The Gazette 1967/71

Mr. Temple Lang said that the suggestion would go to the Attorney-General within a few days. The new committee, he suggested, should include judges, practising lawyers, academic law yers and civil servants, under the Attorney- General. The existing committee of busy, over worked civil servants could not provide a serious consideration of the legal implications of mem bership for Ireland. The wider committee now being suggested was urgently needed. When he opened the conference the Taoiseach, Mr. Lynch, referred at some length to the Attorney-General's committee, and indicated that its work was continuing. The conference produced a great deal of discus sion which could be called politico-legal, as well as debate on technicalities of the law. About twenty-five background papers prepared for, and circulated at the conference, ran to 350 pages of invaluable source material on many aspects of the E.E.C. and the four applicant countries. (These include Mr. Temple Lang's paper on the consti tutional implications for Ireland; Dr. Garret Fitz- Gerald, on the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agree ment; Mr. Marcus Mclnerney, on Ireland and Agriculture; and Mr. Brendan McGrath, on Transport Law in Ireland and the U.K. Of less parochial interest here are papers dealing with E.E.C. and the Netherlands Antilles, or Green land or the Faroe Islands.) Professor Hilding Eek, of the University of Stockholm, prepared a paper on Neutrality and the European Communities, and also chaired a morning's session on foreign and regional relations in the Community. In fact the discussion produced relatively little comment on neutrality. In his paper, Professor Eek quoted legal definitions of neutrality and discussed commercial and ideological neutrality before considering the cases of Switzerland, Aus tria and Sweden. His comment on Irish neutrality was perhaps conclusive—he did not mention it at all. He distinguished between the neutralities of Switzerland and Austria and that of Sweden. The two former had, in their constitutions and in other legal enactments, codified and defined their status as neutrals. Sweden had not accepted any international obligation to remain neutral : it was not a "neutralised" State nor a neutral State in the legal sense. "Nevertheless, the country follows a policy of neutrality in the conduct of its foreign affairs .. . 106

majority verdict be one of guilty or of not guilty, it shall not be allowed until there has been suffi cient deliberation to allow the majority to win over the dissentients, or vice versa. And it has been held that by necessary implication, where the verdict is one of not guilty, there shall be no disclosure of whether it is a majority or a unani mous verdict, thus ensuring that nobody will be put into the doubtful position of being known to have been found not guilty merely by a majority decision. To the extent of these provisos, it may be said that the section seeks to protect from injustice the life, person, good name, and property rights of persons tried by jury for criminal offences. On the other hand, critics of the section maintain that a verdict of guilty by a majority of ten to two is at variance with the general prin ciple of the criminal law that guilt must be proved beyond reasonable doubt. They ask how, if one- sixth of a jury of twelve are in favour of an acquittal, it can be said that guilt has been estab lished beyond reasonable doubt. The aspects of trial by jury of criminal charges dealt with in this article are but a few of the matters that would need to be considered in deciding the scope of the constitutional right to jury trial given by Article 38 (5). If answers have not been given to all the questions raised, it is because it has not been intended to do so. Rather has it been the purpose to suggest that on a topic such as jury trial in criminal cases, which lies deeply embedded in the history of the Irish people and which has been a hallmark of liberty in the common-law world, there is much to be learned, by lawyers and lawmakers alike, from history and comparative law. DUBLIN CONFERENCE ON LEGISLATION OF EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES Part II The Attorney-General is to be asked to set up a special committee to consider the legal impli cations of E.E.C. membership for this country, Mr. John Temple Lang told the International Legal Conference on the Expansion of the Euro pean Communities in Dublin that the small com mittee of the Attorney-General and five civil ser vants, which has been dealing with this subject since 1962, was completely inadequate.