“Congrats! You’re the Auditor” was the text message. In a long campaign, with five other candidates, I had already accepted defeat and gone to the gym. I was in shock when I heard the news. I ran up several flights of stairs to the Benchers’ Room where I was greeted by a round of applause and many kind congratulations from other candidates, staff, and students.
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A student on our Diploma in Legal Studies course, Paul Hughes of House of Calendars, has collaborated with Gerry Kennedy, a Barrister–at–Law student, to design and produce a 1916 Easter Rising Calendar for 2016. King’s Inns were delighted to support this Calendar by providing images taken from the original application to The Honorable Society of King’s Inns to become a barrister by Padraig Pearse.
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‘On the Geology of South America’ is the third book Darwin wrote of his series ‘Geological Observations made during the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle’. It was published in 1846 in the midst of a century that has become synonymous with industrial revolution and scientific thought.
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Mr. Dominick Chilcott, the British Ambassador to Ireland, is something of a history buff. This September, at the Embassy Summer Party, he devoted particular attention to the anniversaries in British history which have particular resonance in this jurisdiction.
Read MoreOn Thursday, 5 November 2015 (the evening before Dublin International Arbitration Day 2015), Arbitration Ireland will host a seminar directed towards young practitioners in the field of international arbitration. Chaired by Audley Sheppard QC (Clifford Chance, London), the seminar will comprise three sessions with speakers from across Europe.
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Today we welcomed the 2015–2016 Barrister–at–Law class to King’s Inns and had a lively time as we all worked through the induction process together. The BL class were addressed this morning by Ms Justice Mary Finlay Geoghegan and Ms Sara Moorhead SC who both spoke about the life in the law for which this professional course is a preparation.
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Sweeping and unprecedented changes to Irish Employment Law are currently underway. How employment rights claims are made will be dramatically different from October 2015 onwards. To ensure you are fully equipped with all the latest in employment law developments, you should attend the King’s Inns Advanced Diploma in Applied Employment Law.
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The community spirit that exists around King’s Inns is that student life extends beyond classrooms and textbooks. Activities such as dining and mooting provide an informal and friendly atmosphere in which students can mix with each other as well as with the wider legal community. In particular, the academic year 2014/2015 has provided students with fantastic opportunities to demonstrate their sporting prowess and enthusiasm.
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How the project began…
In its five centuries as a centre for learning in the law and for promoting collegiality and professional standards in the legal profession, King’s Inns has acquired many important works of literature and art among other fine objects. The library of The Honorable Society of King’s Inns houses thousands of books, some rarely perused at all and some never seen by the public. Even though the King’s Inns is primarily a legal library, we also house a historical/heritage collection of non–legal material. Our oldest books date back to the 1500’s.
The 4th annual British Irish Commercial Bar Association (“BICBA”) Law Forum was held on 23 April 2015 in the Dublin Dispute Resolution Centre in the Law Library Distillery Building. The theme of this year’s Forum was “800 Years of Magna Carta: The Commercial Rule of Law in the 21st Century”. The event was attended by over 150 Barristers, Solicitors and Judges from Ireland, Northern Ireland, England and Wales. BICBA awarded a number of bursaries to students of The Law Society of Ireland and The Honorable Society of King’s Inns enabling them to attend the event.
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King’s Inns recently commissioned another renowned Irish based artist, John Short, to do a new King’s Inns print series. What drew us to his work is his sense of place and the human movement in his work. His is a cinematic vision but intimate, personal and ‘in the moment’. For anyone with a feeling for the ‘majesty of the law’ and the drama of legal life, acquiring these prints will surely be a priority before the new limited edition is sold out.
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Líosa McNamara is a professional photographer who keeps her projects personal. She has the unique gift of creating visual poetry when she captures an image. This skill really reflected the romantic nature of the library and transports the viewer to a bygone era.
Líosa speaks of her inspiration…
John’s work gives the impression of spontaneity, “often the quickest seemingly throwaway and most immediate use of materials can often capture more than a few too many strokes”. His work is accomplished and beautiful, capturing movement that allows one to feel part of the scene.
John speaks of the inspiration for his piece…
Róisín Gartland is Irelands finest leather couture designer and in her other life as a conceptual artist she strives to break down the barriers between craft, art and design, seeing the creative process as all encompassing. The ‘Cover to Canvas’ project allowed her to combine her knowledge of leather and her skill as an artist/designer to create something unique for the exhibition.
Let us take a look at the thinking behind her piece…
Brian Maguire is perhaps one of Irelands most accomplished and celebrated contemporary artists, not only because his work is stunning to behold but also because of his subject matter. He is not afraid to represent, in paint, life’s travesties, tragedies and social injustices, highlighting them in a way that cannot be ignored. True to form this is exactly what he did for the ‘Cover to Canvas’ project, researching the injustices and inequalities within the legal system for people living in poverty.
