Rihla (Journey 36): Phnom Penh, Cambodia: GENOCIDE AND MEMORY LOSS

Rihla (The Journey) – was the short title of a 14th Century (1355 CE) book written in Fez by the Islamic legal scholar Ibn Jazayy al-Kalbi of Granada who recorded and then transcribed the dictated travelogue of the Tangerian, Ibn Battuta. The book’s full title was A Gift to Those who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling and somehow the title of Ibn Jazayy's book captures the ethos of many of the city and country journeys I have been lucky to take in past years. 

This rihla is about Phnom Penh, Cambodia. 

As a visitor you walk down the streets of Istanbul, Berlin, Phnom Penh, Kigali, or Sarajevo, and you admire in the young the bustle of activity, the laughter, the lightness of being as they go about their daily lives …. and you wonder. 

In your mind you start age profiling and ask the question? Do you remember? Do you have a personal or familial stream of consciousness that does not let you forget? Dares not let you forget! 

Are you a victim or a perpetrator? 

At societal level there is generally an orchestrated reconciliation of that memory, often assigned permanence in stone and legal statute, but equally often hijacked in pursuit of national or international political aims with an emotive blackmailing of commemoration. 

But what of the individual? Who owns the memory? Do individuals want to forget? Do they want to bury past memories because either the pain is too great or they do not feel it at all! People who have escaped wholesale slaughter of their kin intact often carry a ‘survivors guilt’ that prevents full participation in the reconciliation. 

One million Armenians of 100 years ago, six million Jews of 70 years ago, two million Cambodians of 40 years ago, 750,000 Tutsis and 25,000 Bosnian Muslims of 20 years ago… a repeating faultline in human behaviour and we have not learned how to prevent it. 

There is imminent danger of an imploding Syrian regime lashing out with chemical weapons perpetrating yet another genocide. There is an opportunity for the international community to help prevent it, and not ignore as they did the cry of the Armenians, the Jews, the Cambodians and Bosniaks. 

There follows a series of pictures taken recently on a trip to see Choeung Ek, one of the notorious killing fields outside Phnom Penh and Tuol Sleng Museum the city centre S-21 detention centre in the former Tuol Svay Prey Highschool that functioned as a clearing slaughterhouse. 

Once of the most poignant of the images is that of a school 'blackboard' on the second floor of Block C in  telling the prisoners to be quiet at all times, written in French, the language of the 'dangerous' educated in Cambodia:

Il est absolument interdit de faire du bruit 

Genocide is a crime of quietness. We must all make as much noise as possible! Cry out to prevent it happening in Syria, if you can.

Rihla (Journey 35): La Pared, Fuerteventura, Canary Islands: THE WALL, PINK FLOYD, JOHN LOCKE, IMMANUEL KANT AND RECONCILIATION

Rihla (The Journey) – was the short title of a 14th Century (1355 CE) book written in Fez by the Islamic legal scholar Ibn Jazayy al-Kalbi of Granada who recorded and then transcribed the dictated travelogue of the Tangerian, Ibn Battuta. The book’s full title was A Gift to Those who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling and somehow the title of Ibn Jazayy's book captures the ethos of many of the city and country journeys I have been lucky to take in past years. 

This rihla is about La Pared, Fuerteventura, Canary Islands. 

The Catalan Atlas of 1375

Canary Islands named bottom left.

In 1404 Gadifer de La Salle landed on the black, volcanic sand of Ajui on the western side of Fuerteventura with a mixed force of French and Castillian soldiers to continue the conquest of the Canary Islands that he and Jean de Béthencourt had begun in 1402 in Lanzarote. At the time of de La Salle’s landing de Béthancourt was in Spain having the title Lord of the Canary Islands bestowed upon him by Henry III of Castile and trying to raise more troops but later joined de La Salle in Fueteventura and founded the first settlement in a valley about 10 km inland, a town that still bears the senior adventure’s name, Betancuria. 

Frontpiece from the Le Canarien,

a journal of the conquest of the Canaries,

showing de Béthancourt and de la Salle.

From Roman Times (and particularly as a consequence of Claudius Ptolemy’s 150 CE Geõgraphikê hyphêgêsis or Geography) the Canary Islands had been called collectively the Fortunate Isles but it was in the 1339 portalano of Angelino Dulcert (de Dalorto) that the island was named separately as Forte Ventura (Great Fortune). 

