 2009 (pdf) may be unconstitutional or incompatible with the ECHR in some important respects.

In Steel and Morris v UK 68416/01, (2005) 41 EHRR 22, [2005] ECHR 103 (15 February 2005) (the infamous McLibel case) the ECHR held that the applicants’ rights under the Convention had been infringed by the failure to allow them legal aid, in an inflexible presumption of falisty (affirmed here), and in the rule that a body corporate taking a defamation action need not prove special damage, in all three cases because these rules compounded the significant imbalance which they faced in defending a defamation action being taken against them by a multinational corporation (McDonald’s).

In Ireland, defamation is absolutely excluded from the legal aid regime by section 29(8)(a)(i) of the Civil Legal Aid Act, 1995 (also here), and the 2009 Act does not ameliorate this in any way; but since there is no constitutional right to civil legal aid at Irish law, if it is invalid, the remedy is a declaration of incompatibility with the ECHR under section 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights Act, 2003 (also here).…

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Esin Örücü on the Convergence of Legal Systems

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| Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops

Prof Esin Örücü via the University of Glasgow websiteThe Irish Society of Comparative Law (ISCL) was established in June 2008 to encourage the comparative study of law and legal systems in Ireland. They will host a very exciting event tomorrow evening, 26 November 2009, when Professor Esin Örücü (left) of the School of Law, University of Glasgow will speak on the topic:

A Comparatist’s Analysis of the Convergence of Legal Systems.

The lecture will be held in Room 11 of the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin (map) from 5:00pm to 6:30pm. Admission is free, and all are welcome. Queries about the event or the society may be directed to the Vice President or the Secretary.

Prof Örücü is Emeritus Professor of Comparative Law at both the University of Glasgow and Erasmus University in Rotterdam; she is a Member of the International Academy of Comparative Law; and she has been a towering figure in comparative legal scholarship for the last 30 years or more. Her recent book The Enigma of Comparative Law: Variations on a Theme for the Twenty-First Century (Martinus Nijhoff, 2004) – delivering on its musical sub-title in chapters successively headed Overture, Intermezzo, Cadenza and Finale – is a beautifully composed and powerful meditation on the role and function of comparative law.…

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Comparative law in the ECHR

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| ECHR

Via ECHR blog, news of an important article:

Article on ECtHR and Comparative Law

Monika Ambrus, a colleague within the Netherlands School of Human Rights Research, based at Erasmus University Rotterdam, has posted ‘Comparative Law Method in the Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights in the Light of the Rule of Law’ on SSRN. The article has appeared in the Erasmus Law Review (vol. 2. No. 3, 2009). This is the abstract:

In several cases, comparative law exercises have been given excessive weight, which has given rise to conflicting interpretations in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). This use of the comparative law method by the Court has been widely criticised. The critical voices have generally argued in terms of what is prohibited by the principle of the rule of law, which the Court itself is also bound to take into account, namely the arbitrary use of power. In the light of these criticisms, it is a challenging task to examine whether and to what extent the comparative law method complies with the principle of the rule of law, which is the aim of this paper. An analysis of several ECtHR cases demonstrates that in many respects the comparative exercises of the Court indeed do not comply with the requirements set by the formal conception of the rule of law.

…

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New year, new defamation regime

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| Blasphemy, Defamation

Department of Justice logo, via the Dept's siteAlison Healy, writing in today’s Irish Times, quotes a spokesperson for the Department of Justice as saying that

… no part of the [Defamation] Bill had come into force yet but the [Defamation] Act was expected to be commenced in January.

Healy continues that, whilst in July, the Department had said that the Act was expected to commence in October, the spokesperson confirmed that it is now expected to commence in January 2010. For earlier comments to the same effect, see Rossa McMahon (see also here).

Unfortunately, the headline is the far more sensationalist

Blasphemy law unlikely to come into force this year

Yes, the Defamation Act, 2009 (pdf) does indeed have provisions relating to blasphemy; yes, I’ve written quite a bit about those provisions on this blog; (and yes, international reaction (pdf) continues (pdf) to be negative); but there is far more to the Act than that. If you want to find out more, you could do worse than to attend this event.…

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Is a low mark a breach of contract?

| 3 Comments
| Academic judgment, Contract, Grading and Marking, Legal Education, Litigation, Universities

NYU Law plaqueFor a low grade to be a breach of contract, there must first be a contract, and courts are slow to find the existence of such a contract, in part because they are reluctant to get involved in grading disputes. Thus, for example, in Keefe v New York Law School (17 November 2009) (hat tips: ContractsProf Blog | Adjunct Law Prof Blog; update: 25 Misc 3d 1228(A) (2009) aff’d 71 AD3d 569 (2010)) York J held that general statements of policy in a school’s bulletins, circulars, catalogues, handbooks and website are not sufficient to create a contract between a student and law school; rather, only specific promises that are material to the student’s relationship with the school can establish the existence of a contract. (Compare and contrast the decision of Murphy J in Tansey v College of Occupational Therapists Ltd [1986] IEHC 2, [1995] 2 ILRM 601 (27 August 1986)). York J provided an important policy justification for this approach:

As a general rule, judicial review of grading disputes would inappropriately involve the courts in the very core of academic and educational decision making. Moreover, to so involve the courts in assessing the propriety of particular grades would promote litigation by countless unsuccessful students and thus undermine the credibility of the academic determinations of educational institutions.

…

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