cearta.ie – Page 113 – the Irish for rights

The Public Health (Tobacco) Act, 2002 (also here), as amended in 2004 (also here) – and in particular Part 3 of the 2002 Act – constitute a comprehensive control on the sale and advertising of tobacco (the Office of Tobacco Control has a comprehensive list of the relevant legislation), and the legislation largely gives effect to EU law in this field. In particular, Section 33 of the 2002 Act as amended by section 5 of the 2004 Act prohibits advertising of tobacco products and section 43 of the 2002 Act as amended by section 14 of the 2004 Act requires vendors to ensure that tobacco products are kept in a closed container that is not visible or accessible to customers. These and related provisions were brought into force by the Public Health (Tobacco) Act 2002 (Commencement) Order 2008 (S.I. No. 404 of 2008) (also here) and took effect on 1 July of this year. Dublin solicitors Matheson Ormsby Prentice have a helpful description of the restrictions here. Now, today’s Sunday Times brings news that these prohibitions are to face a legal challenge in the Irish courts:

Philip Morris sues Irish government on tobacco ban

Tobacco giant Philip Morris International is to launch a legal action against the Irish government over its ban on the display of cigarettes in shops.

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Phones in the theatre

4 October, 20094 October, 2009

| No Comments

| General, Phones in class

On the sin of mobile or cell phones ringing in class, here’s a YouTube clip of Hugh Jackman stopping a performance because a phone is going off (and remains unanswered and unsilenced for quite a long time!):

As usual, the BBC has more detail. Of course, it’s not the first time that an actor has been annoyed by interrupting phones: like Jackman, but unlike David Suchet Richard Griffiths has stopped a play when a phone went off; but, unlike Jackman, he asked the offending audience member to leave. However, angry actors had better beware: don’t smash the phone or throw it at the offender!

Update: the original YouTube video to which I provided a link is down due to a copyright claim by TMZ, presumably relating to the clip to which this post is now linked.…

Judicial Activism

3 October, 200929 September, 2009

| No Comments

| Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops, judges, law school

The Hon. Mr. Chief Justice Balakrishnan, Chief Justice of India, will deliver a Guest Lecture at the School of Law, TCD:

Judicial Activism Under the Indian Constitution

It will be held on Wednesday, 14 October 2009, at 6:00 pm in the JM Synge Theatre, Room 2039, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin (map).

If you would like to attend, please contact the Law School, by email, by mail to School of Law, House 39, Trinity College, Dublin 2; by phone to (01) 896 2367 or by fax to (01) 677 0449.

It promises to be an interesting evening. The label “judicial activism” is often used loosely, sometimes to describe the judicial process, sometimes to castigate judges as failing to confine themselves to reasonable interpretations of laws, and instead substitute their own political opinions for the applicable law. I particularly reocmmend the posts on Balkinization. The issue, a long-time staple of constituitonal jurisprudence, came to the fore again during the confirmation hearings for US Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor. But the debate is not confined to the US: rather, it arises where-ever there are Courts – so judges in Canada, Australia, the European Court of Justice, and Ireland are all routinely praised and criticised accordingly.…

Share and share alike: restitution on overpaid stamp duty reserve tax

2 October, 20093 October, 2009

| 1 Comment

| Restitution

Cases from the European Court of Justice, holding that national tax provisions are inconsistent with EU law, just seem to keep on coming. The most recent is a decision of the ECJ yesterday in Case C-569/07 HSBC Holdings plc and Vidacos Nominees Ltd v The Commissioners of Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs, which held that the levying of stamp duty reserve tax on a transfer of shares in France as part of a cross-border acquisition, pursuant to section 96 of the Finance Act 1986, was inconsistent with EU law (in particular, Article 11(a) of Council Directive 69/335/EEC of 17 July 1969 (pdf) concerning indirect taxes on the raising of capital, as amended by Council Directive 85/303/EEC of 10 June 1985). The Guardian‘s report of the case is typically angst-ridden:

Treasury faces £5bn bill over European tax ruling

European court judgment over UK tax on firms that issue new shares abroad could be costly for British government

The taxpayer faces a bill potentially as high as £5bn following an obscure tax ruling on the issuance of shares by companies made today by the European court of justice. HSBC won an award of £27m plus interest from Revenue & Customs, after a long-running case in which the bank argued that the 1.5% tax it had been forced to pay on new shares it issued in 2000 in France broke EU law.