Brian speaks of the inspiration for his piece…
Bláthnaid is a multi–award–winning artist and has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally. For this project she has embodied the fantastical world of Harry Clarke in her own inimitable style.
She tells us of her inspiration…
In the words of art critic Aidan Dunne, “Margaret Corcoran is known for her lively engagement with the Western painting tradition… There’s a lightness of touch, a very appealing playfulness. When she veers towards abstraction…it’s beautifully judged. The historical material she is dealing with becomes a rich nutritive mass from which she draws not new stories but – as ever – new versions of old stories.”
Margaret speaks of the inspiration for her ‘Cover to Canvas’ project….
Alan is an award winning illustrator. His images conjure worlds that are whimsical, darkly comic, magical, sometimes grotesque, but always beautifully executed. A sustained originality and novelty in the concepts behind the work, married with its painstaking execution makes his work quite unique. His book illustrations have garnered widespread acclaim.
Read about Alan’s work here…
Jeanne has that rare gift of giving herself over to the art process and trusting the voice of the work and her own body in creating it. Her work is very unique and layered with life, emotion and movement grounded in the earth as she so deftly expresses when talking about the work…
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Our 1215 Magna Carta was restored by Benjamin van de Wetering of The Ox Bindery. He writes about his observations and conservation work on the book.
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Steven’s art piece for our exhibition is called “The Mind Abhors a Vacuum”. He manages to combine classical and contemporary ideas and aesthetics offering a very unique vision. There is something to discover in every corner of the canvas!
He tells us about the inspiration for the piece…
Cliodhna Quinlan’s art is very much grounded in the feminine, the tactile, the thought provoking. Her work embodies the layer upon layer of any given concept, difficult to express in words, unsatisfactory in words, and yet expressed in its entirety artistically. Her inspiration for the ‘Cover to Canvas’ project deals with the feminine position in society.
Cliodhna tells us about her inspiration…
Colm is a multi–talented artist working primarily in illustration, painting and print to create his unique art with a definitive style. He works across many themes and influences such as landscape and architecture, people, music and colour. Colm manages to take all of these influences combined and make his work very much of the moment.
The title of Colm’s piece for the ‘Cover to Canvas’ art exhibition is “To Each Cow Its Calf”. Colm tells us about his inspiration…
Joby Hickey is an artist that inspires play and experimentation. He creates little private worlds with his art that transports the viewer, and perhaps he lives in these very worlds while creating them!
His exhibition piece is called…
The wonderfully talented Myra Jago writes/speaks of her work as if writing/speaking poetry, perfectly matching the ethereal essence of her work. We have the pleasure of her words describing her inspiration for the ‘Cover to Canvas’ project and her art practice…
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We are extremely lucky to have Mike as an artist for our exhibition. His achievements are too many to list and span 6 decades across the globe. Mike regards himself as a visual interpreter or inquisitor who was gifted me at birth with an incredible memory and great vision and powers of observation.
He describes his visual interpretation for our King’s Inns Cover to Canvas art exhibition as…
On Wednesday, February 18th, our 185th Auditor of the King’s Inns Law Students’ Debating Society of Ireland (LSDSI), Hugh McDowell, addressed the audience for his Inaugural Address. This year’s Address was on a historical theme: ‘King’s Inns at the Crossroads 1916–1926’.
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King’s Inns Barristers 1868–2004 (Kenneth Ferguson, Ed.) informs us that James Kevin Waldron was born on the 4 April 1921. In his Inns career he was awarded the first Victoria Prize and was called to the Bar in 1948. He had a remarkably distinguished career in the law. This was reflected in the many who attended his Requeim Mass in the Church of the Assumption, Booterstown, on the 21 January 2015. He was 93 years of age.
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The Diploma in Legal Studies course is a two–year course in which students take 14 substantive law subjects, covering each of the core areas of law essential to practise at the Bar. Currently in its fourth decade, the course is primarily aimed at people who do not hold a law degree but who would like to qualify as barristers; however, the course also attracts students with a more general interest in the law or who wish to learn more about the law due to the nature of their existing career.
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This event is now full. You may be interested in attending one of other open days for the Diploma in Legal Studies course on Saturday 7 March or Tuesday 10 March.
This year, for the first time, King’s Inns is giving prospective students on the Diploma in Legal Studies the unique opportunity to experience life as a student on the course before applying. We will be offering prospective students an exclusive chance to attend classes similar to those taken by current students.
Former Taoiseach and KI alumnus, Liam Cosgrave, dined with us in our Dining Hall last Thursday evening (January 22nd, 2015). Here is a 1964 article about his beloved alma mater, King’s Inns. This article is from the Dublin Historical Record, Vol XXI, 1966–1967.
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Ms Justice Mella Carroll was born on 6th of March 1934 and passed away on January 16th 2006. She was a very well respected and accomplished judge who was an inspiration especially for Irish women who wished to pursue a career in law. Mella began her higher education in University College Dublin where she graduated with a degree in French and German. She then studied law in King’s Inns.
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