Author Archives: David Langwallner

From top; Gary Oldman and Tim Roth in the film version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) with author and director Tom Stoppard (right); David Langwallner

It has frequently been recently observed that we are living in a spectator democracy where the populace is, in effect, disenfranchised and disempowered and perhaps only onlookers in events.

Many argue that this has become a cultural and indeed psychiatric phenomenon as we feel increasingly politically disengaged and enter a state of derealisation. Part of that of course is that there is an overall sense of powerlessness. Coronavirus, by creating social distancing and social atomisation and deregulation, is augmenting these tendencies.

In effect, the bifurcation and distinction between the world of affairs and the political world between Westminster and the Oireachtas, and the people, is being increasingly severed not least by spin and disinformation and a sense that control has been lost. The distinction between Hamlet and us. Between Varadker and Johnson and the Rosencrantz of this world. Between the Kremlin and the people.

Tom Stoppard, at 80, one of the last humanist cosmopolitan intellectuals, had a play that came out just before Covid called Leopaldstadt about the Jewish community in Vienna, having discovered relatively recently his Jewish lineage. As I did not long ago. Now, all aspects of Viennese and Austrian culture stoke my interest, so Stoppard entered my consciousness not for the first time.

My favorite plays, though not perhaps the critics overall favourite, is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), which became a film in 1990 with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth and it is the most relevant for our time. The play and film have always been a very clever conceit and an inversion. A kind of slick joke or truffle of inconsequentiality but most relevant to our time.

The central conceit is that which is least important can be made most important, or the last can be first in biblical terms. The two minor courtiers in Hamlet are thus foregrounded and the major work of dramatic art of all recorded time put to the side and the background. The major becomes the minor and the minor the major. A postmodernist conceit. Yet, there are other ways of looking at this.

Hamlet is, at one level, a play about courtly intrigues and the political life and these two characters – are peripheral to that though ultimately affected by it. In fact, we are living in an age where politics has become all intrusive and very controlling indeed, affecting destinies in a manner unprecedented, yeah, until the middle ages.

Vladimir Putin has now said we are in an age similar to the events leading up to the Second World War. In acute historical terms, given the levels of incompetence, it is more like the events leading up to the First World War and we are individually and collectively sleepwalking into it. A kind of docile somnambulism.

So, that is a major aspect of its relevance. It is always of course exclusively dangerous to be dependent on political patronage and favour when you can become the victim. So, in a reduced Shakespeare summary, Claudius wants them to kill Hamlet and instead Hamlet kills them and the brief out of context announcement in Hamlet is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, giving Stoppard his title and perhaps presaging our soundbite age.

Over 1,000 Covid victims are dying every day in the UK. Rosencratz and Guildenstern are dying rather quickly and not just from the virus but the effects of inequality and the illnesses wrought by an isolated state. We are, more than ever, caught by events and the effect they may have on us.

The play has a second conceit which is that the lives of the ordinary folk deserve as much attention as the political life. But, in a time of crisis, the ordinary life is at a distinct disadvantage and subject to the power of events as now. It is inequality, dummy, not the virus.

As victims of history, I have frequently referenced James Agee’s text Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941) and also Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) as to how ordinary people are caught in history and how the sharecroppers became victims and faced destitution. I have written extensively about how such a phenomenon of mass evictions is affecting Ireland.

The characters in question in Rosencrantz specifically mention they have no direct knowledge of exactly what is going on. They are at a level of removal. They are reliant on hearsay double or triple even. Thus, they are disempowered from making accurate predictive decisions as to how they should act and what course of conduct they should choose.

There is informational asymmetry, as there is today. Who knows what? Certainly not from governmental briefings.

In fact, their perception of reality is warped as they suggest accurately and that dictates their actions. There is therefore a split between the two on the question as to whether to implement the will of Claudius and kill Hamlet. Knowledge is power, particularly direct, verifiable knowledge in this day and age. Minions of all sorts face similar dilemmas. Or rather the people do.

They thus may not choose wisely if their knowledge base is incomplete, fragmentary or deluded. And, of course, to choose well is, in statecraft terms, to act like Cesare Borgia as Machiavelli would argue. But not me. In this age of crisis and disinformation are people choosing wisely? I have a sense that many are not. Why?

1. It is now a virtual certainty that Coronavirus will get worse and there have been recent outbreaks and upsurges in other countries and America is going downhill fast, given their dehumanised and unequal neoliberal society, though the UK is faring only marginally better. And the vaccines are an incomplete solution just as the virus is. Putin suggests rightly that inequality and poverty both with the virus and in general is destroying the very fabric of civilisation.

This is a time for ultra discipline and absolute caution and prudence in human affairs. Careful self-regulation and self-orientation, even allowing for hatred of imposed restrictions on liberties.

Or, as the play says:

“Give us this day our daily mask.”

2. To rely on subventions and handouts is not a good idea when the well may run dry. This is a time for work and dynamism if possible. Work remotely to work well with health, including mental health considerations foremost.

Precautionary measures should and ought to be taken but this is a time to earn a crust. Relying on a nanny state when the credit supply seems diminished seems to me a dangerous logic. This is a time to seize the day and opportunity. Hopefully, remotely and certainly safely.

Many are looking for a way out but be careful what you wish for and, in the words of the play, look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else. Well, how many if they can wish to expatriate rats from the sinking titanic. A worldwide sinking.

3. This is a time to use the great pause, which has become a form of popular intellectual self-evaluation but also a projected possibly non-fulfilled hope, to gain a greater awareness of what is a sea change and a shift and a portal in social organisation.

A time for realisation that certain trends, historically the stuff of science fiction, has become omnipresent and increasingly evident. Thus, remote working and individual working now seems on the cards and people have to view themselves as, in effect, standing on their own two feet or rather squatting in their kitchens or relying on handouts and subventions.

Automation may also increase surplus age. Knowledge is power and that knowledge should be used to self protect. With increasing demands almost menaces for money from the world wide mapping of our identity by nefarious advertisers we need to be more discerning and picky about when to do something, why, for how much and to assess in consequentiality terms what if any good it will do us if we have that luxury. The luxury of restricted choice in restricted conditions. The dangers of making a mistake.

And of course that leads into Putin’s other correct warning about the rise of populism or racism and ethnic biases and the demonisation of the other.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, of course, backed the wrong horse and obeyed orders unconditionally. A huge danger of our overly compliant age. They relied on information asymmetry and chose unwisely accordingly.

This is not a time either for wholesale compliance to all authority unless there is a bona fide and justifiable reason for their actions or for backing the wrong horse. Not least as with ever restrictive emergency legislation, and indeed counter terrorism legislation, it is easy enough to be executed for subversion in many countries in the world as they were.

We only know what we’re told, and that’s little enough. And, for all we know, it isn’t even true.
An understanding of the truth and indeed self-education to gain an understanding is crucial. Disbelieve everything unless you can see or verify it with your own ideas including, but especially, official information.

Stoppard’s other plays of relevance in this context is Arcadia (1993) which at one level is dialectic between chaos and order. Chairman Mao said, of course, where there is chaos, as there is now, there is opportunity. But this is not a time for chaotic but ordered behaviour with an acute sense of truth and conscious of the fact that the speaking of the truth has potentially unspeakable side effects.