When de La Salle and de Bethéncourt invaded in 1404 the island was known to the native aboriginal peoples as Erbania. 

The native aboriginals, the Majos were primarily of Bronze Age Berber stock from the north-west corner of the adjacent African mainland, stranded by wind and time on the island, and who spoke a Lybico-Berber dialect. In that dialect ‘bani’ is a word for a low stone wall and Erbania as a name for the entire island derived its origin from a low stone wall built across the narrowest portion of the island to indicate the separate territories of the Kingdom of Jandia in the south from the Kingdom of Maxorata in the north. 

Statues of Ayoze and Guize above the

town of Betancuria. Fuerteventura

In 1405 with the help of the mother-daughter local priestesses Tibabin and Tamonante de Béthancourt managed to get the two opposing Kings at the time, Ayoze of the Maxoratas and Guize of the Jandia to become baptised Christians, and surrender overlordship to the Norman in return for retaining landrights and exemption from tribute for nine years. 

The native population (leaving aside those sold or taken into slavery) appeared to have been assimilated in the main with the invaders. (Of note de Bethancourt’s own nephew and heir as Lord of the Islands in Lanzarote, Marciot de Béthencourt married the daughter of the local Lanzarotian King but later became tyrannical and sold the islands to the Portugese in 1448). 

Back to the Wall! 

About 30 km south of Ajuy is another volcanic beach and port known as La Pared or The Wall in Spanish and it is from here that the ancient wall separating the Jandians from the Maxoratas originated. According to the guidebooks segments of the Wall still exist but when you ask about it nobody is quite sure where exactly. And this is not surprising. Dry stone-walls in Fuerteventura are generally made from volcanic pumice stone and whether the wall was erected yesterday or 2000 years ago in the absence of dating pottery or coinage or plastic they appear the same. The wall that separated north and south was not defensive like Hadrian’s Wall or the Great Wall of China but literally a line in the ground, a border to indicate organisation of a tribal society, a demarcation to reduce hostility. Sometime in the past, long before the European conquest, warring tribes had called time-out and decided on the Wall. It then became a symbol of everything in that society, it was not a mere pile of rocks: it was Erbania. 

The headland at La Pared inlet, Fuerteventura.

I pondered on this notion of intentional isolation, while huddled in a typical Canarian beach stone-walled circular windbreak against the strong northerly wind that drove Atlantic waves crashing onto the La Pared shoreline, and thought of Pink Floyd’s Roger Water’s disaffection with a Montreal audience and the expressed desire to build a wall between him and the audience, and his feelings of abandonment and isolation. The expressed disaffection (and spittle) that was to result in The Wall concept album of 1979 and songs like Empty Spaces, Is There Anybody Out There? or Outside the Wall. 

In my bunker of separation from the winds and sand I extracted from my knapsack the book I had brought for holiday reading: A History of the World in Twelve Maps by Jerry Brotton, a fantastic exploration of the importance in historical terms of 12 key developments in cartography. I had reached his 5th chapter entitled Discovery, which concerned the 1507 World Map of Martin Waldseemuller.

Besides its value as probably the first map to name the newly discovered (or re-discovered!) American continent it was more for his contextual analysis of the map’s publication as a verification of the 15th century Renaissance humanist developments. Brotton writes: What is found at the historical moment of the creation of any world map is not the inviolable identity of its origin but the dissension of disparate stories, competing maps, different traditions. 

As I reared my head above the parapet of pumice, for some reason the backward message to Luka in Roger Waters’s Empty Spaces song from the Wall suddenly resurrected in my consciousness. Was the space beyond the wall truly empty, or do we as a society create spaces of imaginary ‘emptyness’ by erecting artificial barriers to desire, to discovery, to intercourse? Are we so afraid of the ‘dissension of different stories, competing maps, different traditions’ as to try and separate them in space. To cross from one space to another within society implies some form of consent. But from whom? Is it from within oneself or without from society in general? 

Before leaving for Fuerteventura I had been examining, from a medical perspective, the true nature of consent and had just finished reading an article in the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Special Issue on Justice, Legitimacy and Diversity on the tradition of “Consent” in society by Gerald Gaus, a philosopher from the University of Arizona. 