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Updates: Joyce, hecklers and broadcasting

2 October, 20091 January, 2012

| 1 Comment

| Academic Freedom, Blogging, Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, Censorship, Copyright, Cyberlaw, Digital Rights, Freedom of Expression, James Joyce, journalism, Media and Communications, Regulation, Universities

I suppose if I spent ages thinking about it, I could find a spurious thread linking three stories that caught my eye over the last few days, but in truth there is none, except that they update matters which I have already discussed on this blog. (Oh, all right then, they’re all about different aspects of freedom of expression: the first shows that copyright should not prevent academic discussion; the second shows that hecklers should not have a veto; and the third is about broadcasting regulation).

First, I had noted the proclivity of the estate of James Joyce to be vigorous in defence of its copyrights; but it lost a recent case and now has agreed to pay quite substantial costs as a consequence:

Joyce estate settles copyright dispute with US academic

The James Joyce Estate has agreed to pay $240,000 (€164,000) in legal costs incurred by an American academic following a long-running copyright dispute between the two sides. The settlement brings to an end a legal saga that pre-dates the publication in 2003 of a controversial biography of Joyce’s daughter, Lucia, written by Stanford University academic Carol Shloss. …

Televising the Supreme Court

1 October, 200910 July, 2013

| 4 Comments

| Court dress, judges, Law, Open Justice, UK Supreme Court

No, not the Irish Supreme Court, but the new UK Supreme Court. There’s quite a lot of coverage in the UK media and blawgopshere today about the new Court at the apex of UK’s judicial system, which opens for business today, on time and on budget, in a refurbished former criminal court, after a difficult gestation. David Pannick argues in the Times today that, however unhappy its origins, the opening of a new Supreme Court is an important commitment to the rule of law. Much of the media interest turns on the fact that the Court will be televised. For example, one of the pieces in the Times is headlined that TV coverage means justice really will be seen to be done:

The reform has taken a number of steps over 20 years: a Bar Council report chaired by Jonathan Caplan, QC, in 1989, the filming of parts of the Shipman inquiry and the Hutton inquiry and the 2004 pilot project in the Court of Appeal all moved the issue of cameras in court forward. … The footage will be filmed and recorded by the court and made available by a feed to broadcasters, … [and] can be used only for news, current affairs and educational and legal training programmes.

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Proportionality in the ECHR

30 September, 200930 September, 2009

| 1 Comment

| ECHR

The principle of proportionality is one of the most important, and most mercurial, concepts in the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights. Antoine Buyse on ECHR blog brings news of an important new book on the topic:

New Book on Fair Balance

Jonas Christoffersen, director of the Danish Institute of Human Rights, has just published a reworked version of his Ph.D. thesis as a book: Fair Balance: Proportionality, Subsidiarity and Primarity in the European Convention on Human Rights with Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. An important addition to the field of ECHR studies and a very extensive analytical work (670 pages) on a legally complicated principle. This is the abstract:

In one of the most important publications on the European Convention and Court of Human Rights in recent years, a wide range of fundamental practical and theoretical problems of crucial importance are addressed in an original and critical way bringing a fresh, coherent and innovative order into well-known battle zones.

The analysis revolves around the Court’s fair balance-test and comprises in-depth analyses of e.g. methods of interpretation, proportionality, the least onerous means-test, the notion of absolute rights, subsidiarity, formal and substantive principles, evidentiary standards, proceduralisation of substantive rights etc.

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Protest? Yes, of course! Censor? No, absolutely not!!

29 September, 20093 March, 2023

| 3 Comments

| college funding, Freedom of Expression

Free Education for Everyone (FEE) is a grassroots group of students and staff in various third level instititutions which has been set up to fight the re-introduction of fees while campaigning for genuinely free education for all. According to their About Us page:

FEE activists have organised protests, occupations and blockades across the country over the past number of months.

For example, in February of this year, their protests against former Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern‘s arrival at NUI Galway led to the cancellation of a public interview with him – and I thoroughly disapproved of this at the time. Protestors must be allowed to make their point, but, by the same toke, they must not have a veto on the speech of others. Now, it seems that FEE have Bertie in their sights again, according to a press release published this afternoon:

Press Release: UCD students plan Bertie Blockade

Student campaign group, Free Education for Everyone (FEE) is planning to planning to stage a blockade of Bertie Ahern’s appearance at a debate on the Lisbon Treaty, tonight at 7pm in UCD’s O’Reilly Hall. Following a blockade of Brian Lenihan by the group last September, Martin Mansergh, Mary Hannafin and Conor Lenihan were forced to pull out of other scheduled appearances at the college.

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