Camus of course said, riffing on Orwell, that there will come a time in human history when the man who says two and two equals four will be sentenced to death. And that time is perhaps now.

Though Denmark seems much more stable now I understand. Nordic and middle European countries are in fact less mad or can afford to be though the Swedish solution did not work and Putin says candidly that human civilisation through the virus, inequality and poverty and the rise of populism as well as nationalist and irredentist nonsense, is on the brink of a collapse and what will happen to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? The little men.

Let us support them but not support them if fascism, racism and prejudice are their agenda. Let us support them with proper healthcare, housing and the right to offend and protest.

Let us support little big men or little big women.

David Langwallner is a barrister specialising in public law, immigration, housing and criminal defence including miscarriages of justice. He is emeritus director of the Irish innocence project and was Irish lawyer of the year at the 2015 Irish law awards. His column appears here every Tuesday and Friday. Follow David on Twitter @DLangwallner

Pic: Alamy

From top: Flagstaff, Arizona, USA; David Langwallner

Dedicated To Professor Robert Scher. University of Northern Arizona.

I was invited by Professor Robert Scher to give a talk several years ago before the Arizona bench on The Innocence Project and start out by thanking him for inspiring this. I was most grateful. It was a huge respite at the time. Robert is based in Flagstaff and it is a fascinating place.

Above the town and a steep uphill walk is The Lowell Observatory where Pluto was finally identified.

In fact apart I believe from Peru there is more climate diversity in Arizona in a smaller place than any other part on earth. The drive from Phoenix to Flagstaff only a few hours straight uphill starts with arid desert and cacti in abundance and ends up in alpine forests. It is like a compressed tour of the planet’s geological and plant diversity.

It is also a subtle or none too subtle reminder of all that we are losing and quickly.

The science is quite clear that within 60 years all animal life will be extinct so The Sixth Extinction (2015) by Kolbert maintains and although human mass extinction will not I predict take place as certain dystopias fear in reality it will by increments diminish.

Various parts of the earth will be rendered uninhabitable by plant and animal extinction and environmental meltdown thus encouraging more mass migration with no clear destination or acceptance and with social quarantining in secluded detention centers an obvious solution.

The divide in spoils and income and the radical variations in wealth and assets will cause earlier deaths through poverty and an under resourced protection system. Death on The Installment Plan (1936) as Céline would have it. The obsession with marketisation and growth has led to downfall and draconian legislation will become an increasing norm as state authorities seek to preserve social cohesion.

In effect A kind of enforced Social Darwinist Malthusian liquidation will take place precipitated and caused by environmental decline which some see rather alarmingly and with far too much sangfroid as necessary. Of course all well and good if you are not in the firing line.

A crucial consideration flagged in detail by John Gray among others is that agriculture topsoil is being eroded at rapid rates. Further, that the use of pesticides and market speculations in agricultural fuels is also destroying everything. Never mind the aforementioned migration problems of overheating and reduced human living capacity due to the greenhouse effect.

Gray in effect argues for a form of coalition of ideas between moderate conservatism and the green agenda. Conserve institutionally that which is good in terms of environmental and civic health. . This is a variant of the term sustainable growth or development. However, such thoughts though admirable are probably going to be non effective.

First and foremost the post truth universe has led to the multiple airings of climate change sceptics and climate change deniers peddling inaccurate ideologically driven lies and getting them accepted as an alternate point of view. One of the forms of cultural blindness that is most damning apart from political correctness is the obsession with balanced coverage. There is no such thing and nonsense does not deserve public ventilation in the media or law courts nor the purveyors of nonsense.

But Fox News and indeed The Irish Independent which respectfully reports the views of the dancing gnome of leprucauhitis Michael O’ Leary on climate change and other vectors permit endorses and encourages the same.

The agenda is clear: The super rich prizes its assets and its riches, the pillaging of the earth, more than the protection of the planet. Also the impending collapse is underreported or not viewed with clarity. So in the midst of the immediate pressing destruction of the virus the much more disturbing report recently to this effect needs to be foregrounded.

According to the Geophysical Research Letters the ongoing melding of the glaciers of Antarctica is now going to be exacerbated by the collapse of the greatest canyon on earth The Denman Glacier. As of now the glacier is mostly cut off from the sea thanks to all the glacial ice piled inside and atop the ravine.

However, as the glacier’s edge continues to retreat farther and farther down the slope, warm ocean water will pour into the canyon, battering bigger and bigger sections of the glacier and gradually turning the Denman trough into a giant bowl of melt water with nowhere else to go.

This scenario, the researchers wrote, could kick off a runaway feedback loop of melt that ultimately returns all of Denman Glacier’s ice to the sea — risking nearly 5 feet (1.5 m) of global sea level rise quite apart from rogue gigantic icebergs recently floating.

It also means that there will be severe population migrations from South to North as overheating increases such as the ever prevalent boats arriving at Sicily or from Mexico or other countries.  People will be desperate and refugee crises will compound leading to ever more draconian solutions to control population migration and to regulate and in effect dispose of humanity for protectionist purposes.

In short there will be chaos and ever increasing chaos. A spiraling madness.

Nor will the developed world be immune far from it. The increasing crisis coupled with pandemics with pandemics to come will further precipitate world financial collapse and has already led to the growth of authoritarianism and an ever oppressive jackboot state. In a sense the ensuing chaos will further strengthen the authority of the state and corporate interests. As John Gray remarked in a different context civilization is being replaced by barbarism. In fact there has always been a tension in liberalism between these polarities.

So The Lowell Observatory where Pluto was discovered is at the highest point of Flagstaff on a hill overlooking that beautiful hippie town. An oasis of education and funkiedom also is an emblem of the past or present. In fact the small town but community driven living of Flagstaff might be a useful way to run our lives in the future also an environmental consideration.

Fintan O’Toole has recently argued for the redevelopment of Irish urban spaces to provide bright coloured houses and such is evident in nordic countries and middle europe. Even Michael McDowell argues for the urban regeneration of Smithfield. We need to paint our houses in bright colours and it is cost effective but we also need more houses and not fabricated dwellings for fabricated lives. better models for living.

There are also environmental considerations about the quality of civic life with all of this. The cultural observer of society Alain De Botton in one of his very perceptive monographs wrote a book called “The Architecture of Happiness” (outlined the thesis that the buildings we occupy and the spaces we live and work in affect our state of well being and happiness). That there is thus a correlation between our state of mental health and our living and working conditions and that of course seems self evident.

Thus placing people in skyscrapers or as per the designs of the Bauhaus tower blocks of uninhabitability treats people as battery hens. America is the paradigm of the skyscraper mentality and Chicago under such architects of the future as Sullivan the progenitor of all of this. Earlier than Bauhaus.

I have had the privilege of visiting perhaps the seminal modernist or rather brutalist building of sustainable living in apartments Le Corbusier‘s Unite d’Habitation (1952) the perfect expression of his idea of “a machine for living in” and though wonderful in principle in application a bastardised disaster. The problem is not that or Gaudi‘s earlier more pleasant La Pedrera from an earlier period bu the tower blocks of the 60’s that were its progeny.

