Reviews

Ruadhán Mac Cormaic’s book on Ireland's Supreme Court comes highly recommended by Seosamh Gráinséir. Ruadhán Mac Cormaic’s book reads with such ease that you tend to forget that you’re reading an extensively researched chronicle of the cases that have shaped Ireland. Each chapter serves to

“I was five years old when I learned that my grandmother lived behind a curtain.” The line that opens this book written by a former U.S. intelligence officer, Nina Willner is, of course, a reference to the Iron Curtain. Forty Autumns spans three generations of the author’s family living in Eas

Kapil Summan was greatly impressed by East West Street and spoke to the author about current threats to human rights. In The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee, scientist Jared Diamond cites 20 genocides since 1950, arguing that “genocide has been part of our human and prehuman heritage for

The main character in WHS McIntyre’s book is Robbie Munro, a criminal lawyer in a one man band on Linlithgow High Street. From this book’s opening paragraph, it takes the reader into the highly recognisable field for lawyers undertaking criminal work as it refers to “Clients. They fall into on

The fourth in Dr Fiona Westwood's series has just been published and is a must for any solicitor taking the nurturing of young lawyers or their own professional development seriously. Following Achieving Best Practice-shaping professionals for success (2001), Accelerated Best Practice-implementing s

Churchill and Ireland

Ross Harper remembers Ross Harper, as author of this biography, certainly needs no introduction to Scottish lawyers given the number of legal roles, both in Scotland and at the International Bar Association, which he undertook during his lengthy career. That career included academia and the judiciar

Our ideas of Paris during the war may well have been shaped from the film Casablanca. "Well, Rick, we’ll always have Paris…" Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) says. But I would doubt few, if any of us, would have paused to consider what Paris actually meant for those living there in the period of the Second

Advocate Stephen O'Rourke is impressed with a new biography of the great barrister Marshall Hall. This life of ‘The Great Defender’ and Conservative MP Sir Edward Marshall Hall KC (1858-1927) is a fascinating read, beautifully written by another English silk, Sally Smith QC.

Trials: On Death Row in Pakistan by Isabel Buchanan

John Sturrock QC enjoys a Poacher's Pilgrimage to the Western Isles and finds this mystical journey is much more than another travel book. The human ecologist, Alastair McIntosh has already established his credentials as one of Scotland’s greatest living authors. Soil and Soul and Hell and High Wa

Long ago I was introduced to the philosophy of David Hume (1711-76) by the late Neil MacCormick lecturing in the Jurisprudence class at Edinburgh University. It was the best of ways to meet another great mind. In the scheme of the course Hume was presented as the harbinger of the end of Natural Law

In Set Adrift Upon the World: The Sutherland Clearances James Hunter masterly weaves together a fascinating account of the Sutherland Clearances. One that takes you from the Strath of Kildonan and other parts of Sutherland to battles in New Orleans via South Africa and onto the foundation of what is

It may surprise some readers that the last Communard of this title is not Jimmy Somerville, the shrill voice of the 1980s, but Adrien Lejeune who as a young free-thinker reluctantly took the side of the Commune revolutionaries when the people of Paris rose up against the reactionary French governmen

The gavel, a device never used in the English courts, features on the cover of Confessions of a Barrister – and is a harbinger of things to come.