The Relevance of Jurisprudence to Law Part 1

This article is a response to Supreme Court Justice Gerard Hogan’s Annual Hale Lecture in Trinity College, Dublin in November 2023 on the on the topic of: ‘Grundnormen in UK and Irish Constitutional Law,’ and I thank him for sending it to me. The grundnormen is a creation of the legendary Austrian jurist Hans Kelsen. … Read more

Socio-Economic Rights Must Be Vindicated

The noted American historian, and Putin critic,Timothy Snyder’s recent text Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty and Solidarity (2020) is a cri de coeur against almost non-existent healthcare rights in the U.S. – which the pandemic brought into sharp focus. The cossetted Yale professor saw the light, as his country failed to cope. Our Malady is … Read more

Declan Costello and the Decline of the Just Society

Fifty years ago a politician published a manifesto which, if implemented, would have changed the nature of Irish society, would have defied the ethos of contemporary political culture and would have spared us so much of the misery caused by the recent crisis. (Vincent Browne ‘Remembering when Fine Gael flirted with a left-wing agenda’, Irish … Read more