How can you function properly with a young family living in an overpriced tenement which chews away at much of your salary? Your commute to work in a pattern of urban flight to assist in greater livability compounds the problem as you spend your spare hours on a train to and from a workplace that often also contributes to the diminishing of your sense of well being and for that matter in conditions of over work and lack of exercise shortens your lifespan.

Thus a wildcatting lack of urban planning, the unregulated and the overpriced nature of the same is further accentuating our spiraling sense of chaos and social disintegration. The drug problem in the north of the city was caused by putting people into tower blocks rather than affordable and liveable housing structures.

Ireland wildcat capitalism is not unlike the road into Agrigento in Sicily, Italy full of disused or half built monstrosities after the mafia took backhanders. The skyscrapers and the crowded urban spaces and the slums have merged together to create an Ecocidal space in many places.

But not in Flagstaff.

Well what is good or very good urban planning. Well Paris was a crime and slum invested medieval city until the Baron de Huysmans created its prototypical grid system and its boulevards which have made it the definitive city in the world attracting flocks of people every year to indulge in a practice called boulevard ism or strolling the streets of Paris or even being a flaneur. A healthy exercise, life affirming and environmentally sound. The desire to walk rather than use public transport. Walking safely. in an environment where people like to walk.

Or Referencing the lovely buildings of northern Europe and middle Europe what about more buildings like this Hunterwasser House in Vienna, Austria?

The remnants of Native American civilization are everywhere in Arizona and the Indian reservation was bedeviled by poverty, social exclusion and a measure of crime.
It is very difficult to escape the bind of ethnic exclusion in America and indeed Ireland.

The myth of upward mobility is merely often that. Poverty and inequality are the great determinants of social exclusion. The Hopi reservation is in fact a de facto separate territory but is compound living and indeed is segregation by wealth not creating the same effect. Not that different to the distinction between Smithfield and South Dublin. Worlds apart.

The most pressing point of concern for the students accompanying me to Flagstaff was seeing the Grand Canyon. The wide cavernous snaking drops into eternity. The long basilisk-like canyons like science fiction spaceships from Close Encounters. Or The Castles in The Sky of Miyazaki both of which creative works it no doubt influenced.

One cannot express the wonder of seeing it or dangling on the edge of eternity which I had to take the overzealous students back from. Indeed the lack of safety precautions was jaw dropping. One slip on the path round the edge and curtains. Unobservant visitors drop down the Canyon every few months! Sedona the famous red rocks in a valley downhill from Flagstaff also one of the most incredible outposts of nature.

The contrast with the over populated urban conurbations and this huge space of lightly populated (some Indian tribes and intrepid tourists go down to the bottom) is vast and also as result of a visit to the Lowell Observatory led to me being reminded of the famous quote by Carl Sagan and his book Pale Blue Dot.

My main touristic aim which in fact took great effort due to America’s non existent public transport system was to see Monument Valley, the site of John Ford‘s famous westerns. I think the greatest site on earth of sheer geophysical wonder or the greatest I have ever had the privilege of seeing and it eerie reminder of all we are losing quickly and indeed how a futuristic desolate landscape might look. Lunar like.

Thus Arizona reminds us of the beauty of the rural and natural world compared to our awful urban spaces  and Flagstaff of how we can live well with a sense of community in small houses and affordable structures. It also causes us to understand the biodiversity and richness of the earth and how it is being undermined. it is in microcosm all we are losing and losing quickly.

David Langwallner is a barrister specialising in public law, immigration, housing and criminal defence including miscarriages of justice. He is emeritus director of the Irish innocence project and was Irish lawyer of the year at the 2015 Irish law awards. His column appears here every Tuesday and Friday. Follow David on Twitter @DLangwallner

Pic: Arizona Tourism

From top: Oscar Wilde; his cell in Reading Gaol as it is today; David Langwallner

I recently pre covid did a crown court case in Reading and, after a bizzare development whereby my client indicted on charges of robbery was simultaneously a witness in a murder case in an adjacent court, the case was adjourned. I thus sauntered out of the sleek new court, reflecting on life being stranger than fiction, and took the very brief walk down the road to a prison closed for the last number of years, Reading Gaol. It is three minutes walk away.

The prison is now a non-accessible if rather imposing oasis. Doors firmly shut but there is a number on the wall to phone security. So I did. A most helpful man, who does not wish to be named or identified, came to the door and asked me what I wanted.

Is it possible, I asked, to view the cell of Oscar Wilde, former prisoner here. He knew where the cell was and also who Wilde was, I explained my Irish background, produced a barrister’s calling card and was fortuitously allowed in, despite the prison closure.

The prison had been open a few years previously for a Wilde celebration of sorts. It is cell C22, rather anonymously named, but still the extant cell redecorated in bright colours, lots of red. Not the spartan colours Wilde must have faced but very pleasant, for it had been converted to a youth offenders’ institution. The thought did occur to me that Wilde of course, had abused the youth in conventional parlance.

The window from the poem “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” that he gazed out of is famously still there and I checked closely, and it seems historically authentic. I scrambled around to see if there was any WIldean graffiti but it has been done over so many times there did not appear to be any. But I did look out of the room with a degree of lift and gazed downwards confronting the Gorgons head, the prison courtyard.

In the poem it is of course clear that he saw the execution yard just below the window, and there it is a bit like looking into your garden.

It really is thus just below his room, or his confinement. Words matter, and he was a master of words beautifully crafted and phrased, the wit of all wits. Perhaps he used a suitably masked phrase to express his predicament.

By happenstance in a charity shop later I found a small treasury book of his witticisms, but I knew many of them already.

It should be stressed that he should never have been there in the first place, save for an error of judgment and perhaps hubris, to which we are all susceptible. His error of judgment was his wit. Words misplaced. As a Greek scholar he would have perhaps reflected on hubris and Icarus and flying too close to the sun.

The context of his confinement, let us use the polite word, at the height of his fame was of course that the Marquis of Queensbury left a calling card at his club to Oscar Wilde ‘posing as a sondomite’. Now of course the brutish inventor of the rules of boxing could not spell but the implication was clear and Wilde sued for libel, always, then and now, very dangerous.

He should not have done so, people should not conceal their failings or lie about them privately.

Wilde was lying and thought wit and theatrics could pull it through, and it nearly did save Edward Carson, a Trinity contemporary of Wilde’s. Mediocre lad, but a brilliant and tenacious cross examiner. Wilde got over confident about his innocent meetings with boys and Carson popped a surprise question. The true genius of the art of cross examination. After Oscar regaled the courtroom with the art of ridicule, dismissing any ulterior purpose to his many associations with boys, Carson asked about Grainger, said “did you kiss him?”. Wilde’s witty response, leading to his premature death,was “oh no he was far too ugly”.

The gate was thus open and other boys, less ugly, by implication were kissed. Reading Gaol Was the ultimate outcome.

