Thirty Years of Legal Scholarship edited by Thomas Mohr and Jennifer Schweppe

• Date: 01 January 2013

THIRTY YEARS OF LEGAL SCHOLARSHIP

THOMAS MOHR

AND

JENNIFER SCHWEPPE1

Roundhall, November 2011

ISBN 978-1-8580-0626-0

Daire Hogan2

This volume of essays has been published to mark the 30th anniversary of

the foundation of the Irish Association of Law Teachers in 1979. It is a

summary and review and critique of developments in legal scholarship and

legal education in Ireland, north and south, over the last three decades. It

constitutes an excellent analysis of the changed nature not only of Irish legal

scholarship, but also of the way that law has been taught and, in a sense, the

contributions speak for themselves as to the quality of such scholarship.

The editors’ introductory chapter is a thought-provoking analysis of the

nature of teaching and publication in Irish law prior to the era of greater

professionalisation of which the foundation of the Association was a powerful

symbol. It raises a number of challenges for Irish legal academics, and indeed

for the Association itself.

The core of the book is a series of 14 chapters outlining developments

(and offering perspectives for future scholarship) in specif‌ic subject areas,

such as land law, human rights, tort, criminal law, contract law, etc. Michael

Doherty in his chapter on labour law makes an interesting observation on

the shift that has taken place over the decades from a model of “labour law”

framed by collective bargaining to a more individualist model of “employment

law” based on statutory rights and obligations. Our perspectives or starting

points on other legal subjects have similarly been transformed (or indeed

created) in the course of the last three decades.

Blanaid Clarke, having offered a useful def‌inition of scholarship, remarks

in her contribution that:

One would also expect that the label ‘scholarship’ tells us something

about the level or calibre of writing. It should involve some element of

quality and originality. It should also be useful and inf‌luential in the

sense that it is capable of changing how people, particularly the legal

community, think about things. In this way, legal scholarship may promote

law reform and serve a clear policy objective.

1

Thomas Mohr and Jennifer Schweppe (eds), 30 Years of Legal Scholarship (Roundhall,

2011)

2 Daire Hogan, Consultant, McCann Fitzgerald

Book Reviews.indd 145 11/06/2013 10:46