In contrasting John Locke’s (1632-1704) rejection of a medieval supremacy rooted in God-granted rights and his liberal social contract declaration based on Natural Law that all people are intrinsically free and equal and that prospective political authority or the legitimacy of any state must be based on the individual consent of the governed with the Immanuel Kant's (1724-1804) perspective that because of an a priori Idea of Reason, and the absence of justice in Nature, a social contract is necessary to fully realise individual freedoms, rights and justice and the notion that individual consent to the legitimacy of that contract is subsumed to the notion of a primary duty to participate, Gaus concluded in Mevlana fashion that there is a role for both approaches. Consent is basically a form of reconciliation of the individual with society, and that different traditions have different strengths in achieving that reconciliation. 

And this is what the Wall is, was: a reconciliation of that early Erbania society. 

There and then I felt the need to see for myself as to whether there were any obvious remnants of the Wall at La Pared. Logic, reason even, told me the wall must have ended where the land cascaded into the sea and getting up from the shelter (of reason!) I walked to the far end of the beach and climbed up the spur of land that jutted out from the village towards the sea. Halfway up I was certain that I had found what appeared to be a faced wall, so obvious and so unmarked as to then immediately dismiss it as a volcanic rock formation. I am still not certain and will just have to leave my photographs of it as a question posed.

The 'WALL' at La Pared looking east.

The 'WALL' at La Pared looking south.

On returning to Ireland I turned to Google Earth to try and explore the terrain more closely. A definite linear feature appears to completely cross the isthmus on the first line of hills just on the northern edge of the sand plain. The pictures that follow show a portion of a wall traversing the north facing slopes just above a dry bed about 5 km east of La Pared, and crossing that river bed at one point. This continuity would not be characteristic of field enclosures where the rivers edge would provide definition. The rest is conjecture. Again it is for the reader to judge.

Regardless whether this is the Wall or not, its existence remembered in the name of Erbania, in that of La Pared, and by the Canarian peoples, was of far greater importance than its physical construct. The Wall was a product of individual and collective reason, and a reconciliation of the legitimacy of a societal contract.

SECONDARY LEGISLATION AND SECOND-RATE DEMOCRACY

I hope readers of this blog from outside Ireland will forgive me if I post on a subject that appears to be intensely domestic, and yet if you are from Australia, the UK, New Zealand, Canada or the United States the matters discussed also have relevance in your domestic legislative process.

For many years there have been significant concerns about the increasing democratic deficit engendered by the unfettered proliferation and enforcement of secondary legislation in general, but even more so with the secondary legislation promulgated by delegated “secondary” legislative bodies such as the Superior Courts Rules Committee or closer to my professional life, the Medical Council.

Secondary Legislation 

 The Irish Constitution of 1937 provides for the delegation of power to enact secondary legislation: Article 15.2 of the Irish Constitution 1937 states that:

1. The sole and exclusive power of making laws for the State is

hereby vested in the Oireachtas: no other legislative authority

has powers to make laws for the State.

2. Provision may however be made by law for the creation or

recognition of subordinate legislatures and for the powers and

functions of these legislatures.

Professor Jim Dooge, one time Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, in a June 1984 Seanad Éireann Debate (Upper House of the Irish Legislature, the Oireachtas) on secondary legislation, said that secondary legislation was “unavoidable”. He clarified:

“It is unavoidable because of the manner of the detail with which certain matters 

must be regulated, a degree of detail well beyond what can, with convenience, 

be encompassed inside statutory legislation. It is also necessary, because the 

 nature of the modern policy is such that it is impossible to anticipate in a world 

which changes rapidly, not only technologically but also politically, but perhaps 

unfortunately not quite so rapidly socially, there are unanticipated effects. 

Also, delegated legislation is necessary because the borderline between legislation 

and administration is by no means a sharp divide.”

 Since the foundation of the Irish State the increasing inability of the legislature (Houses of the Oireachtas and the President’s constitutional testing powers) to formally legislate by statute for the rapidly evolving and profound social, scientific, economic, legal and moral environment has meant that in many aspects of life the State has absconded its responsibility and delegated legislative power to individual Ministers and Statutory Bodies such as the Medical Council, The Law Society of Ireland, and Superior Courts Rules Committee. Although governed by a primary Act this delegated empowerment results in a legislative process that is then two steps removed from the true democratic engagement and oversight, envisaged by our Constitution.

