PAUL CULLEN, Political Staff
LEGAL CHALLENGE: RTÉ HAS defended its election coverage in the face of criticism of its treatment of Independent candidates by a Dublin city councillor.
Cieran Perry, who is standing as an Independent in Dublin Central, says he is planning a legal challenge to the State broadcaster’s policy on election coverage.
Mr Perry has accused RTÉ of breaching the principle of fairness established in court judgments on election coverage because it treats some candidates as “also-rans”.
I’ve set out the legal principles in posts on Cearta here and here.
During the property boom, lots of banks made lots of loans to lots of property developers. Then, as the market began to tighten, many of the banks made alternative arrangements with some of their developer clients. Now that the property market has collapsed, banks are seeking to enforce the terms of loans as against developers, and the developers are relying on the alternative arrangements by way of defence. An Cumann Peile Boitheimeach Teorenta v Albion Properties Ltd & Ors [2008] IEHC 447 (07 November 2008) is one such case (see also the legal issues in Helsingor Ltd v Walsh [2010] IEHC 54 (05 March 2010)).
I learn via the very helpful new blog Stare Decisis Hibernia – a blog concerned with recent decisions of the Irish Superior Courts – that another such case has recently been decided by the High Court. ACC Bank plc v Kelly [2011] IEHC 7 (10 January 2011) turned largely on its facts, and Clarke J held that there was no binding agreement in place or clear understanding between the parties that the bank would not call in the loan. The defendants had argued that the alternative arrangement could be relied upon on the basis of an estoppel or enforced as a contract supported by consideration, but, in the course of holding that those claims failed on the facts, Clarke J made some important observations about when forbearance to sue constitutes good consideration (the underlined words are his emphasis):
…7.9 So far as the case in promissory estoppel is concerned, I have already indicated that I am not satisfied that any concluded arrangement (even if it be short of a contract) had been come to between the parties such as could have grounded a case in promissory estoppel.
On Monday the J. Paul Getty Trust and Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced the joint acquisition of the works of Robert Mapplethorpe. The 200 unique artworks, 2000 photographs, 3,500 Polaroids and 120,000 negatives are worth in the neighborhood of $30 million.
In addition to the artworks, Mapplethorpe’s correspondence is included in the acquisition. What will probably be of most interest to history are the documents related to the 1990 “obscenity” trial in Cincinnati, a flashpoint in the era’s culture wars, that stemmed from a posthumous show of Mapplethorpe’s photography that included homoerotic and sadomasochistic images. But pop culture fans may be more interested in Mapplethorpe’s personal correspondence with rocker Patti Smith, whose memoir of her relationship with Mapplethorpe, “Just Kids,” won the 2010 National Book Award for nonfiction.
For mire on the controversial Mapplethorpe show in Cincinnati, and subsequent equivalent causes célèbres, have a look at my post on Cearta considering whether galleries should show offensive art and my follow-ups here and here on this site.
Anyone who blogs regularly will have discovered several truths. The first is that you are only as good as your last post. …
The second truth is reflected in something that Shelly Blake-Plock (@teachpaperless) has expanded upon in his excellent post ‘Why teachers should blog‘. I quote: To blog is to teach yourself what you think. …
A third truth … is this: Writing on blogs is dialogical, much more so that it ever could have been in paper format. …
The political views of academics should not be used as the bases to hire, fire, promote or demote them. That idea — not terribly disputed — is at the center of draft policies being released today by the American Association of University Professors on how to handle personnel issues involving politically controversial academics.
But even if the AAUP and many of its critics agree on that statement, they are likely to disagree on at least some of the principles put forth by the association. …
To prevent inappropriate political intrusion, the report offers a series of principles. For example, when responding to charges that indoctrination is going on in the classroom, the AAUP states that “[o]nly the proven demonstration of the use of ‘dishonest tactics’ to ‘deceive students’ — not the political views, advocacy, or affiliations of the faculty member — may provide grounds for adverse action” and that “[n]either the expression nor the attempted avoidance of value judgments can or should in itself provide a reasonable ground for assessing the professional conduct and fitness of a faculty member.” … The report says as well that colleges must focus on academic substance, not style. “The academic imperative is to protect free expression, not collegiality,” it says.
Derek E. Bambauer, Brooklyn Law School, is publishing Consider the Censor in a forthcoming issue of the Wake Forest Journal of Law & Public Policy. Here is the abstract.WikiLeaks is frequently celebrated as the whistleblowing heir of the Pentagon Papers case. This Essay argues that portrayal is false, for reasons that focus attention on two neglected aspects of the case. First, the New York Times relied on a well-defined set of ethical precepts shared by mainstream journalists to contextualize the Papers and to redact harmful information. Second, American courts acted as neutral arbiters of the paper’s judgment, and commanded power to enforce their decisions. WikiLeaks lacks both protective functions to regulate its disclosures. The Essay suggests that WikiLeaks is a bellwether: an exemplar of the shift in power over data generated by plummeting information costs. While that trend cannot realistically be reversed, the Essay offers two responses to the problems that WikiLeaks and its progeny create. First, established media outlets must continue to act as gatekeepers governed by strong journalistic ethics, even in an environment of ubiquitous access to raw data. Second, governments should consider, and debate, the possibility of using technological countermeasures – cyberattacks – against intermediaries threatening to disclose especially harmful data.
In Experience Hendrix, LLC v. Hendrixlicensing.com, (W.D.Wa. Feb. 8, 2011 (Zilly, J.), a federal judge in the Western District of Washington struck down as unconstitutional a Washington State law that attempted to grant dead celebrities, including Jimi Hendrix, a posthumous right of publicity.
After Andrew Croskery comes Tony Chinedu Wogu. According to the Daily Telegraph and The Register, Tony Chinedu Wogu has failed in his bid to sue the University of Bradford for £5m compensation, alleging that a 2:2 and not a First in Computing Science was the result of discrimination and breach of contract. Judge Andrew Collender QC struck out his case, saying academics had a much better understanding of the quality of a student’s work than lawyers did. As Treacy J had done in Croskery, Collender QC pointed out that Mr Wogu could seek judicial review of the university’s decision to award him a 2:2, but only after he had exhausted his internal appeals. Moreover, he reasserted the principle of judicial deference to matters of purely academic judgment (as opposed to breaches of procedure):
…This court has the most limited of powers to interfere in such a decision. This court has not the power or expertise to simply examine or to determine the proper degree grade to which the claimant would have been entitled from the University of Bradford. That is a decision particularly within the scope of an academic institution. It would not be for this court to apply its judgment as to the degree level reached and substitute that for the university’s … and the defendants’ application to strike out is successful.
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