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GAZETTE
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1994
At the launch of A Dictionary of Irish Law were l-r: Dick Spring, TD, Tanaiste
and
Minister for Foreign Affairs; Harold Whelehan, SC, Attorney General; the author of the
dictionary,
Henry Murdoch, and Liam McKechnie,
SC, Vice Chairman
of the Bar
Council.
other people's money or why indeed
they bother is there for all to see in
those business pages. Getting to grips
with the jargon, the abbreviations and
the institutions is another matter.
Alan Molloy
works as an Investment
Director with James Bowen &
Associates in Dublin. He succeeds
within a hundred pages, using
layman's language, in explaining
those terms in a succinct and
demonstrative fashion. The reader is
quickly paving a course through
tracker bonds, offshore unit funds,
UCITs, section 23 property schemes
and leveraged futures. Following the
dissertation are another thirty pages of
appendices of graphic guidance and a
glossary thrown in to keep the mind
refreshed.
David Givens
of Oak Tree Press has
once again shown us that he can spot a
writer with a feel for his subject.
Already, there would appear to be
scope for another edition. The EC has
become the EU; The Uruguay Round
is over, IBEC is spawning further
acronyms. We must wait for it. For
those who pause on that journey
through the business and finance
pages of the newspapers, a brief
perusal of Alan Molloy's book will
peel away the layers of darkness and
enlighten the forager.
Justin McKenna
•
A Dictionary of Irish Law
By Henry Murdoch, second edition.
Topaz Publications, 1993, xii 604pp.
"There's no better way of exercising
the imagination than the study of law.
No poet ever interpreted nature as
freely as a lawyer interprets truth"
Jean Giraudoux.
In this dictionary the author quite
rightly does not concern himself with
a lawyer's interpretation of the truth,
but rather the lawyer's tools of the
trade, legal words and terminology, to
which he gives simple and readily
understandable definitions and
explanations.
Sometimes the definitions are dealt
with discursively and relevant case
law is quoted where necessary. The
dictionary is also extensively cross
referenced.
It will prove useful for existing
lawyers and also those interested in
starting the study of law. In the
foreword to the first edition, The Hon.
Thomas A. Finlay,
Chief Justice,
stated that this dictionary provided an
excellent tool in the hands of lawyers
while providing at the same time an
extremely convenient, if not
indispensable, piece of equipment to
persons of other disciplines who have,
from time to time or consistently,
recourse to the law or concern with
the law or legal documents.
The second edition has been published
to take account of the substantial
changes which have occurred in the
law in the five years since the first
edition. There are many new entries in
the second edition and some previous
entries have been updated.
The second edition will prove, as did
the first, a very useful reference book
and source of information, while still
fulfilling the basic job of a dictionary;
providing concise and intelligible
definitions.
Ronan Baird
Basic Documents on Human
Rights
Edited by Ian Brownlie, Oxford
University Press, 1992. 627 pp.
The third edition of this compendium
of International Declarations and
Conventions in the Human Rights area
has been much expanded to include
Conventions Against Torture, on the
Rights of the Child, on the Rights of
i Migrant Workers etc., which were
introduced in the 1980s.
The terrible conflict in the former
Yugoslavia has drawn attention to the
significance of the Conventions on
Genocide, Status of Refugees, and the
Status of Stateless Persons. Though
the contents of the volume are
extremely wide ranging, the author
suffered from that variation of
Muqjhy's Law which prescribes that if
a topic is omitted from or given little
attention in any work it will