 The vast majority of secondary legislation enactment is by way of Statutory Instrument, signed off by the relevant Minister, or authorised official of a Statutory Body with delegated legislative powers. From 2000 – 2012 there have been a total of 9208 SIs issued giving a ratio of 1 Act of the Oireachtas (Parliament) for every 17 Statutory Instruments (a peak was reached in 2005 when the ratio was 1/27).

Much of the recent increase in SI use has been as a consequence of being the preferred method of transposing European Union Directives, involving about 150 SIs annually. (EU Regulations do not require any domestic enactment process as they are automatically incorporated).

The legislative tactic of transposition of EU Directives was enabled by Oireachtas approval of Section 3 of the European Communities Act 1972, and allowed by Section 4(1)a of the amended Act which meant that any SI made under the 1972 Act are automatically given statutory effect.

It was only with the establishment of a Joint Committee (a committee involving members of both Houses of the Irish Parliament – the Dáil or lower chamber and the Seanad upper chamber) on European Scrutiny in October 2007, a committee legislated for by the European Union (Scrutiny) Act 2002, that some semblance of European legislative oversight exists, even if Section 3 of the 1972 Act means that finalised EU Directives are a statutory fait accompli.

A former Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell has stated:

“As presently organised, the Oireachtas is nowhere near being in a

position to fulfil the enhanced role envisaged for it under the Lisbon

Treaty, let alone to discharge the functions which it has abysmally

failed to discharge in respect of our membership of the European

Union up to this point. The whole process of transposition of EU

law into Irish law is one which the Oireachtas has, largely speaking,

totally abdicated its functions.” 

Statutory Instruments and Domestic Practice

Leaving Skibereen Eagle-type European scrutiny to one side, for the remainder of the domestic Statutory Instrument process only about one-quarter of SIs are required to be laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas (Parliament) for potential legislative scrutiny. In practice, however, this scrutiny is “window-dressing” at best, as any objection to any or all of the provisions of the SI have to be debated in the very limited Private Members time available, and even if that was to happen a successful objection to any part of the provisions results in the entire SI being rejected. Given that a majority Government promulgates the SI then the likelihood of annulment is extremely rare and to date has not happened.

Professor Jim Dooge in 1984 summarised the wide variety of practices where Statutory Instruments were concerned:

1. “There are statutory instruments properly made but which can 

be certified by the Attorney General to be of such a local or a 

personal nature that there is no need to give notice of them in any 

form whatsoever.”

 2. “We have a second class of statutory instruments of which notice 

must be given in Iris Oifigiúil and which must be deposited in certain libraries. “

3. “In many cases there is a requirement that the statutory instrument be laid 

on the Table of each House of the Oireachtas, thus constituting a third group 

of statutory instruments.”

 4. “Among these there is a fourth group, which are subject to annulment 

by either House of the Oireachtas — the so-called statutory orders subject 

to negative resolution.”

 5. “Finally, there are statutory instruments, which require positive approval 

by both Houses of the Oireachtas and belong to the group of affirmative resolution.”

 Most Statutory Instrument enactment in Ireland is governed by the Statutory Instrument Act 1947 (+Amendment Act 1955) and its provisions apply to any Statutory Instrument which:

Section 2.–1

(a) is made after the 1st day of January 1948, and

(b) is made by any of the following authorities, namely:–

(i) the President,

(ii) the Government,

(iii) any member of the Government,

(iv) any person or body, whether corporate or unicorporate, exercising through the State any function of government, or discharging throughout the State any public duties in relation to public administration, (vi) any authority having for the time being power to make rules of court, and

(c) is either (i) required by statute to be laid before both or either of the Houses of the Oireachtas, or (ii) is of such character as affects the public generally or any particular class or classes of the public, and

(d) is not a statutory instrument which is required by a statute to be published in the Iris Oifigiúil (the Irish State Gazette)

The Statutory Instruments (Amendment) Act 1955 amended in part Section 3 of the original Act but kept the statutory demand that any SI subject to the Act must,

(1) (a) Within seven days after the making thereof, a copy thereof shall be sent to each of the following namely, the National Library of Ireland, the Law Library, Four Courts, Dublin, The King’s Inn Library, Dublin, the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland, the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, the Cork Chamber of Commerce, the Limerick Chamber of Commerce, the Galway Chamber of Commerce and the Southern Law Association, Cork.

Increasingly even basic SI Act 1947 oversight is being bypassed by inserting a clause in the enabling Act to have any SIs issued published in the Iris Oifigiúil.

