The Gazette 1989

SEPTEMBER

1989

GAZETTE

November 28, 1954): "A judge should be compounded of the faculties that are demanded of the historian and the philosopher and the prophet. The last demand upon him - to make some forecast of the consequences of his action is perhaps the heaviest. To pierce the curtain of the future, to give shape and visage to the mysteries still in the womb of time is a gift of the imagination. It requires poetic sensibilities with which judges are rarely endowed and which their education does not normally develop. These judges must have something of the creative artist in them; they must have antennae registering feeling and judgment beyond logical, let alone quantitat- ive, proof". There are timorous souls among the judiciary; Justice Benjamin Cardozo's words in The Growth of the Law (1924) come to mind: "Judges march at times to pitiless conclusions under the prod of a remorseless logic which is supposed to leave t hem no alternative. They deplore the sacrificial rite. They perform it, none the less, with averted gaze convinced as they plunge the knife that they obey the bidding of their office. The victim is offered up to the gods of jurisprudence on the altar of regularity." All of the chapters in this book have relevance to Irish situations. Take the chapter on privacy, for example. The author argues that the right to privacy has many applications: it can mean freedom from snoopers, gossips and busy- bodies; or being treated by State

officials with a measure of decency and dignity; or being entitled to indulge in harmless activities w i t hout observation or inter- ference. An American judge in 1956 stated that the law of privacy could be characterised as " a haystack in a hurricane" (Ettore -v- Philco Television Broadcasting Corp. 229 F. 2d 481 at 485). Although some progress has been made on the right to privacy (see for instance the judgment of Hamilton P. in Kennedy and Arnold -v- Ireland [1988] ILRM 472), the metaphor of the haystack in a hurricane would not be entirely out of context if applied to the State of Irish law on privacy. Henry David Thoreau stated in Slavery in Massachusetts (1854) that the law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free. Men and women interested in freeing the law in the common good would benefit from reading this book. Students of constitutional law, the thinking practitioner, judges, policy-making civil servants, members of the executive and legislative arms of government would be forced into reflection on a reading of Freedom, the Individual and the Law. Eamonn G. Hall Solicitor

Geoffrey Robertson is a leading civil liberties barrister and the author of several legal works including Obscenity (1979), People Against the Press (1987), and Media Law (1984). His period as editor of the "Out of Court" column of The Guardian and chairman of the Radio 4 pro- gramme "You the Ju r y" have served him well in his mission to interest lawyers and laymen alike in his quest for law reform. The topics one would expect in any book on fundamental rights are covered in this book. The various chapters cover a separate right or theme: Personal Liberty and Police Powers; Public Protest; Privacy; Official Secrecy; Censorship; Regulation: Film, Video and Tele- vision; Freedom of Expression; Fair Trial; Freedom of Movement; Freedom from Undue Control; Freedom from Discrimination; and the final chapter discusses the issue of a Bill of Rights for Britain. At the end of the book there is a very useful section on sources; a table of statutes, a table of cases and an index. Ireland has its Bill of Rights - Bunreacht na hE'ireann - and its interpreters, the judges, have ensured that many of the rights wh i ch Geoffrey Robertson demands for Britain are taken for granted in this jurisdiction. Brave souls among the Irish judiciary have made our Bill of Rights a real and vibrant document; these brave souls share some of the qualities expounded by Felix Frankfurter (The New York Times Magazine

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