It has always been a source of wonder why Carson was so vicious towards Wilde in court, considering they had played together as children in Ireland in Waterford, meeting again as students at Trinity College, Dublin, and in London. As the respective sons of a surgeon and an architect, Wilde and Carson were both born in 1854 to affluent Irish Protestant families in Dublin, and lived just a few streets apart

The Irish can be, of course, a deeply malicious lot. Anything goes and always has. Our downfall, collectively as a nation, is the art of cutting down tall poppies and destroying national heroes. Parnell suffered the same fate.

In any event, by a verbal mistake, Carson crucified him and, after several trials later culminating in a criminal prosecution, Mr. Wilde was off to do some hard labour in Reading gaol.

One should never be overconfident and should always see the pothole coming. Wilde did not. The intoxication of success blurred his judgement.Being cross examined, and cross examining, is a fine art and I have been at both the giving and receiving end so should know.

Wilde was also out of his depth, or should that be his milieu, and he did not understand the context. A courtroom is not a source of public entertainment, particularly if you are a witness. It is not a stage for a performance. Short precise honest responses are desirably required.

I have also visited Wilde’s gaudy grave in Père Lachaise, sponsored by his acolytes. It is, in that kitschy Art Deco way, over-inflated and slightly pop star-like, belying the grubby reality of what happened and what led to his early death.

Post release, or in the modern vernacular, post conviction he was a shattered man. A phrase such as a dandy in aspic does not quite cover it. His health was broken. The lubrications and dissipation of a certain lifestyle led him utterly unequipped to deal with the rigours of a Victorian prison. Dead in Paris a few years later. T

It is a grave risk always, as aforementioned, to submit to cross examination and Wilde should not have sued, unless capable of proving his innocence. He was too remote, in his gilded cage of artistic approbation in London, to get what he was confronting, namely the puritanical zealot that was Carson and the law courts, of which he was unfamiliar, and which he treated as a stage.

Carson did not, to be fair, it was said, pursue him any further after the initial damage had been done. The poor man has suffered far too much he said, refusing the criminal brief.

A smidgen of basic northern Irish decency if nothing else, a southern Irish person might well have accepted it for a few shillings? Well clearly not?

Now I would not have been there in Reading had my trial not been aborted, or if the friendly security guard had not let me in or, for that matter, if I was not practising law in London and had not got the brief to go to Reading. Causas causans.

So much of our success or opportunity in life thus is happenstance and accident.

Wilde should have realised, in Irish terms, he was on the pig’s back in London, that he had been embraced and accepted. He should have realised what people realised about him, and he should have acknowledged his foibles and certainly should not have crowed about them.

So, Wilde should not have sued and, all brilliance aside, and despite his death bed witticisms of dying beyond his means and the wallpaper or he needed to go, he died in a grubby hotel in Paris.

Reading Gaol seems to me modeled on Bentham’s panopticon based on the surveillance techniques he outlined. Constant watch where, by constant surveillance, the dignity of the prisoner is undermined. Wilde, expansive and gregarious, must have felt completely stifled.

The butterfly broken by brute force. It’s wing clipped.

I do not like cages, and God knows how Oscar was so confined. When he expresses in the ballad the fears, apprehensions and indeed dread of the man facing the gallows it is more noble than you might think. For when he gave evidence he signed his own death warrant, and must have been conscious of the dying of the light in prison.

He of course lobbied for prison reform as a result of his experiences in Pentonville Prison and Reading. My experiences in London so far suggest nothing other than people getting irretrievably psychologically and physically damaged by prison.

Certainly, the prison of constant surveillance and the harsh work culture are disgraceful as are the recidivist drug and abuse infested infernos we create today though they perhaps should incarcerate many of our right wing politicians and lawyers at least as therapy.

Not all artists, it should be said, lack wisdom and judgment. Beckett, a life well led and long, is in a different cemetery in Paris, distinguished to the end. Growing older gracefully. A less gaudy grave but a lot of tributes in Montparnasse.

I suppose what Wilde lacked Beckett had. Judgment. And judgment of people and context is so important.

Honesty also. Lies catch up on people over time and if you do lie do not turn it into a circus, Carson in his way, mediocre or not, saw this.

And now one more twist in the tale.

Long after Carson’s death in 1935, the son of one of his friends confided in a 1950 recently discovered letter:

“I was never able to get Carson to admit that Wilde possessed any ability at all. ‘Ah,’ he used to say angrily, ‘he was a charlatan.’’

Lod Birkenhead’s letter reveals the extent of Carson’s loathing:

“His distaste for Oscar betraying his own social class – consorting with people from the lower classes, as he’d have seen it – was almost as strong as his feelings of disgust about what Oscar had done.”

So Carson was not being honest about his motivations for taking the case. He wanted to do Wilde for his moral disapproval.

Though I love Oscar Wilde and think the Importance of being Earnest a greater play than Godot, because of its sparkling wit, it should be noted that Beckett wrote Godot at 50 with greater works like Endgame, The Trilogy and his wonderful evocation of childhood in Leopardstown in Company at 80. He preserved his dignity to the last.

In the interests of any degree of politicisation, which this contribution does not have, The Ballad of Reading Gaol is one of the greatest arguments against the death penalty, homosexual convictions and persecutions.

Given That the death penalty is still in Africa and other places still awarded for homosexuality the treatment of Oscar and his denouement is thus of piquant contemporary relevance,

But overconfidence in cross examination can be very dangerous. Wilde must have been conscious of this in his dying room in Paris witty to the last as aforementioned with two famous alleged deathbed lines.

“One of us must go: the wallpaper or me.”

Or

“I am dying beyond my means” (as he guzzled champagne).

Beckett opens Company with the lines to one on his back in the dark. Imagine.

One wonders what Oscar imagined.

David Langwallner is a barrister specialising in public law, immigration, housing and criminal defence including miscarriages of justice. He is emeritus director of the Irish innocence project and was Irish lawyer of the year at the 2015 Irish law awards. His column appears here every Tuesday and Friday. Follow David on Twitter @DLangwallner

Getty/BBC

From top:, left to right: Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Eamon RyanTaoiseach, Micheál Martin, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar; David Langwallner

The Irish Coalition Government, The Weimar Republic, and German Caricaturists

Ireland has  a coalition government of the two far-right-wing parties in a time of real national emergency. A recipe for putative stabilised disaster. Martin, deploying a Gay Byrne presentational lightness, with the more dangerous Varadkar, waiting for the succession and handover in 2022 which I predict will happen earlier for a variety of reasons. In any event, the tail is wagging the dog.

Sinn Féin excluded a pointless leftist opposition without any prospect of power or decision-making created to languish in permanent opposition as disruptors.  The non-entity Greens getting their pound of flesh and blood, though divided about how to apportion up the spoils or indeed how to peddle or create even a Green conservative agenda. The eternal assimilated Green coalition trap.

Now there has never been such a right-wing coalition government before as the parties have been divided on tribal and civil war lines, but what is even more sinister is that the hitherto divisions have receded and they have been replaced by deeply conservative corporate orthodoxy. In effect, the politicians are puppets on a chain controlled by the vested interests of ever more powerful corporate and business influencers.

