Sentencing, Crime and Justice

If I were to give one piece of advice to someone starting out in the practice or teaching of law, it would be that everything you have learned or will learn, not only about law but about life, will prove useful at some point during your professional career. Here I recount how something I learned as an Arts student in Galway in the early 1970s helped me win a case in the Court...

The issue the UK Supreme Court had to decide in Rukhadze v Recovery Partners GP Ltd [2025] UKSC 10; [2025] 2 WLR 529 was undoubtedly an important one. It concerned the scope of the so-called profit rule as it applies to trustees and other fiduciaries such as company directors. In the words of the Court, this rule requires that “fiduciaries will act with single-minded...

On 16 December, those of us who are fans of Jane Austen celebrated her 250th birthday with tea and crumpets though, sadly, we can no longer have a nice peat briquette fire at which to toast them. It also brought to mind the fairly recent English case of Ben John who, at the time of his arrest, was a 21-year-old student (studying criminology and psychology). He was found to ha...

A convicted person who appeals against sentence to the Court of Appeal naturally hopes to achieve some reduction in their sentence, but there is always the possibility that it will be increased. And since the sentence in question is almost invariably one of imprisonment, the risk of this happening must always be taken seriously. Further, the appellant is not normally made awa...

The age of criminal responsibility has once more become an issue following the publication of the General Scheme of a Children (Amendment) Bill 2024. This makes no reference to the age of criminal responsibility, but submissions from the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) and the Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT) to the Oireachtas Committee charged with subjecting the Bil...