The Gazette 1980

GAZETTE

APRIL 1980

LAW REFORM — NOW! —Continued from p. 49

Law Reform Commissions entrusted with the drafting of legislation and have tackled these problems by employing experts, on contract, to tackle Law Reform subjects. Some four years ago the Government of Trinidad and Tobago commissioned Professor J. C. W. Wylie to prepare draft legislation revising their Land Law, Conveyancing Law, Registration of Title Law and Planning Law. All this has now been done by Professor Wylie and the legislation is currently going through the houses of Parliament in Trinidad. He was given a free hand to go out and meet all parties who might have an interest in the reform of the Law, to discuss their problems with them and then to draft the legislation. Our need is perhaps not as great as that of Trinidad and Tobago, but there are certainly wide areas of our Land Law and Conveyancing Law which should be reformed. Practitioners in other areas would not doubt argue that reform is equally necessary there. It seems clear that the rate of progress of the three bodies entrusted with keeping our law up to date is not sufficient. Perhaps the Law Reform Commission might improve its productivity by adopting different methods and selecting topics which might be dealt with more rapidly than some of those already tackled. It is suggested, however that the freelance expert may prove not only a more effective, but a more efficient and, indeed, a more economic achiever of Law Reform than our present combination of bodies. Incorporated Law Society of Ireland EXAMINATION TIMETABLE 1980 Closing date Examination Dates for receipt of entries Repeat of Final Examination — 1st Part 18-25 June (inclusive) 2 June 8 and 9 July 12 June Preliminary Examination 15 & 16 July 12 June 1st, 2nd & 3rd Law 13-25 August (inclusive) 4 July 7 October 15 September Ist and 2nd Irish 2 & 3 December 3 November Final Examination — 1st Part (not Fixed) Please note that this Notice corrects the Notice under the heading "Examination Timetable" which appeared at page 41 of the March, 1980 GAZETTE. S.Y.S. Lecture Scripts Orders for the Full Set of S.Y.S. Lecture Scripts, in 5 bound volumes, price £191.60 (carriage extra) should be sent to:- S.Y.S TRANSCRIPT SERVICE C/o Mr. Normal Spendlove, Solicitor 94, Grafton Street, Dublin 2

conservative, the formal advertisements for submissions, followed by the learned working paper, requests for comments and, ultimately, the draft Bill. Perhaps the example of the Australian Law Reform Commission, where the Chairman appears on "talk-in" radio programmes, would be too radical but the New South Wales Commission practice of issuing pamphlets containing brief summaries of the working papers, written in laymans' language, might well be copied. The approach of our Commission in its working papers has been, in general too academic: while its papers are a fascinating source of legal knowledge, they point in the wrong direction — backwards. There is too much emphasis on research into the state of the law here, which is sometimes found to be uncertain and, while there is useful comparative material, there is too little evidence of a striving to decide what the Law should be. The topics which the Commission have chosen for themselves,with one exception, are narrow ones. Why only "the law relating to the Domicile of Married Women"? Why not examine the doctrine of domicile itself, confusing to seven of our fellow EEC member countries and a survival of an era when mobility of the Population was unknown. Other countries have recognised the slow progress likely to be produced by Government Departments and

S.Y.S. Presentation Mr. Terence Dixon (left) Chairman of the Society of Y oung Solicitors, and Professor Richard Woulfe, Director of Education, Incorporated Law Society of Ireland, admiring one of a set of five bound volumes of fhe lectures delivered to the S.Y.S. since April 1965. The inscribed volumes were presented by the Society of Young Solicitors to the Law School of the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland at a pleasant ceremony at Blackhall Place on the evening of March 31st 1980. In addition to Mr. Dixon who made the presentation and to Professor Woulfe who accepted it on behalf of the Law School, the ceremony was attended by S'.Y.S. committee Members, by Mr. James J. Ivers, Director General of the LL.S.I. and by staff members of the Law School. The set °f lectures has been placed in the library for the use of students who were represented at the presentation by Miss Emer Moriarty and Mr. John Hurley.

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