This is a worldwide depression not even at its inception. Dark times. In fact, we are beginning to see the signs already obvious of stagflation and hyperinflation. A Weimar Republic meltdown. It is only an analogy for what is a collapse of civilisation and the neo-liberal model of the marketisation of human activity intruding into all sectors of life, and the virus has compounded all of these problems.

Of course the powerless and bought judges and politicians became part of that problem in The Weimar Republic as I predict they will be in Ireland, or are so already.

Much more revealing than any official texts of that period are many of the novels and the pictures which capture accurately what was really going on? Now in the film Cabaret (1972) the fictionally represented Christopher Isherwood is supposed to have left Berlin after he hears the Nazi youth sing Tomorrow Belongs to Me, an even more sinister version of The Horst Wessel Song.

In fact, in the book nothing quite as dramatic as that epiphany moment occurred in reality, just the gradual and growing persecution of the Jewish community, communists, dissidents and perceived degenerate races in a sedulous and incremental way.

The sense of unfolding chaos is well documented in Klemperer’s diary Let Us Bear Witness. He, in fact, was peculiarly well placed with a protected Christian wife and a Jewish convert to christianity but let go from his job. Furloughed. Perfect to bear witness in an objective way.

The sense of impending chaos in The Weimar Republic is also well documented by the caricaturist George Grosz, Otto Dix and others, of course. The essence of what the Nazis called degenerate art.

George Grosz, Pillars of Society/Shit for Brains (1926)

The picture above says more about how the Nazi judges and commissars worked hand in glove with their jackboot associates to precipitate the sense of impending disaster and undermine democracy in Germany.

Rather inelegantly it has been called Pillars of Society with the subtitle Shit for Brains. And if you look closely that is what you will see on one of the paragons of virtue.

Now this seems to me peculiarly relevant in Ireland today.

The following can be unequivocally said. In 2008, the double recession that hit the tiger economy led to NAMA and the bailing out and upholding of banking malpractice. The upholding of varied mortgage rates, the side deals of NAMA to uphold failed banks and speculators. The reneging on contracts and representations upheld by the courts and the persecution of whistleblowers who blew the whistle on all of this.

Now the Apple judgment, if not overturned, which it is at present but with an appeal to come, will lead the multi-nationals to decamp elsewhere as the entire economic model was built on tax breaks for multi-nationals ever since Haughey.

Conorovirus successively will destroy many small businesses, the pub and the leisure industry. And tourism is intrinsic to the Irish economy. How many can or will travel? It is a toxic time bomb except for the mega-rich and it is on the point of utter implosion as Ireland is put in another Level 5 lockdown. Economic unsustainability for many lives is very much on the cards.

Further, the EU as Varafakis recently indicated is likely sooner rather than later to collapse and, like a supernova, implode. And what do our corporate judges, bankers, lawyers and politicians do?

Well enforce further austerity and jackboot tactics and impose further shit for brains on a docile and far too accepting population. Socially distanced and self-isolated perhaps for the foreseeable future without a prospect of stability, a sustainable living structure or affordable rent or housing.

And what about our intellectuals?

Otto Dix, Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia Von Harden (1927)
,

Well, the Fintan O’Tools, David McWilliams, Feminist Pseudo Intellectuals of Caring Catholicism or worse still Nanny state secularism, well protected judicial mediocrities and fabricated café bar pseudo intellectual posuers seem, to me, to be evident in this relatively accurate representation by Dix (above) of bohemian non seriousness.

Powerless neo-liberal café side commentators and/or time serving survivors spectating on a society falling apart. The collective act of Nero fiddling as Rome burns or being like Heidegger in Germany selling out to the fascists to preserve their income structures. Our paper of record The Irish Times particular complicit in this respect.

And what do they see around them?

Otto Dix, The Match Seller (1923)

The homeless and deprived and disempowered of Dublin. There after all but for the grace of god go they and they will keep singing for their supper to patch up and appease their corporate paymasters until the ship is sunk.

Yes, boss. Yes, Leo, yes, we consent. Oh yes, Leo. Be careful what you wish for or consent to.

David Langwallner is a barrister specialising in public law, immigration, housing and criminal defence including miscarriages of justice. He is emeritus director of the Irish innocence project and was Irish lawyer of the year at the 2015 Irish law awards. His column appears here every Tuesday and Friday. Follow David on Twitter @DLangwallner

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From top: Illustration from  A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) updated for 2021; David Langwallner

Daniel Defoe: The Plague Years. Review. Fictional Books (January 2023).

Mr. Defoe has just written a book about the last two years or more of unsettling unpleasantness and although it may not be published and is privately given to this reviewer it is unlike his recent text Robinson Crusoe (2017).

In fact it is not a work of fiction though like that text it does concern a man isolated and observing. Self isolating to coin a phrase de jour.

Thus Mr. Defoe stayed in London despite the advice of Doctors to chronicle the events described in his text. But where could he go after a while? No one was allowed to go anywhere except for a local walk, a brief controlled shop or a court room or hospital.

An earlier book was of course published at the time of the last plague in 1665 by a curiously similar named author.

I am led to understand by a learned Spanish friend of mine that the conditions in the city of Madrid and indeed by my publisher Dublin were much different during the plague and those countries have been more stringent in curtailing the liberties of subjects which sensible British opinion such as the noble Lord Sumption have condemned.

The slippery slope to the creation of a police state now sadly evident. I understand also that the Chinese have behaved very extremely but at great consolation to the mass of the populace but at great detriment to the impact on civil liberties not least of those in Hong Kong. The cause of liberty and indeed human rights are much imperiled by all of this embedded legislation.

Mr. Defoe chronicles the events in London of all his present citizens he encounters as The Plague visits in this year of our Lord 2020 and lasts for over two years and the sediments are still with us with the possibility of plagues to come.

He seems to have seen a lot and perhaps has not maintained all the rules about social distancing. London at least permits that limited level of freedom. Now from his observations Mr. Defoe has made a number of points of I think universal significance.

He is concerned about how astrology and the dark arts are gaining sway over the populace. He is thus obviously concerned about the quality and standard of governmental briefings. By indirection I suspect he is concerned about the rejection and denudation of scientific fact which has blurred both the standard of our public discourse and its responsiveness to this crisis and how spindoctering has taken over.

A point he might have made but did not in an escalating sense of crisis is that the rejection of scientific modes of analysis and the distrust of experts may have contributed to the present sorry impasse. But of course scientists are also manipulable and sell products too.

He is thus obviously perturbed how those who offer to the poor and gullible on the black market false information and fake solutions such as paper masks of dubious non proven validity should be disbelieved and one should not fall into that particular venus fly trap. In fact a German lawyer is accusing Pfizer of fraud and many are profiting from and have profited from social and economic collapse. Late dark capitalism.

Regrettably, he endorses as a Christian gentleman, how religion provides solace but that is the last thing we need now. Not religious solace but yes of course christian compassion to protect the wretched and poor of the earth with widening inequality.

