Letter from the Editor

A chairde,

It is my pleasure to conclude Volume 9 of The Eagle with the publication of our spring edition It seems like only yesterday that I submitted my application to The Eagle Editorial Board in July 2020, at which stage the terms “social distancing,” and “lockdown” had firmly entered our common vernacular. In the throes of the Covid-19 crisis, I was grateful to be offered an Editorial Board position; the gazette offered an engaging community of student editors at a time of great physical isolation from peers, a series of focused editing projects in the face of debilitating uncertainty, and a forum to write about exciting political-legal developments when enthusiasm for my own degree dwindled This year, it has been a privilege to serve as Editor of a publication that has enriched and inspired my study of law at Trinity.

From ICC arrest warrants to the 25th Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, this final, open-themed issue of The Eagle offers a wide range of articles examining some of the most significant political-legal developments of the past term in an informative, yet accessible manner I am delighted to feature an Irish language article in this issue, written by our very own Síofra O' Donoghue (p. 15), as well as the winning pieces of our ‘Home and Housing’ essay competition in collaboration with the Trinity College Law Review In our “Law School Life” section, you can also find articles reflecting on the variety of activities coordinated by our excellent student-run law societies over the past academic year I would like to extend my gratitude to all of our authors who took the time out of a particularly busy season in college to craft these compelling and thought-provoking pieces.

As always, this issue would not have been made possible without the dedication of our talented Junior Editorial Board: Rose, Aoife, Chloé, Beth, Arielle, Ciara, Jacob, Muireann, Laoise, Caoimhe, Síofra, Mark, Jenny and Simon. In addition to being excellent writers in your own right, I have been consistently impressed by your careful, diligent and perceptive editing this year. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the gazette’s wonderful Deputy Editor, Mark, who has been a fantastic first point of contact for authors and editors alike, as well as being a helpful sounding board for new ideas To our Copy Editor, Doireann, you have done a fantastic job in maintaining the upkeep of our blog this year, and I am forever indebted to your eye for detail, syntax, grammar, and spelling Under your direction as Editor-inChief for 2023/24, I am confident that The Eagle is in safe hands! I would also like to thank our talented Public Relations Office, Eoin, for promoting The Eagle’s online presence this year through such wonderful, eye-catching graphics and social media posts Finally, I am immensely grateful for the generous financial support of our title sponsor

Maples and Calder (Ireland) LLP, particularly the ongoing support of HR Business Partner, Ciara O'Brien.

In this final foreword, I would like to take the opportunity to impart the three most important lessons that I have learned from my time studying law at Trinity – advice that was, incidentally, offered by the first three lecturers of our Junior Freshman year Their guidance has, I would submit, informed and inspired my own college experience and that of my colleagues, sustaining our capacity to study amidst the challenges of remote learning. To the Class of 2023, I hope these are lessons that you will carry with you beyond the steps of House 39 and into your postgraduate and professional lives

After providing a colourful introduction to the Law of Torts in our first term of college (replete with tales of snails in ginger beer bottles and episodes of “egging”), Dr Des Ryan imparted the first word of wisdom to our class of fresh-faced first years: Remember to keep law in its place. While not grasping the full import of his counsel at the time, I quickly learned that Dr Ryan’s advice was, in actuality, often difficult to observe. Law is a demanding subject and the learning curve in first and second year is steep: there are Latin terms to interpret, bottomless reading lists to tackle, the OSCOLA referencing style to master As you come to the end of your Freshman years, you begin to recognise that the law is never static, rarely black and white, and ascertaining the current status of a particular legal principle is seldom a straightforward task Left unchecked, law can be allconsuming Taking proactive steps to avoid burnout and combat demotivated periods has been critical, particularly in the absence of regular college routines and face-to-face teaching during the Covid-19 crisis Freshman and Sophister students: enjoy your study of law, attend your lectures and seminars, engage in rich and contextualising conversations with your peers, apply yourself to your assignments, but know that your degree has a place alongside those activities that inspire and energise, such as spending time with friends and family and engaging in society life.

The second piece of advice was offered by Dr David Kenny in the final week of our Constitutional Law I module. After twelve weeks of accepting the law we had been taught at face value, Dr Kenny encouraged us to question everything from that point forward; to challenge the foundational principles on which our core legal subjects were based, to subvert the process of non-thinking that is so often masked as “legal reasoning ” In my sophister years of study, I have learned that once you start to interrogate the “rightness” of law, the sociopolitical ideologies and power relationships on which its grounding assumptions are based begin to unravel: your eyes open to the capitalist underpinnings of tort law, the fallacy of equal bargaining power in contract, the inherently male-based standards of “objective” reasonableness and gendered constructions of sexual offences in criminal law. Modules that have facilitated this exercise of deconstruction have undoubtedly made for a more rewarding and intellectually stimulating law degree, and it is my hope that The Eagle has provided, and will continue to provide, a vehicle for such critical debate amongst students.

Finally, the most significant lesson I have learned at my time in Trinity was imparted by Professor Neville Cox in the first Foundations of Law lecture of September 2019. After denouncing natural rights as “nonsense upon stilts” and offering a scintillating taster of the Socratic method, Professor Cox noted that to survive our time in law school, we needed to observe three pieces of advice: Be kind, be kind, be kind Admittedly, this instruction seemed wholly antithetical to Freshers’ Week rumours of snatched pages from library books and hidden copies of McMahon and Binchy in the Berkeley’s midwifery section.

Fortunately, after four years of Trinity law, I can confidently say that for all its brilliance and academic rigour, kindness is the defining characteristic of the Law School. It is evident in the members of faculty who have been responsive and available to meet students when studying law has, at times, proven overwhelming, in the colleagues who have offered to proofread essays in critical moments of self-doubt, and in the friends who have consistently helped me to “keep law in its place ”

With these lessons in mind, I would like to dedicate this final issue of the gazette to the Class of 2023 You have zoomed in the face of fickle Wi-fi connections, gone to great lengths to connect with peers in spite of physical isolation, and endured online assessments while facing debilitating uncertainty. Throughout the tumultuous period of remote learning necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic, I hope you know that you have acquired qualities that cannot be learned within the confines of a lecture hall – qualities such as resilience, perseverance and resourcefulness - which will stand to you in your postgraduate and professional lives For the law students of today are the lawyers, leaders, politicians, academics, and journalists of tomorrow; I have every confidence that you will pursue justice with patience, serve clients with diligence, and lead with empathy

Emma Bowie Editor-in-Chief

Minford

Copy Editor