cearta.ie – Page 48 – the Irish for rights

EU law update

from the Irish Times Mon, Aug 27, 2012

THE EUROPEAN Commission has published a “reasoned decision” including an order for Ireland to take steps to recover exchequer funds obtained unlawfully by Aer Lingus, Aer Arann and Ryanair. It found the Irish air carriers had received an unlawful selective benefit by virtue of the two-tier structure of the Government’s “air travel tax” from March 2009 to March 2011.

A €10 levy applied to all passenger flights save for those to destinations less than 300km from Dublin Airport, which incurred a €2 levy. The lower tax was found to be an unlawful waiver of tax revenue for domestic airlines, so the exchequer must now recover the €8 difference for each flight.

via irishtimes.com

The Commission decision will be here; meantime, the press release is here.

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A New Yorker Lawyer Joke, for back-to-school week

26 August, 201218 August, 2012

| No Comments

| General

New Yorker Cartoon, from New Yorker site.

Image: In a classroom full of pupils and their lawyers, one child responds to his teacher:

Caption: Miss Finch, my attorney has advised me that I’m not obligated to address the question of what I did on my summer vacation. Nonetheless, I would like to respond.…

Open justice and access to court documents

23 August, 201214 September, 2020

| 3 Comments

| Open Justice

In yesterday’s Irish Independent, Dearbbail McDonald reported that the public will get better access to court documents under plans being considered by the Government:

Ireland is unique among countries with a common law system as it does not provide access to court documents. Members of the public, as well as the media, have no way of securing access to documents, including court statements and legal submissions, that are opened and relied on in legal proceedings. …

The lack of access to court files has been raised in submissions to amend the forthcoming Legal Services Regulation Bill.

The image left is of the Irish Petty Sessions Court, taken from the Illustrated London News in February 1853, and it shows open justice at its best: a packed courtroom, with a full crowd following the proceedings. The Petty Sessions Court was established by the Petty Sessions (Ireland) Act, 1851; and it has long since been subsumed within the District Court.

I have referred to aspects of the Legal Services Regulation Bill, 2011 already on this blog; and I hope that this welcome and significant development will find a legislative home when the Bill becomes law. Strictly speaking, this is unnecessary, as there already exist various rights of access to such material, at common law, under the European Convention on Human Rights, and under the Constitution; but an addition to these rights is very welcome.…

Spectacular disgorgement in NTI v Canada

22 August, 20127 November, 2012

| 1 Comment

| Restitution

Where a defendant has made a profit from a civil wrong such as a breach of contract or a tort, damages can be directed to stripping the profit from the defendant. For example, in Hickey v Roches Stores (High Court, unreported, 14 July 1976) (pdf) Finlay P held

Where a wrongdoer has calculated and intended by his wrongdoing to achieve a gain or profit which he could not otherwise achieve and has in that way acted mala fide then irrespective of whether the form of his wrongdoing constitutes a tort or a breach of contract the Court should in assessing damages look not only to the loss suffered by the injured party but also to the profit or gain unjustly or wrongly obtained by the wrongdoer.

So far as breach of contract is concerned, English law reached the same conclusion in AG v Blake [2001] 1 AC 268, [2000] UKHL 45 (27 July 2000). It was a controversial conclusion. It has been applied in Esso Petroleum Co Ltd v Niad [2001] EWHC 6 (Ch) (22 November 2001), considered in passing in Sempra Metals v Revenue [2008] AC 561, [2007] UKHL 34 (18 July 2007) and Kuddus v Chief Constable of the Leicestershire Constabulary [2002] 2AC 122, [2001] UKHL 29 (7 June 2001), and distinguished in Experience Hendrix Llc v PPX Enterprises [2003] EWCA Civ 323 (20 March 2003), WWF-World Wide Fund for Nature v World Wrestling Federation Entertainment [2008] 1 All ER 74, [2008] 1 WLR 445, [2007] EWCA Civ 286 (02 April 2007), and Devenish Nutrition v Sanofi-Aventis SA (France) [2008] 2 All ER 249, [2008] 2 WLR 637, [2007] EWHC 2394 (Ch) (19 October 2007).…

Law and Justice on the Small Screen

21 August, 20126 November, 2012

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| Cinema, television and theatre

Hart Publishing has just announced the publication of Law and Justice on the Small Screen, edited by Peter Robson (University of Strathclyde) and Jessica Silbey (Suffolk University Law School).

This is the book description from the Hart website:

Law and Justice on the Small Screen is a wide-ranging collection of essays about law in and on television. In light of the book’s innovative taxonomy of the field and its international reach, it will make a novel contribution to the scholarly literature about law and popular culture. Television shows from France, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain and the United States are discussed. The essays are organised into three sections: (1) methodological questions regarding the analysis of law and popular culture on television; (2) a focus on genre studies within television programming (including a subsection on reality television), and (3) content analysis of individual television shows with attention to big-picture jurisprudential questions of law’s efficacy and the promise of justice. The book’s content is organised to make it appropriate for undergraduate and graduate classes in the following areas: media studies, law and culture, socio-legal studies, comparative law, jurisprudence, the law of lawyering, alternative dispute resolution and criminal law.

