In such circumstances, we must essentially trust twelve people on a jury to get it right
What harm, you might ask, comes from Burke standing outside a school for the rest of his natural life? The answer is the precedent that it sets.
Mullen: “Crush dissent”
At the moment, Irish voters are being told that the changes proposed to their foundational legal document are small and symbolic. That simply is not the case.
Judges, of course, have a very defined and limited role: Their job is not to make the laws, but to apply the laws as written by the legislature.
This morning, just after 9am, more than 17 hours after the story that appeared on this page on Gript.ie was published the Garda Press Office contacted Gript to say that the unnamed person referred to in the story that appeared at this link yesterday, is not, in fact, a person of interest in the events […]
In this case, it is fair to say, Ireland was not looking out for the person who gets up early in the morning.
If she was smart, she’d have quietly dropped it.
Were it simply the position that Gardai had the discretionary power to grant immunity from deportation, that would be one thing.
There might be no better system, but I’m not sure that this system, reliant as it is on the prejudices and biases of twelve ordinary citizens, can be called justice.
The accused in this case may be found guilty, or innocent, and if they end up in prison, few will mourn their plight on an individual level.
Our legal system is slow, ponderous, expensive, and off-putting to most ordinary citizens