The Gazette 1981

GAZETTE

APRIL 1981

BOOK REVIEWS Cases and Materials on the Irish Constitution: by James O'Reilly and Mary Redmond, the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland, 1980. lv, 712p. (with Index) £27.50 incl. VAT. It is less than two years since this reviewer, in search of a systematic legal commentary on the Constitution had resort to a series of articles written by Donal Barrington, now Mr. Justice Barrington, in the Irish Monthly, and published in 1952. As late as last session, the Law Society's syllabus on constitutional law advised students to consult Kelly's Fundamental Rights, the last edition of which was in 1967 and has long been out of print. The enormity of the gap filled in this last year with the appearance first of Professor John Kelly's The Irish Constitution and now of O'Reilly and Redmond Cases and Materials on the Irish Constitution, is clear. What better recommendation could publications expect, than, as has occurred with these books, that they are pressed into immediate service in every constitutional law course in the country and can anticipate a lively interest from the practitioner and the general market as well? Both books are however expensive and it is unlikely that, aside from the specialists, other readers will buy both. The differences between them are therefore import- ant. The texts offer a choice; Kelly (reviewed in the Gazette vol. 74 no. 5 June 1980) is an encyclopaedic annotation of and commentary on the Constitution through the cases; O'Reilly and Redmond consists of a set of selected materials with added comment which seeks to give the reader direct access to the primary sources of constitutional law and practice. In reading Kelly, the serious student would need the law library at hand to con- sult the references; in O'Reilly and Redmond the library is built in. The casebook is an American invention adapted to the emphasis there on students reading primary sources and making up their own minds rather than reproducing the comments of someone else on the law. In Ireland even if the lecture is still the primary vehicle of teaching, this book will prove an excellent one to teach from and to learn from. It will have the added value of relieving pressures on library resources. Students can be asked to read a judgment in the casebook, thus avoiding the familiar nightmare of librarians —when fifty or more of them invade the library in search of the 1965 Irish Reports. But there is more to a good casebook — and this is an excellent one, than convenience. It calls for a deep understanding of the subject, considerable skills in select- ing, editing and arranging the sources cited and perhaps above all, for a linking commentary which is both economical and unobtrusive yet directs the reader to the significance of the range of materials reproduced. The Constitution itself is, as might be expected the major document reproduced in the book. That takes up 100 pages. Might it have made the book less expensive if it had been omitted and the user asked to find it in another source? The answer obviously is yes, if we had a good edition to Bunreacht na hEireann. The Stationery Office is still selling an edition which does not incorporate any constitutional amendment in the text but merely records them on a page slipped into each volume. At 25p it may

be the last book bargain left but it is time for a new edi- tion and the text reproduced in this book with amend- ments italicised and deletions footnoted could well act as a model. Other sources reproduced in the book include the leading constitutional decisions and relevant pro- visions from the statutes. There are also extracts from debates in the Oireachtas, from the Report of the Com- mittee on the Constitution, and from various other reports and inquiries down the years. The value of this work be- comes clear when it is remembered for all practical pur- poses most of these sources would be otherwise in- accessible to the majority of readers. The selection of cases made for this very large book is so comprehensive than one is hard put to find any major decision some part of which is not reproduced from the law reports. As Mr. Justice Walsh points out in an introduction which is predictably thought provoking, the texts of the cases are reproduced in sufficient length to allow serious study of constitutional reasoning. One quarrel I would have with the authors concerns the decision to cut up some of the judgments cited and fit excerpts here and there in the text as it suited their themes. From the experience of using the book over a couple of months, I think it would have been a better decision to re- produce all of the text of a case in one place with references back to it at other portions of the text. On coverage my only quibble would be that the chapter on Art. 29 and International Relations gives too much space to the extradition controversy and too little to other matters. It is for example surprising, to put at its mildest, that the EEC amendment (Art. 29 4(3)) gets no mention. The significance of this amendment might at least have drawn a comment when discussing the constitutional pro- visions which state that the Oireachtas has exclusive legislative authority in the state, or that the decisions of the Supreme Court are final for all purposes. The commentary otherwise is uniformally superb. It is most clearly written and never overshadows the material reproduced — a standard pitfall in this type of book. It achieves the purpose of integrating the enormous range of materials used while also conveying numerous interesting suggestions on interpretation and possible reform of the Constitution. A word about the publishers. The publishers of books are usually taken for granted. They should not be in Ireland. There are several reasons why we have had to wait so long for books of this quality on our Constitution. But at least one of the reasons has been the lack of willingness of commercial publishers to produce, for what they consider, a hopelessly uneconomic market. That picture is changing and the activities of the Law Society in publishing and stimulating young lawyers to write, has largely brought about that change. The preparedness of a professional body to support and to publish a book of this kind, which must largely find its market among law students is as unusual as it is welcome. Kevin Boyle Law at Work Series: Sweet and Maxwell, 1980. £1.95p (sterling) The paucity of Irish literature for those interested in Employment law in this country has forced most prac- titioners to purchase English books. These are, as may be expected, heavily laden with analysis and comment on English statutes. While our own statutes tend to mirror

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