David Langwallner As the founder of the now seemingly inactive Irish Innocence Project, and co-founder of The European Innocence Network, I staunchly oppose the death penalty, with exceptions for certain Crimes Against Humanity. I have personally visited and represented individuals on death row in Kenya and the U.S.. This underscores the critical need for our legal system … Read more
I have just finished representing a client in a murder case and have plenty to reflect on about guilt and innocence. This is a two-part excursus for Cassandra Voices dealing first with why certain people are found guilty of crimes they did not commit. The Innocence Project, with which I was involved over many years, … Read more
This Ireland exists. And should one travel there and not find it, then they have not looked closely enough.. Hugo Hamilton: The Island of Talking – In the footsteps of Heinrich Boll #IrelandisFull: the migration of this phrase from the far-right into the mainstream is an awful feature of our woe-begotten times. It begs the … Read more
When David Irving, the mad fascist historian imprisoned in Austria for Holocaust denial, was asked to speak by The University Philosophical Society in Dublin in the late 1980’s, the Student Union – involving the current Labour leader Ivana Bacik – instigated a protest that led to a minor riot to prevent him from speaking. Given … Read more
The theme of ‘late art’ was recently explored by the art historian Carel Blotkamp in The End: Artists’ Late and Last Works (2019) focusing on the visual arts, but in an age nonspecific way. Raphael’s ‘Transfiguration’ is central to the argument of the book. After Raphael’s death, the author notes his body was laid out … Read more
Born in 1875, like many in his era Thomas Mann was initially a Great German Conservative, but by the outbreak of World War II he was making anti-Nazi speeches for the BBC. Mann won the Nobel Prize in 1929 for his chronicles of German families in Buddenbrooks (1901), and for his bildungsroman The Magic Mountain … Read more
This article is dedicated to Patrick Healy. The Irish people have a long-standing relationship with ‘numinous presences in the landscape’, often referred to as the little people, or faeries. The literature provides a complex set of illusions. The writer, philosopher and independent scholar, my friend, Patrick Healy on a recent visitation tendered me a painting … Read more
Both as a lawyer and Supreme Court judge, Louis Brandeis was an inveterate opponent of big business interests. Less well known than his other contributions, is that he a co-authored a text in the 1890 Harvard Law Review that invented a privacy right, which has steadily been eroded in criminal justice. Indeed, as a judge … Read more
All persons and authorities within the state, whether public or private, should be bound by, and entitled to, the benefit of laws publicly and prospectively promulgated and publicly administered in the courts. Lord Bingham, ‘The Rule of Law‘, Sir David Williams Lecture, Cambridge, 2006. I have written extensively about the whittling away of due process … Read more
U.K. lawmakers, unlike their Irish counterparts, are currently agonising over the Online Safety Bill 2023. It is far less draconian than the recent Irish Bill, which I recently assessed. This is currently being reviewed in the House or Lords – a body not to be automatically dismissed. This archaic assembly is still capable of acting … Read more