He saliently notes how the poor and essential workers expose themselves to danger and danger to others as they irresponsibly interact of financial necessity and travel when they should not. He notes the fearlessness and the recklessness but does not, in my estimate, sufficiently weigh the desperation of Conorovirus Catch 22.

That much older text by Mr. Joseph Heller, an esteemed American author, is worthy of consideration in this context. Now the premise is simple and that is a serviceman refuses to go on a flying mission or indeed any other mission with the certain prospect of death as to do so would be insane unless of course you were a Japanese Kamikaze pilot. Thus the indication he would not want to do so is an exercise in rationality.

The Catch 22 is that demonstrates his rationality and not insanity and thus he is trapped. Or rather an impossible universe creates the problem.

The larger Catch 22 is that as depression looms or is here we have to work but by working unless privileged to do so exclusively from the comfort of homes or sealed offices we are all part of Catch 22. If we do not work then the social structure and economy will collapse and resources are dwindling and we will not be bailed out. If we do work we risk self immolation.

In a most salient passage Mr. Defoe notes:

“I only hinted before, but must more fully speak to here, namely, that men went about apparently well many dyes after they had the taint of the disease in their vitals, and after their spirits were seized as they could never escape it, and all the while they did so they were dangerous to others.”

Thus he is aware of the spreader or the silent spreader and many extreme actions have been proposed and were implemented in this respect. But what choice did they have or do we have. There is no alternative. TINA.

The watchmen figure highly in his book the enforcers of self isolation but he I think does not fully understand how their now putative and assumed authority can be abused and who shall watch the watchman as movement, liberty and dignity were and are still restricted and many arbitrary and random arrests took place and indeed random acts of civil disobedience and said powers are now given permanently to the Hobbesean state to abuse.

There are watchmen in effect now in abundance and of course a growing harvesting of personal data and information for reasons we know not but cannot only speculate. Doubtless we will know soon.

He notes how the tavern shows were closed or curtailed and condemned in a civic fashion by those who flouted the rules and engaged in those illegal vices. Well a little puritanical. The puppet show continues and the taverns closed and opened and closed again in a merry go round for we should be sociable beings for that is all we are creatures in now a worldwide magic lantern show. Smokes and Mirrors and it is very difficult to know what is going on in a world of illusions, fakery and fake news, spin doctoring and assumptions of false dawns.

He notes that the much criticised alt right President Trump lost the election in far off america and was replaced by an ostensible democrat Biden but nothing changes and trumpery or neo liberalism continues and the poor die in truckloads worldwide.

Something he neglects to mention is that we still have had access to the Brave New World (an even older book by Mr. Huxley) of the London hatchery of Netflix and social media. The bread and circuses of our new dehumanised, atomised and distanced existence. Working and looking at things from home.

Defoe does deal with how information travels fast but not with the quality of the information provided and shared gossip by the sans culottes is very dangerous. Word of mouth and I believe what The Daily Blah says got also us in this predicament and the social panic that ensued.

The most disturbing thing he demonstrates is how the pit of disposal and the knacker’s yard is the common fate of many and how human disposal needs to be quickly dealt with to avoid the dispersal of infection and spread of the same. The hospitals have become like scenes from a war zone for that is what is what or society has become.

The last two years or so has been a salutary reminder of human behavior at its worst and indeed best and the resulting confinements and social chaos as well as undignified deaths in an under resourced hospital system often by key workers something we should not wish to see again in 2023.

But yet I fear all has changed and the chronicle of Mr. Defoe is not an isolated one and there will be more to come unless the present order of neo liberal globalization changes which it will not.

John Gray, the UK academic, in evolutionary descriptive not evaluative terms has spoken and written about a form of Malthusian population cull. Conorovirus achieves that in increments as may austerity, depression et al. This is a turning point not for the good in human affairs.

Mr. Defoe chronicles the sheer amount of early deaths caused by this visitation. A form of Malthusian Social Darwinism he might have added. The death of the disempowered by a world leadership corporate and political obsesse with thinking in terms of numbers and not people.

David Langwallner is a barrister specialising in public law, immigration, housing and criminal defence including miscarriages of justice. He is emeritus director of the Irish innocence project and was Irish lawyer of the year at the 2015 Irish law awards. His column appears here every Tuesday and Friday. Follow David on Twitter @DLangwallner

Illustration via Samzdat Writer’s Co-Op

From top: Gustave Flaubert; David Langwallner

Flaubert in a codicil to his novel “Bouvard and Pecuchet” (1881) has a very significant quasi literary addendum, the dictionary of received ideas. The essence of the matter is that he presents a vocabulary of traditional bourgeoisie terms with alternative definitions of same.

The argument is one of exposing official prejudice, preconceptions, standard held assumptions or indeed standard operating procedure, quackery and nonsense.

Now in a world dominated increasingly by the soundbite, the simplification and the cult of the expert or pseudo expert let us propose some terms for inclusion in a modern version of a dictionary of received ideas.

I shall approach the matter chronologically but also thematically and where necessary expand. I would hope to encourage a discussion where others can add other expressions with alternative definitions and of course none of my definitions are sacrosanct.

Flaubert was of course in general tremendously interested in bourgeoisie hypocrisy and indeed mediocrity and “Madame Bovary” (1856) his most esteemed novel exemplifies all of this rather trenchantly and tragically.

Louis Buñuel, the great Spanish atheistic director, perhaps the greatest chronicler of the modern age of bourgeois hypocrisy in a variety of different films with particular reference to attitudes towards sexuality, religion and etiquette in his devastating satire was also a demoniser of the middle class and one of his later films summarized his position ultimately in the deliberately ironic title “The Discreet Charm of The Bourgeoisie.” (1972).

The point is that formal manners and discretion and a degree of polish and pseudo education contain a multitude of horrors both self-inflicted and indeed inflicted on others. Bearing all of these ideas in mind let us start our modern day dictionary of received ideas.

A:

Academic: Someone who is an expert in a particular area of learning. In reality someone whose expertise is never tested in a field situation and may or may not be an expert. Particular contempt must be shown for law academics. Not academics as such. Or someone who can only function in a controlled audience with a captive audience. A time server for corporate sponsors. On the other hand academics are supposed to be inadept in the real world whereas that is far from true in many instances.

Adults: A neo liberal corporate fiscally responsible idiot dedicated to family values the service of the state, god and country and the lining of his or her pockets. An appropriate adult as above. An inappropriate adult is a human rights lawyer, dissident, journalist, communist or indeed any poor or weak person particularly those of sub races such as Greeks or Irish who the Eurocrats can exploit. See Lagarde inappropriate adults in the room

Administrator: A person often in a University in charge of the smooth operation and impartial running of a faculty. A slightly deranged and frustrated sociopath who prevents people doing their job by red tape. A bureaucrat and a fascist.

Alcoholic: Someone with a major drink problem and drink dependency. Someone who you wish to destroy because they are more talented than you and who enjoys a tipple too much.

American:A force of world progress and innovation. A hippie New York liberal. A Neo Liberal Imperialist Religious fundamentalist. An ubermensch Ayn Rand fascist like Bannon. Someone who believes in facsism and the control of the world by the mega rich.

