Editorial

• Date: 01 January 2018
• Author: Glen Rogers

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Editorial

Lawyers are destined to live in interesting times. As generational power shis with

each passing decade, the work of lawyers – as facilitators of progressive advances

in almost every conceivable area of social, political and economic life – remains

intimately directed by contemporary human interaction, by fundamental changes

in the fabric and structure of society, and by popular and commercial trends. e

many changing faces of the law through times past mirror the prevailing moods,

attitudes and norms of the societies that have come before us.

For lawyers, what’s past – as the Shakespearean adage holds – is prologue. e

canon of precedent, on the one hand, breathes certainty into the law and enables us

to provide clients with reliable legal advice. From our earliest days as law students,

we study and debate the seminal, frequently colourful landmarks of the common

law. Some precedent, on the other hand, serves as a philosophical anchor that

besieges us to correct the anachronistic injustices of history and to modernise the

law. But lawyers and the law are, inherently, creatures of reaction, and it may be

easy for those of us calcied by the daily practice and study of law to forget that

the wider public’s comprehension of, access to, and engagement with the law is

essential to the proper functioning and progress of society.1

Remedying the historic subjugation of women and minorities remains an

important area of legal development. As the world around our small-but-mighty

Republic trembles with unpredictable political pandemonium, the Irish people

are busy stoking the embers of progress. e collective, compassionate and

categorical double-imprimatur of the Irish people for marriage equality in May

2015 (proudly making us the rst nation on earth to equalise marriage rights for

the gay community by popular vote) and, more recently, for the total removal

and replacement of the Eight Amendment in May 2018 (an experientially callous

provision not quickly enough consigned to the scrap-heap for too many women)

signals the enthusiastic engagement of Irish society, on an unprecedented scale,

with the law under which we live together.

at thousands of Irish citizens living abroad – particularly young emigrants,

thereby emphatically refuting the pejorative stereotype of their political

indierence and social apathy as ‘millennials’ – travelled from the four corners of

the world, at great personal expense on both occasions, to exercise their franchise

and progress our law is marked evidence that Ireland is atop the precipice of seismic

social and legal transformation, and is cause for celebration. One wonders whether

1 For our own part, the Journal has, where possible, departed from the typical law journal convention

to list only the most authoritative citations to reported case law, with a view to additionally providing

citations available in a more easily accessible (typically public and free-of-charge) location.