The Gazette 1982

CI A / E T N

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1982

to the practitioner in that he can read extracts from important cases without having to get out actual reports. There can be no substitute, however, for the actual report when in Court or indeed when preparing a case for Court when it is obvious that certain precedents will be relied upon. It is always possible that some point, which may seem to have little importance at the time but which may be vital at a later stage, may have been ommitted. This is expecially true in the complex and technical field of Criminal Law. To be fair the editors would no doubt be the first to point out this problem. Secondly however the editors do not inform us of the exact manner in which they have interfered with the text. For instance in The People (AG) - v -Cowan there are (at page 310 in the Casebook) four lines in italics stuck right in the middle of the extract. This appears to be a comment on the Judgement. Is this a comment of the Editors? Is it a statement that the Judge particularly wanted to emphasis? It would also be interesting to know whether the footnotes (usually references) are those of the Editors or are they part of the actual report. Thirdly, and most regrettably there are a large number of printing errors, and at times references to footnotes, which do not exist. Some printing errors may be expected in 400 closely typed pages, but I feel that they occur too frequently to make the book totally reliable in Court. Furthermore, I would not agree that the Casebook is completely up to date. It contains only four unreported Judgements (two of which are over ten years old) and very few cases from the nineteen seventies. The Editors claim that developments in Irish Substantive Criminal Law have not kept pace with other jurisidictions. They blame this phenomenon partly on the fact that Courts in small jurisdictions get fewer opportunities to develop the law, and that this is due somewhat, in our case, to "evident reluctance of defence counsel to appeal Criminal cases on other than Constitutional grounds." This last point is rubbish. In my experience, defence lawyers are very willing to draft grounds of appeal involving points of Criminal Law, Evidence and Criminal Procedure as well as Constitutional points, and I do not think I have ever seen a set of grounds of appeal containing only Constitutional points. In any event it is not only through appeals that cases reach the higher courts for decision. Decisions on State Side applications have produced a number of interesting Jugements affecting the Criminal Law, and none of these are reported in the Casebook. "Ivan Scott " (1980) is concerned with the definition of Common Law offences. " James Daly" (1980) dealt with the vexed question of the scheduling of offences under the Offences Against the State Acts " George Farrell" (1977) and " Jeremiah Walsh " (1979) dealt with substantive as well as evidential aspects of the same legislation. " John O'Loughlin " (1978) ruled on the so called "Claim of Right" in larceny cases. It is interesting to note that this last case was an appeal! Finally, but not exhaustively, " Carew " (1979) dealt with the offence of public mischief. My final criticisms are perhaps unfair. Every Editor of an Anthology is criticised for not including somebody's favourite poem. Similarly an Editor of a Casebook cannot include every case, and thus leaves himself open

BOOK REVIEW A Casebook of Irish Criminal Law: by Mark Findlay and Barry McAuley. Precedent Publications 1981. Pbk. only. 490pp. IR£16.00 + £1.50 post & packing. This book contains over four hundred pages of excerpts from many of the most important Irish Criminal Law cases. As such it is a very welcome addition to the rather poor selection of books on the topic. In recent years there seems to be a trend towards the publication of different books on various aspects of Irish Law. Gone forever, one hopes, are the days when Irish students were forced to rely on English textbooks and the odd Irish case. The editors of this book, both Lecturers, have attempted to produce a casebook with a difference. The reader is not given a note of the facts of the case nor a potted introduction to the relevant law - he is expected to extract both of these from the excerpt quoted. Head notes have been excised in all cases. This is a deliberate * policy of the editors. In their introduction they cast doubt on the educational value of the traditional casebook - that is where students are presented with highly abridged extracts from leading cases. There argument is that the student is not aware either of the extent to which cases have been cut or the criteria governing editorial decisions. Accordingly, we are here presented with extremely long excerpts and in some cases, in fact, the whole case as reported in the reports. Whereas I appreciate the point the editors are making I am not convinced that they have been entirely successful in their attempt to overcome these difficulties. Ironically part of the reason for this failure stems from the method of presentation of the cases. As there are no references or headnotes the reader can have no idea, for instance, of the year in which the decision was handed down unless he is prepared to look up the table of contents at the beginning of the book. Then he may be presented with legal argument of Counsel concerning intricate facts (and of course in many cases the facts themselves are in issue) long before these facts are disclosed to him, for example cf. The People (AG) -v - Heald (at page 300). Furthermore because the editors are loathe to interfere overmuch with the cases there is much boring and wasteful repetition. In The Minister for Post and Telegraphs - v -Campbell (page 19 of the casebook) a full case stated sent up by the District Court is set out in the first page and a half the Judge effectively repeats the facts of the case stated in the next half page and the decision itself takes up less than a page. Similarly in cases where there is more than one Judgement more severe editorial pruning would, I feel, have been in order. Finally I was surprised to see that the list of cases at the beginning of the book did not refer the reader to the pages in the book containing the excerpts. The editors also claim that this < asebook could be of benefit to the practitioner as it brings together ill ol the leading cases on Irish Criminal law in a single volume. I cannot agree fully with this claim. I he book is of value

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