The annual distinguished lecture in NUI Galway will be given this year by two leading experts on family law from Ireland and Britain, Mrs Justice Catherine McGuinness, former Supreme Court judge and president of the Law Reform Commission, and the Right Honourable Baroness Hale of Richmond. The topic will be "Family Law in Ireland and the UK: Common Threads and Divergent Perspectives".
The lecture will take place on Friday, April 11th at 7pm in Áras Moyola (opposite St. Anthony's), North Campus, NUI Galway. The event will be chaired by the college's law faculty graduate, Geoffrey Shannon, who is senior lecturer in family and child law in the Law Society.
Brenda Hale became the first woman Lord of Appeal in Ordinary in January 2004, after a varied career, first as an academic lawyer, then as a law reformer, and then as a judge. She was a founder member of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.
Before her appointment to the Supreme Court, Catherine McGuinness was a Circuit Court judge (1994-1996) and High Court judge (1996-2000). She was called to the Irish Bar in 1977 and to the Inner Bar in 1989. From 1979 until 1987 she was an independent member of Seanad Éireann. She is adjunct professor of law in NUI Galway.
Mr Shannon was appointed as special rapporteur on child protection by the Government and was selected by the European Expert Organising Committee as the Irish expert member of the Commission on European Family Law. He is chairman of the Adoption Board.
Reflections on Lisbon Treaty
The Irish Society for European law is holding a public conference on Friday, April 18th, on the Treaty of Lisbon and the Irish referendum. It is free to members of the public and worth three hours' CPD for solicitors and barristers. It will take place from 2.30 to 5.30 in the President's Hall, the Law Society, Blackhall Place, Dublin 7.
New Books on Law
Four Courts Press has just published a book by Prof WN Osborough, called Literature, Judges and the Law, which is a quirky little book of judges' summations which have been embellished by allusion to literary matters.
It contains sections on the Bible, Greece and Rome, the Middle Ages, Shakespeare and also the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
WN Osborough, emeritus professor of law at University College Dublin, is also the author of Law and the Emergence of Modern Dublin (1996) and Studies in Irish Legal History (1999). He has also edited several books in the Irish Legal History Series.
Tottel Publishing has just published Global Tax Risk Management, by Ernst and Young tax partners PJ Hehehan and Aidan Walsh.
It will be launched by the former chairman of the Revenue Commissioners, Frank Daly, on April 10th next in the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, Kildare St, Dublin 2.
Willan Publishing has just published Terrorism, Rights and the Rule of Law and Negotiating Justice in Ireland, both of which are jointly authored by Dr Shane Kilcommins of UCC and Barry Vaughan of the Institute of Public Administration.