Category: Law

Law in the Real World

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| Carneige, Law

'Law in the Real World' cover via UCL websiteHot on the heels of the Carneige Foundation‘s report on Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (which I have already discussed on this blog) comes Law in the Real World: Improving our Understanding of How Law Works (pdf) by Prof Dame Hazel Genn of UCL. It was launched in London at the British Academy on 6 November 2006 last (and welcomed here and here) – sorry I’ve only come upon it now. It makes for important, if uncomfortable, reading: its importance is self-evident, but it is discomfiting because of how little of this type of research is being undertaken in Ireland in the kind of systematic manner advocted in this report.…

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What is the Preamble to a Constitution for?

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| Law

preamble.jpgFor various reasons, the question in the title has come up several times today. As a first thought, it seems to me that the Preamble to a Constitution sets out some general aspirational sentiments about the nature of the polity being created by that Constitution. It is a general statement which introduces the document and its purposes, ambitions, principles, and commitments, and thereby serves to explain its raison d’etre. In modern American parlance, it’s where the polity puts ‘the vision thing‘ for its members and others to find. Such broad brush strokes are inappropriate for binding text, but, because it is an expression of the polity’s vision, it is a useful aid for guiding the interpretation of the text which follows. Famously, the Preamble to the US Constitution does this in a single sentence. That to the Irish Constitution is a little longer.

So, my question is this: is the above paragraph a fair summary of what constitutional preambles do, or not?…

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What Carnegie might still teach us?

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| Carneige, Law, Legal Education, Libraries, Universities

Carnegie Foundation on Education LawyersI like the Carnegie Foundation, not least for its founder‘s support of Irish and Scottish libraries, one of which was my local library when I was growing up (and it features in the lovingly written and beautifully produced Brendan Grimes Irish Carnegie Libraries. A Catalogue and Architectural History (Irish Academic Press, Dublin, 1998), though its court wing is no longer up to the mark). However, there is much more to the Carnegie Foundation than that. As the homepage of its website puts it:

Founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1905 and chartered in 1906 by an act of Congress, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is an independent policy and research center with a primary mission “to do and perform all things necessary to encourage, uphold, and dignify the profession of the teacher and the cause of higher education.

One of its classic publications it its 1921 Bulletin Training for the Public Profession of the Law by Alfred Z. Reed. Now comes a wholly new report on Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law, the fruits of a two-year study of legal education in modern American and Canadian law schools …

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I knew this was a good idea!

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| Law

Last April, the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School hosted a Symposium on Bloggership: How Blogs Are Transforming Legal Scholarship. The event was podcast at the time; and the papers were made available on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). Now comes the news that the symposium will be published on dead trees by the Washington University Law Review. Paul Caron, of Law Professor Blogs fame, who organised the symposium, has just posted an update of his introductory paper from the symposium on SSRN to appear to appear in vol 84 of the Washington University Law Review early next year. Thanks for all of that, Paul. It provides me with just the kind of justification I need to keep going with this blog. As I say in the title, I knew this was a good idea.…

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