Secondary Legislative Bodies and Democratic Vacuums

For the reasons outlined above where the State has delegated legislative function to a particular body then the democratic oversight is even more remote from the source of that democracy, and this has engendered an arrogant and dangerous arrogation of power, and abuse of that power.

An example of this dangerous development occurred in my own professional life when I had serious reservations concerning the delegated legislative powers being proposed at the drafting stage of the Medical Practitioners Act (2007). I pleaded for a rigorous form of democratic accountability but my objections fell on stony ground and the Act was passed with enormous legislative power delegated.

As a consequence democratic oversight has become near impossible. For example with a recent Statutory Instrument issued by the Medical Council (SI 171 of 2012) concerning Annual Retention Rules I felt that the threat of referral, of a practitioner who fails to submit a valid annual Application for Retention on the Medical Register, to the Preliminary Proceedings Committee to be draconian and objectionable.

The Medical Practitioners Act 2007 defines “published in the prescribed manner”, in relation to any document or information (howsoever described), means the document or information, as the case may be—

(a) is published on a relevant Internet website, and

(b) is available for inspection, at the offices of the Council and at all reasonable times, by members of the public.

These “publication” provisions are not enough to excuse the Medical Council under the Medical Practitioners Act (2007) from the remit of the Statutory Instrument Act 1947, and the Amendment Act 1955. Having satisfied myself of this statute requirement I asked the Galway Chamber of Commerce in February 2012 as to whether a copy, as required by the SI Act, of the most previous Medical Council SI (741/2011) had been deposited in the Chamber within seven days of its issuance. I found out that not only had a copy of the SI not arrived in time, it had not been received at all!

The deficit in democratic process was further stretched when the Rules under SI 741/2011 were put into effect from the 14 December 2011 and yet a very basic validation by way of publication in the Iris Oifigúil did not occur until the 21st February 2012.

This picking and choosing (and avoidance) of democratic oversight galled and prompted an exchange with the Medical Council, which finally resulted in being told that if I had any further concerns about the issuance and validity of Medical Council SIs I should consult a lawyer.

I am now obviously classified as a “vexatious litigant” in Medical Council eyes! So much for our second-rate democratic process where even the most basic of oversight demands are not met!

Henry VIII and the Lunatic Fringe 

What is the basis of this democratic deficit? 

They are known as Henry VIII clauses.

In 1531 a Statute of Sewers (23 Henry 8 c.5) gave the Commissioner of Sewers the powers to make rules (like the Medical Council), which had the force of parliamentary statutory legislation. Latching onto this development in 1539 Henry VIII forced through Parliament the Statute of Proclamations (31 Henry 8 c.8), which allowed him to make proclamations, which then had the force of an Act of Parliament and could alter the provisions of previous acts without debate.

For Henry VII in the 1530s read the EU in 2013!

A later statute of James I remaindered these ‘delegated’ powers and it was not until the Lunacy Regulation (Ireland) Act 1871 (34 Vict.) that such a clause found its way back into UK & Irish legislation again and which then was to be the kernel for the exponential use of secondary legislative arrogation of democratic process since.

The clause in the Lunacy Regulation (Ireland) Act reads:

118. The Lord Chancellor may from time to time make such orders as to him 

shall seem meet for carrying into effect the purposes of this Act, and for 

regulating the form and mode of proceed- make generaling before and by 

the masters and the practice in matters in lunacy, orders. and for regulating 

the duties and powers of the several officers in lunacy, and, so far as to him 

may seem expedient, for altering the course of proceeding herein-before 

prescribed in respect of the matters to which this Act relates, or any of them; 

and any such order as aforesaid may be from time to time rescinded or varied 

by the like authority; 

(The sad thing about the Lunacy Regulation (Ireland) Act of 1871 is that its provisions are still the primary legislation governing mental capacity in Ireland today. In the Court (Supplemental Provisions) Act 1961 the jurisdiction and powers previously vested in the “Lord Chancellor” are now vested in a judge of the High Court.) 

Section 3 of the European Communities Act 1972 mentioned previously is the ultimate expression of a modern Henry VIII clause. It states:

Section 3. –

(1) A Minister of State may make regulations for enabling section 2 of this Act to have full effect.