Austerity: The need to impose belt tightening measures in a reduced economic situation. In reality the imposition and facilitation of state and banking criminality for the enrichment of multinationals and vulture funds and entities like Goldman Sachs who was responsible for all other austerity measures in the first place. Socialism for the rich and Capitalism for the poor. Traducing Zizek we do the thinking and you do the austerity.

Attitude: I do not like the manner in which that person is acting or his attitude (see arrogance) which in effect means he is right and cleverer than me and present a threat to my superior position thus I will fire or seek to destroy him by whatever means possible. He should do what he is told and obey orders. When I as CEO am then indicted he can take the rap.

Ape: From Dr. Johnson a monkey good at imitating. Or as I might suggest a politician or corporate business man.

Arrogance:  falsely inflated and rude sense of oneself in a conventional definition which, in effect, means I do not understand what he or she says and since I have no rational method of disputing the same I will call it arrogance. An idiot who resents. Often an over-indulged rich kid, AKA a judge from a privileged background.

B:

Balance: (Worse Still Balanced Coverage).

Bankrupt: From Dr. Johnson a debtor beyond the reach of payment. Or as I might suggest Not to be confused with a rich banker, lawyer or property speculator where vast debts are written off. Often a poor person is misled by banks.

Businessman: Someone who is self employed and contributing to the enhancement of jobs by the creation of trickle down wealth. In reality a ruthless sociopath engaged in a practice of cartelization for self-enrichment based on the exploitation of others and also hugely adept at doublespeak see also climate change.

C:

Corporate Lawyer: A business lawyer who advises businesses and organizations. A crook that contributes to world misery and neo-liberalism and uses vulture funds and investment banks to inflict further misery on defenseless nations.

Criminal: A person who breaks a law. In reality of course a law can and is broken by state criminals and since the laws are written by corporate criminals to suit their interests they are breaking all sorts of moral codes but not committing crimes. Let us also look at the vexed question of morality in this respect. A criminal is not in bourgeois terms a criminal if they occupy a position of official responsibility and power so they determine who is a criminal without casting the lenses on themselves a feature of the establishment. Now the term criminal has expanded to a human rights lawyer, a dissident, someone who has anti governmental thoughts, a democratically elected person we do not approve of. Anyone we do not like. Aliende or those who held the election in Catalonia.

Criminal Lawyer:A lawyer with an expertise in crime and evidence. A courtroom trial lawyer. In reality a performing flea, psychologist and vaudeville act. A genius with words and emotional manipulation. A trouble maker sees a criminal defence lawyer.

Court: The temple of justice and equity where claims are fairly processed. In reality a shabby venal deal making den of inequity for the unjust enrichment of lawyers where every procedural and non-equitable tactical ruse is utilized to secure a result and where justice has nothing to do with it. See Charles Dickens.

Civil Servant: An official of the state whose job it is to serve the interest of the state and the national interest. A time server adept at doing nothing but seeming to do things. A master in fudge and procrastination and doublespeak. A zealous opponent of human rights and a state criminal in league with the government and Police forces to remove enemies of the state by whatever means possible. A lover of the opera.

Climate Change: The reality that the world is heating up and parts will be uninhabitable and there will be massive population displacement and all sorts of social ills. Something to be denied by RyanAir boss Michael O’ Leary because it does not suit the agenda of the corporatocracy. Something that people have to be convinced does not exist so the rich can continue on unjustly enriching ourselves in the short term. Something a disruptive Swedish child adult thinks is destroying everything

CoNorovirus:A dangerous epidemic threatening humanity and warranting extreme measures of social distancing and self-isolation. A vastly overstated crisis leading to the curtailment of human rights, permanent alteration in work practices and economic meltdown as well as mental and physical deterioration. See also anti-terrorist legislation.

Conservative: A moderate person seeking to conserve the good in the Disraeli sense. A deeply deranged fascist hating migrants, socialists and poor people. Take your pick, both are in evidence.

D:
Continue reading →

From top: Jonathan Swift face mask; David Langwallner

A Ted Talk by Brendan O’ Fúcbag, Eminent Irish Civil Servant to a Meeting of the Bilderberg Group in Lockdown. Location Geneva.

It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town of Dublin, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, crowded with beggars, children, teenagers, all in rags, importuning every passenger for an alms, their simple homes now requisitioned by legitimate – if unfortunate – legal procedure.

Such people would traditionally face the happy prospect of a migratory adventure, to Britain, America, or the Indies. But now all borders are closed and that state policy of exporting the surplus population is impossible. And work at home is impossible because of the Level 5 lockdown and the tourism and hospitality trade now on the brink of extinction.
Decision Makers and Thought Leaders in these times have to make hard choices, tough choices, and honest choices.

I think it is agreed by our representatives of all Irish parties – that is to say, FG and FF – that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom, a very great additional grievance; and therefore whoever could find out a fair, cheap and easy method of making these inappropriate adults and children sound and useful members of the commonwealth, without the necessity for export or internal destitute deserve so well of the public, as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.

But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the children of professed beggars: it is of a much greater extent, and shall take in the whole number of infants, children and adults, of the vulnerable, so they no longer need seek the charity of the state – our state, built by our forefathers – making great demands upon the welfare system, the charitable- that is to say, the NGO sector, and the courts by bringing frivolous and entirely valid cases. These people regrettably are welfare spongers, a drain on our resources.

As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years upon this important subject, and maturely weighed the several schemes of our projectors, I have always found them grossly mistaken in their computation. Now I have a rough calculation on the fiscal cost of such people, who contribute nothing to the economy. I believe they are part of humanity as are we all (hands raised to heaven for dramatic effect) – and we owe them compassion but firm treatment.

The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned three million and a half, of these I calculate based on governmental estimates, helpfully provided, that in the light of current and future plagues, the potential decamping of all industry thanks to the presently suspended Apple judgment, the destruction of the hospitality and tourism trade and the depression now upon us, that we can no longer afford even to debate such frivolous notions as a wealth tax, social – that is, free – homes, or any other such redresses posited for ‘inequality’ (for to put it plainly, there is no more a solution to Inequality than to Gravity!).

Our learned friends in NAMA – National Association for Misery and Austerity and our esteemed thought leaders have advised us prudentially.

While acknowledging that austerity is the fate and burden of a great many of these fine people, we must also consider that with immigration now only a slight possibility, drastic measures will have to be introduced to deal with the over 2 and a half million surplus in the light of the virus.

How then should this awful number be reared and provided for? Which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, it is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. For we can neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture – those industries in receivership or bankruptcy and soon to be without the steady subvention of European subsidy.

They cannot afford houses or apartments – not even a humble rural cottage – many resort to entrepreneurship in the form of controlled substances or – worse, being idle, they take it upon themselves to play at lawyering, busying our judiciary with frivolous and costly actions “in the public interest”.Continue reading →

From top: Dublin city centre yesterday; David Langwallner

It is the not too distant future and The Supreme Court of Ireland in the light of a worldwide pandemic of mutant viruses and an escalating housing, eviction and homelessness crisis has been asked to consider whether a right to housing should be declared in the Irish Constitution.

