David Langwallner 
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), U.S. President between 1933 and 1945, was born to enormous privilege. He came from one of the most aristocratic families in America. A distant cousin, Teddy, had even been elected President. In his youth FDR was a bon vivant and ladies man, who strayed from Eleanor, his saintly but still formidable … Read more
Donald Trump’s former confidante Steve Bannon has been on a latter-day American Grand Tour around Europe. But rather than making his peace ‘With learned Italian things / And the proud stones of Greece’, he embarked on an ideological excursion through the newly constituted enclaves of extreme right wing Populism; spreading a gospel on behalf of … Read more
The great Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities imagines a conversation between the Mongolian emperor Kubla Khan and the legendary traveller Marco Polo. Kubla Khan asks Marco Polo to describe for him the great cities he has visited. After a number of vivid and enthralling accounts it becomes clear that Marco Polo is confining himself to … Read more
The task of ascertaining essential qualities required to be a judge is necessary for the preservation of a functioning democracy. Any state demands gatekeepers of independence and probity, and leadership of the just and the wise. Importantly, the qualities that make for a good judge do not necessarily align with the skills of a successful … Read more
Professional experience as a criminal lawyer has shaped my appreciation of the interplay between political subversion and its criminalisation. I have observed how real subversion often emanates from those state authorities inflicting punishment against the supposedly subversive. This has come into sharp focus since a German court declined to extradite the deposed Catalan president Carles … Read more
The greatest trial lawyer of the last century was undoubtedly Clarence Darrow. He was often described as just a lucky country bumpkin, or a ‘lucky old son of a […]’ in the vernacular of the time. More than a lawyer though, he became the exemplar and paradigm of secularism in America, a voice of reason … Read more
Harry Gleeson was wrongfully hanged for the murder of Moll McCarthy in 1941, and fully exonerated in 2015 after the case was re-investigated by the Innocence Project in Ireland.[i] Gleeson was framed by the police, with the collusion of elected representatives, for the murder of Moll McCarthy, by reputation a ‘lady of the night.’ There … Read more
Editor’s Note: The presumption of innocence is a hallowed principle central to the Rule of Law. Human rights lawyer and founder of the Innocence Project in Ireland, David Langwallner rails against a culture of Political Correctness that permits trial-by-media of alleged sexual offences, leading to a distortion of male-female relations. He identifies this with an … Read more
