REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE 22ND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE IRSCL
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE 22ND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR THE REFORM OF CRIMINAL LAW
Dia dhíbh, a cháirde go léir. Tá mé iontach sásta bheith anseo libh inniu.
Good afternoon everybody and thank you for your warm welcome to this conference. It is a real pleasure to see such a rich coming-together of legal knowledge for this important - and in an Irish context, very timely - colloquium. I know that many of you have travelled very considerable distances to be here, and I have every confidence that you will find that it was worth the effort. Let me wish you then céad míle fáilte, one hundred thousand welcomes.
Thank you too, Chief Justice, for your kind remarks of introduction, and you, Professor McAuley for the invitation to address the conference. Had my career taken a different path, there is every danger that I would be sitting among you today, for so fascinating did I find conveyancing and land law as a young student, that as soon as I could I specialised in criminal law, a field of study in which I spent many happy years as an academic.
The criminal law has always had a special dynamic. It brings together the core elements and values of a society, laying out the rules-based architecture by which a society chooses to structure itself, balancing the competing needs and rights of citizens against the backdrop of a fast evolving society.
The very building in which we gather tells a fascinating tale about the evolution of a society, but also of the uses and abuses to which the criminal law can be put. Throughout Ireland’s long history, a succession of officials used the criminal law as a tool in their arsenal of oppressive devices, subverting the needs of justice to the preferences of power.
The legacy of that experience lives on, not just in our collective memory, but in the very legal system that we inherited at independence. It is telling that a priority of the founders of this Republic was the creation of a written constitution, not merely to create a statement of difference from the old colonial power, but as part of a very real, very potent pillar upon which the young Republic would stand - the subservience of the legislature to the rule of law and the embedding in that rule of law of the dignity and freedom of the individual.
The balancing of societal needs against individual rights and the demands of due process is a theme running right throughout the criminal law, and although the concept is simple in the abstract, when faced with unprecedented dangers, such as organised crime, international drug cartels and cataclysmic terrorism, we have seen that the decisions faced by society and lawmakers are anything but simple.
As society’s defensive buttress against the excesses of human misconduct, therefore, the content of our criminal law makes a very particular statement about the type of society in which we live. It attracts the attention of the public and the legislator more keenly than any other area of law - perhaps than all other areas of law put together. It opens windows on human nature that many of us would prefer not to look through, windows on the behaviour of individuals, of systems, of subcultures, and of societies.
In the cut-and-thrust of the common-law, legislators, advocates, judges and academic lawyers are engaged in a daily search for the perfection of that law - whatever about the perfection of behaviour - the finessing of gaps, the securing of just outcomes. In this search lies the key to the best way we know of creating a structure within which we can live humanly and safely with one another, as individuals who are more than atomised strangers but rather as members of a functioning, integrated community.
The very programme for this conference speaks clearly about some of the challenges and issues facing the criminal law today in many jurisdictions besides Ireland - terrorism, drugs, sentencing, victims and witnesses in the criminal process, persistent offenders, young offenders, and the criminal liability of corporations. The sophisticated entrepreneurship that is very evident in a number of key areas of criminality today calls for sophisticated responses both nationally and internationally.
We require the best of law enforcement methods and the most effective of laws underpinned by a culture of immutable due process and respect for civil and human rights. We don’t protect our rights by abusing them ourselves when tempted or provoked.
But we make no apology for constructing the best criminal justice network and we are in the process of developing for the first time, a criminal code for Ireland. Typical of most common law systems, our system, like Topsy, “just growed”, giving us a relatively unscientific hotch potch of case law and statutes, some ancient, some new. It might be just about penetrable to law students and lawyers but its scattered and fragmented nature presents real issues in terms of the wider societal accessibility of the law. It does, however, have about it a certain wisdom distilled over many long generations of trial and error and so the absorption of the best it has to offer into a new code is a tough agenda.
It’s a complex task, for it will effectively be a major shift of culture, but reassuringly it is carried out under Finbarr McAuley’s able chairmanship, and as this gathering testifies there is a wealth of international wisdom, insight and experience available to us which is being generously shared.
The International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law has been an invaluable reservoir of expertise and we are indebted to each of you for the sharing here in Dublin and elsewhere which ensures that the distilled wisdom of international best practice is given the widest possible audience. I know that this is not a one-way process and that code renewal is an issue for many States, in particular for those jurisdictions with long code histories. Finding the time, the energy and the political will to engage in such massive renewal projects can be difficult, so I hope that here in Dublin you will find a renewed energy and inspiration from the debates and deliberations, the sharing and the analysis that this gathering will generate.
You have a phenomenal work programme ahead of you, but then you are lawyers and contrary to all the stories told about us by accountants, we are not afraid of hard and challenging work and we generally have an uncanny ability to mix it with music, wine, lunches and dinners, maybe even sightseeing and shopping.
One of the benefits of a Dublin summer is that it makes indoor pursuits like conferences so attractive. Good luck with your deliberations and many thanks for bringing your interest, enthusiasm and wisdom to Dublin.
Go raibh maith agaibh go léir.