A number of Plaintiffs are going forward in a group or class action of varying different circumstances some with health conditions of great severity which may disable them from working and certainly would make homelessness a life or death situation.

The argument before the court is this:

(i) Does Article 45 of The Constitution and the Directive Principles of Social Policy lead to the conclusion that a right to housing of an affordable nature can be derived from Article 45?

(ii) If so could such right at least protect against arbitrary eviction prior to consultation and a mediated or arbitral solution where there is a compromise of claims?

(iii) Could an unspecified right to housing be declared under Article 40.3 of the text with the appropriate limiters above?

(iv) How relevant is the right to life clause of the constitution in this respect particularly given the emergency that is faced.

This article is influenced by Lon Fuller’s The Case Of The Speluncean Explorers (1949) and addresses how different judges might evaluate the question. Given the emergency we face and constraints of time it is obviously not as considered as that opinion and the core and binding parts of the views of the justices have been culled. Some commentary as to real life events is also included.

Judge Positivist.

“This is a remarkable case that is before the court and one’s absolute sympathies go out to the plaintiffs in question and to the social predicament they find themselves in. There is no doubt that the country is in a state of perilous economic instability. But I am a judge and to a great extent thus my hands are tied.

“There is a great misapprehension from ordinary people of the role of the judiciary in such matters. First, under the doctrine of separation of powers I cannot interpolate or read my own views into the constitution. I am bound not to legislate but simply to parse and interpret the clear language of the text. Plain words must be given their plain meaning unless ambiguous. Thus there is no textual right to housing in the constitutional text and I am powerless to declare one. In point of fact where I do so I would be overstepping my role as a judge and engaged in the sin of legislation. Judicial sin that is.

“The doctrine of unspecified rights of reading rights into the constitution is remnant of a previous activist age of judges now no longer. I am constrained in the delicate balance of separation of powers and deference to the executive and those that have appointed me to behave in a judicial fashion and thus not to read extraneous and contestable matters into the text.

“I adopt my judicial philosophy from forebears in other jurisdictions such as Lewis Powell in the US and am thus a textualist and a literalist. To do otherwise would be to abnegate my judicial responsibilities.

As far as the right to life arguments is concerned and as far as one of the plaintiffs is concerned Ms. Murphy I am convinced that her life would be endangered by eviction without appropriate institutional support and I urge the appropriate authorities to support her.

But again the constraint sets in all I can do is declare that in her particular case her life would be endangered. I am powerless to do any more and cannot grant a mandatory order forcing the authorities who have appointed me to act in a certain way. It is regrettable and I hope the situation can be resolved but I cannot do anything.”

Judge Natural Lawyer.

“The constitution of Ireland is a thomastic document and thus its principles derive from St Thomas Aquinas and christian natural law. This has informed the court in declaring a long list of unspecified constitutional rights as long as they conform with “the christian and democratic nature of the state.”

“The net question is whether the right to housing is in conformity with those principles and I find it is. But of course no right is unconstrained but is resource dependent and subject to reasonable legislative responses and initiatives and constraints on fiscal expenditure. Nonetheless, these are exceptional times not least in that the right to life is also involved, in my view, for all of the designated plaintiffs.

“In the light of this I order in a mandatory way the appropriate state authorities to immediately and without delay house all of the plaintiffs in this case or cease and desist from the eviction process. Now this is not an unqualified endorsement that other evictions may not be acceptable but these plaintiffs, obviously carefully chosen, are in a perilous position and warrant protection. I am not making a generalised ruling but confining it to these plaintiffs though as an extra remedy I also hereby order that within 14 days the government implement an emergency housing plan to deal with sundry other claims.”

Judge Realist

“My fellow judges are far too concerned with the quiddities and oddities of legal precedent and a somewhat pedantic erudition. If you read the Irish Times today a paper not noted for its radicalism or sensationalism you will see pictures of armed police officers evicting people on behalf of landlords after the rent moratorium has ended. Thus many lives are at stake. Judicial notice should also be taken that our deeply right wing government in league with banks and corporate entities is disinclined to do anything about this that is quite apart from judgments about their individual or collective competencies.

“This is a case to be approached in a pragmatic non dogmatic way and to adjust constitutional doctrine to policy and present social norms. We are the custodians of our society and the gatekeepers. We have an obligation to implement laws in favour of the majority of the community and the majority are suffering.

I thus have no hesitation and in terms of legal realist doctrine to declare an unfettered right to housing for these plaintiffs and others who find themselves in a similar situation and if matters are not dealt with within 14 days at least in an emergency context contempt proceedings will ensue and can be instituted.”

Judge Marxist

“The neo liberal world order is in collapse and Ireland is the center of the storm with huge wealth cartelisation and a very uneven distribution of wealth. Any growth is being channeled out of the country to enrich foreign holdings and Canadian and American vulture funds. Even those that can pay their rent as in the Tyrellstown Estate are being evicted as the collective assets are being bought by Goldamn Sachs with their proxy vulture funds. We are on the brink of revolution and social and economic meltdown.

“In fact as the Nobel prize winning economist Stiglitz said it is socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. Disturbing ideas are surfacing about race and mixed race theories. A form of Spenglerian social Darwinism and of self endowed exceptionalism is dictating attitudes.

“We are in effect a post colonial nation being exploited by the forces of the world corprotrcay and Europe.

“As a judge of course I cannot instigate a revolution but I can in Gramsci terms create a revolution by stealth and hegemony and in those circumstances it is quite clear to me that the resistance of liberal elites towards the enforcement of social and economic rights has outlived its usefulness and I have no hesitation in finding a right to housing immediately enforceable within 14 days for all.”

An earlier text of this opinion was circulated and the judge removed from the court and impeached by the FG party for conduct ill befitting a judge. He sadly had a heart attack. In any event a safe pair of positive hands was appointed and the vote went the other way. All is happy in wonderland.

Judge Blueshirt Fascist

“I am very proud to be a member of the Fine Gael party and have worn the blue shirt uniform as my father and grandfather did. I have attended FG conventions otherwise known as rallys and know that the business of Ireland is business. Our business not their business. You are with us or against us.

I recently had lunch with the Taoiseach and he informed me how to vote in this case. A lot of money is being made by our friends in business and in government and our assets and interest would be jeopardised by a decision in favour of the right to housing. The poor do not vote for FG anyway unless they are deluded which of course many of them are. We have orchestrated a very good bread and circuses campaign for many years to ensure compliance.

The Taoiseach was most informative as to how a degree of social cleansing needs to take place so that the good burghers are protected. Our finances collectively are on the brink of collapse so in those circumstances and to protect my obligations and indebtedness to the banks as a result of unfortunate property speculation I am instructed specifically by my political paymasters to vote against a right to housing.”

Thus by a vote of 3-2 after much deliberation the right to housing is lost.

David Langwallner is a barrister specialising in public law, immigration, housing and criminal defence including miscarriages of justice. He is emeritus director of the Irish innocence project and was Irish lawyer of the year at the 2015 Irish law awards. His column appears here every Friday. Follow David on Twitter @DLangwallner

Previously: David on ‘Tomorrow Tonight’

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