(2) Regulations under this section may contain incidental, supplementary and consequential provisions as appear to the Minister making the regulations to be necessary for the purposes of the regulations (including provisions repealing, amending or applying, with or without modification, other law, exclusive of this Act).

The clause in slightly less and equally arrogative forms has appeared in multiple primary legislation since:

 4.—

(1) The Minister may by regulations provide for any matter referred to in

this Act as prescribed or to be prescribed.

(2) Without prejudice to any provision of this Act, regulations under

this section may contain such incidental, supplementary and consequential

provisions as appear to the Minister to be necessary or expedient for the

purposes of the regulations.

Residential Institutions Statutory Fund Act 2012 

Or,

4.—

(1) The Minister may by regulations provide for any matter referred to in

this Act as prescribed or to be prescribed or for the purposes of enabling

any provision of this Act to have full effect.

(2) Regulations under this Act may contain such incidental, supplementary

and consequential provisions as appear to the Minister to be necessary or

expedient for the purposes of the regulations.

National Vetting Bureau (Children and Vulnerable Persons) Act 2012. 

Or,

5.—

(1) The Minister may make regulations to do anything that appears necessary

or expedient for bringing this Act into operation.

(2) Where a provision of this Act requires or authorises the Minister to make

regulations, such regulations— (a) may make different provision for different

circumstances or cases, classes or types, and (b) may contain such incidental,

consequential or transitional provisions as the Minister considers necessary

or expedient for the purposes of this Act

National Asset Management Agency Act 2009. 

Where delegated legislative function is devolved to a Statutory Body such as the Medical Council or the Superior Courts Rules committee the clause can also vary in empowerment:

Section 11.—

(1) Subject to subsections (3), (4) and (5), the Council— (a) may make rules

for the purposes of the better operation of any provision of this Act,

Medical Practitioners Act 2007 

Or,

 68.—

(1) From and after the passing of this Act the power of making, annulling, or

altering rules of court and making new rules conferred by section 36 of the

Principal Act shall cease to be exercisable by the Minister for Justice, and in

lieu thereof it is hereby enacted that, subject and without prejudice to the

provisions of this Act in regard to the fees chargeable in court offices, the 

said power shall be exercisable by the Superior Courts Rules Committee

with the concurrence of the Minister for Justice.

 Courts of Justice Act 1936 

Despite being empowered by their own delegated legislative rules committee there is a Judicial wariness of other Constitutionally challenging use of Henry VIII clauses as commented on by Chief Justice Keane in 2004:

It is well established that the exclusive role assigned to the Oireachtas in the 

making of laws by this Article (15.2) does not preclude the Oireachtas from 

empowering Ministers or other bodies to make regulations for the purpose 

of carrying in to effect the principles and policies of the parent legislation. 

But it also clear that such delegated legislation cannot make, repeal or amend 

any law and that, to the extent that the parent Act purports to confer such a 

power, it will be invalid having regard to the provisions of the Constitution.

These clauses however continue to be incorporated in primary statutes, with no European remit, and with no clear direction as to their validity, scope, or consequence.

Secondary Legislation – The Future 

Where ministerial orders are concerned the Houses of the Oireachtas must seize back control of the process and in addition to the Joint Committee on European Scrutiny establish a Joint Committee on Domestic Secondary Legislation Scrutiny.

Any debate on statutory instruments laid before either one or both Houses, and subject to either positive or negative resolution, should be removed from Private Members Time and scheduled in main parliamentary time on a once a week basis.

A very strict code of conduct for parliamentary draughtsmanship should be established where any incorporation of a Henry VIII-type clause will be tested by the President for its Constitutionality.

 Where delegated statutory bodies with legislative powers are concerned it is even more important that these are scrutinised and supervised fully. I would suggest the appointment of a Constitutional Court where all such legislation is automatically referred.

Further Reading: 

Dennis Morris:   Henry VIII clauses: Their birth, a late 20th century renaissance and a possible 21st century metamorphosis. 

Jonathan Buttimore:  Developments in the delegation of legislative powers in Ireland 

Brian Hunt:  Role of the Houses of the Oireachtas in the Scrutiny of Legislation 

Peter L. Strauss:  Legislation that Isn't - Attending to Rulemaking's Democracy Deficit

The Irish Supreme Court:  Laurentiu v. Minister for Justice [1999] IESC 47; [1999] 4 IR 26; [2000] 1 ILRM 1 (20th May, 1999)