Judge Jed Rakoff gave a keynote address last week to a conference hosted by the Centre for Law, Markets and Regulation (CLMR) at the University of New South Wales.

The influential judge from the Southern District of New York spoke about the flawed rationale for non-prosecution of offences related to the Global Economic Crisis. Judge Rakoff explained, as far as he is aware, the Department of Justice in the US has taken the position that no crime was committed in connection with the events leading up to the financial crisis. Their public position is that they could not indict for three reasons, some of which may be familar to the Irish case.

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Originally posted in the CLMR portal by Elaine Byrne (11 April, 2013)

The Salz Review into Barclays shares similar findings to the Honohan and the Regling and Watson Banking Inquiries. Salz attributed the extraordinary failings at Barclays to “corporate corruption” while the Irish approach has been to focus on “group think”.

“Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society,” warned Machiavelli. He was wrong as the Independent  Review into Business Practices at Barclays, the latest in a series of reports into the corrosive nature of investment banking, makes abundantly clear.

The probe into the manipulation of benchmark interest rates at Libor ultimately resulted in a £290m million settlement by Barclays with US and British regulatory authorities in June 2012.  In February 2013, Barclays surprised everyone when it revealed that it had set aside £1 billion to cover mis-selling as part of a damages bill for Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) and the cost of compensating small businesses, bringing its overall estimated legal liabilities to £2.6 billion.

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Posted by Elaine Byrne

Deputy Brendan Griffin (Kerry South) has introduced a proposed amendment to the constitution which seeks to -

• Hold a referendum on reducing the Dail to 101 members
• From 100 evenly populated constituencies  
• Retain the PRSTV system. 

Deputy Griffin says the primary purpose of the amendment is to help “ensure that the attention of parliamentarians can be more focused on parliamentary/legislative/policy issues and not on competing locally with constituency rivals, both inside and outside their parties”. He believes it would also lead to a less congested Dail. He argues that, at present, “many Deputies are waiting for weeks to raise a matter on Topical Issues and very often do not get selected high enough in the order of oral questions to have their issue discussed using that avenue”.

The Bill can be found here.

This book examines the fortunes of small political parties in Ireland and asks why no new party has yet emerged. While the type of minor political party in Ireland has varied, their fate, it seems, has not. Although some enjoy a brief time in the sun, termination would appear to be the long-term prospect for all minor parties. The usual pattern is a speedy ascent, an impact on the political system including a time in government, followed by a prolonged death. This book examines this pattern of evolution for the smaller parties in Irish politics.

As the Irish state has changed, so too have the types of parties that have emerged. With the first-time entry of the Greens into government in 2007, their wipe-out in 2011, the dissolution of the Progressive Democrats in 2009, and the failure of a new party to emerge despite the ongoing financial crisis, the time is ripe for this analysis.

Contributors include Des O’Malley, founder of the Progressive Democrats, Dan Boyle, former Green TD and Senator, Catherine Murphy TD, and a range of Ireland’s leading political scientists, including John Coakley, Gary Murphy, Kevin Rafter and Eoin O’Malley.

The book is available from Easons, most bookstores and thehistorypress.ie. Its RRP is €20.

Regular contributor Donal has asked us to link to his case for Swiss-style citizens initiative and direct democracy, which the Human Rights in Ireland website* has just published as part of the series Shadow Constitutional Convention,
He argues that there may be change in the criteria of decision-making at the top; change in social habits at the bottom. But unless these two are bridged by the mutual education of the democratic process, communication between the top and the bottom may cease. In Ireland, where the stimulus to change is external, something like this may in fact be happening