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GAZETTE
SEPTEMBER
1989
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
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
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