The Gazette 1991

GAZETTE

DECEMBER 1991

infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final." Gerard Hogan and David Morgan consider over 200 Irish cases decided since their first edition in 1986. But the authors do not accept automati- cally either the finality or the infallibility of these or earlier decisions. In their examination of relevant cases, the authors express concern for the general lack of respect for precedent. They note that the respect for precedent is the vital vehicle to ensure certainty and consistency and lack of judicial subjectivity which are the essential features of any legal system. The authors go so far as to speak of a breakdown in the system of precedent. In the context of any breakdown in respect for precedent, your reviewer in conscious of the words of Cardozo, one of the great American legal philosophers and judges. He wrote in 1924 in The Growth of the Law of the fecundity of case law. He continued: "The output of a multitude of minds must be expected to contain its proportion of vagaries... An avalanche of decisions by tribunals great and small is producing a situation where a citation of precedent is tending to count for less, and appeal to an informing principle is tending to count for more. Crowded dockets make it impossible for judges, however able, to probe every case to its foundation." Your reviewer agrees with Cardozo that certainty can be bought at too high a price, "that there is danger in perpetual quiescence as well as perpetual motion, and that a compromise must be found in a principle of growth." One is reminded of the words expressed in Glanzer -v- Shepard 233 N.Y. 236, 241; "Life (a legal case) has relations not capable of divisions into inflexible compartments. The moulds expand and shrink." The law relating to instruments of government, such as ministers, departments and the civil service, state-sponsored bodies and local government, is set out in

Administrative Law in Ireland. The instruments of control, namely tribunals and inquiries, the Ombudsman (Chapters 6 and 7), judicial review (in Chapters 8 to 11) and the modification in ordinary litigation where public authorities are involved (in Chapters 12 - 14) are described in some detail. Gerard Hogan and David Morgan have produced a treasury of learning. In so far as is possible, the authors have endeavoured to bring certainty and order out of the frequent wilderness of precedent. "He who has not a copy of Azo's books," stated the proverb of the Middle Ages, "need not go to the Courts of Justice." (Vinogradoff, Common Sense in Law p.202). The authors have provided an inestimably important service for judges, practitioners, public servants, and students. He or she who has not consulted Hogan and Morgan's Administrative Law in Ireland should be wary of going to court on any issue touching upon administrative law. Edited by Maurice R. O'Connell, Institute of Public Administration on behalf of DOCAL - Daniel O'Connell Association Limited, vii + 147pp, paperback, IR£9.95. As a barrister, Daniel O'Connell was described by a contemporary, Charles Phillips, a Commissioner of the Court for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors, as an admirable Nisi Prius advocate, a shrewd, subtle, successful cross-examiner, an excellent detailer of facts, a skillful dissector of evidence. His speech in the case of The King -v- Magee is a noble specimen of his talents and intrepidity. This he published afterwards as a pamphlet. Charles Phillips often acted as Daniel O'Connell's junior and stated that in the management of a case, Daniel O'Connell was both discreet and dexterous. Toward the bench 415 Eamonn G. Hall Daniel O'Connell; Political Pioneer,

BOOK REVIEWS

Administrative Law in Ireland

Second Edition. By Gerard Hogan and David Morgan. [London, Sweet & Maxwell, .1991, £39 . 20 paperback] What is Administrative law? Professor S.A. de Smith wrote in 1968 in relation to the term "adminstrative law" that in place of integrated coherence, our nearest neighbours had " an asymmetrical hotchpotch, de- veloped pragmatically by legislation and judicial decisions in particular contexts, blending fitfully with private law and magisterial law, alternatively blurred and jagged in its outlines, still partly secreted in the interstices of medieval form of action." The authors refer to the con- ventional definition of adminis- trative law as the law regulating the organisation, composition, function and procedures of public authorities (in the wider sense); their impact on the citizen; and the restraints to wh i ch they are subject. However, there is still the element of ho t chpo t ch in administrative law; the outlines of the subject may be partly blurred and jagged, but adminstrative law has assumed an important role in legal affairs in Ireland. Justice Robert Jackson once observed of the US Supreme Court, "We are not final because we are