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Points for Law

20 August, 20127 November, 2012

| 2 Comments

| Central Applications Office, Irish Society, Legal Education

The Central Applications Office (logo left) processes all applications to first year undergraduate courses in the country’s various third level institutions. Those institutions inform the CAO of the number of places in a given course, and the CAO’s computer will allot places on the course on the basis of results in the Leaving Certificate, a state examination at the end of secondary school. The grades of the last-admitted candidate can be regarded as the cut-off for qualification for entry to that course. Those grades are assigned points, and the entry requirement for any given third-level course in any given year can be represented in terms of points. This year, the first round of offers of places in third level institutions was made this morning, and the cut-off points levels for their 44 50 law offerings are below.

Points Required for Entry to 2012 Level 8 Courses

Athlone IT
AL057 Business and Law 270
AL058 Accounting and Law no points stated

Carlow IT
CW708 Law 305
CW938 Business with Law 315

University College Cork
CK301 Law 475
CK302 Law and French 515
CK304 Law and Irish 530*
CK305 Law (Clinical) 535
CK306 Law (International) 550*

Dublin Business School
DB514 Business and Law 235
DB568 Law 275

Dublin City University
DC230 Economics Politics and Law 390
DC232 Law and Society (BCL) 410

Dublin Institute of Technology
DT321 Business and Law 400
DT532 Law 350

Griffith College Dublin and Griffith College Cork
GC203 Law (Cork) 315
GC403 Law (Dublin) 305
GC404 Business and Law (Dublin) 250

Trinity College Dublin
TR004 Law 525*
TR017 Law and Business 565
TR018 Law and French 565
TR019 Law and German 525
TR020 Law and Political Science 575

University College Dublin
DN009 Law (BCL) 495
DN021 Business and Law 495
DN028 BCL Maîtrise 525
DN029 Law with French Law (BCL) 560
DN060 Law with History 500
DN065 Law with Politics 510
DN066 Law with Philosophy 495
DN067 Law with Economics 515

NUI Galway
GY101 Arts 300 (depending on subject choice and progression rules, this can lead to a BA in Legal Science)
GY250 Corporate Law 350
GY251 Civil Law 405

Limerick IT
LC231 Law and Taxation 305

University of Limerick
LM020 Law and Accounting 415
LM029 Law Plus 405

NUI Maynooth
MH115 Law (BCL) and Arts 460
MH 119 Law 475
MH406 Law and Business 460

Waterford Institute of Technology
WD140 Law 295

Points Required for Entry to 2012 Level 7/6 Law Courses

Dublin Business School
DB580 Legal Studies 105
DB581 Legal and Business Studies 170
DB582 Legal Studies AQA
DB583 Legal and Business Studies 100

IT Carlow
CW706 Legal Studies 270
CW926 Business with Law 250

Letterkenny IT
LY207 Law 140

Waterford IT
WD013 Legal Studies 225

This list follows the order provided by the CAO.…

The varieties of subrogation

17 August, 201220 July, 2023

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| Restitution, Subrogation

By means of the doctrine of subrogation, one person is substituted for another in the exercise of that other’s rights against a third person. In particular, it is the process by which one party is substituted for another so that the first party may enforce that other’s rights against a third party. Mark Leeming (Faculty of Law, University of Sydney) has just published “Subrogation, Equity and Unjust Enrichment” as Sydney Law School Research Paper No 12/52 on SSRN. It is a version of his paper in Glister and Ridge (eds) Fault Lines in Equity (Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2012) 27-43 (collecting the papers from the symposium “Comparative Perspectives on Equity” held at the University of Sydney on 14 December 2010). This is the abstract:

Is “unjust enrichment” merely a unifying theme, or is it something more, a legal norm in its own right capable of supplying answers to particular cases? Or, if that is a false distinction, and indeed “unjust enrichment” may be either, then what approach is more likely to result in a legal system whose operation is clear, certain and coherent? This paper is directed to those questions. It notes the highly divergent approaches to a single doctrine – subrogation – in the House of Lords and the High Court of Australia, with a view to evaluating which mode of reasoning leads to clarity, transparency and coherence.

…

Judges and Professors – Ships passing in the night?

16 August, 201212 May, 2021

| 4 Comments

| Restitution

Lord Neuberger, outgoing Master of the Rolls in the England and Wales Court of Appeal and incoming President of the United Kingdom Supreme Court, delivered a lecture under the above title at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg on 9 July last. The paper has just been published on the judiciary website (link). Picking up where Baroness Hale left off in “Judgment Writing in the Supreme Court” (pdf | html), his theme was the nature of the relationship between the bench and the academy.

He began with the observation that, the relationship between judges and academics had long been that of ships passing in the night. Historically, convention barred citation of works while their authors were still alive. In the Irish courts in the not too distant past, this convention was still alive and well. I remember discussing a case with a then-serving but now-retired judge. He commented that he had found something I had written “quite useful” (or something equally droll). And he added – matter-of-factly – that he didn’t cite me because I wasn’t dead! I must confess that I didn’t find that comment particularly useful at all.…