Making a difference? The role of Statutory Committees in the Northern Ireland Assembly

This paper seeks to examine some aspects of the early operation of the Northern Ireland Assembly and in particular the role of the Statutory Committees. The particular issue that is used to explore these matters is the review of student finances which the Higher and Further Education, Training and Employment Committee (HFETEC) undertook as its first major investigation. It should be noted here that the Department of Higher and Further Education, Training and Employment changed its name to the Department of Employment and Learning during 2000. The Committee also changed its name to the Employment and Learning Committee. Since the issues discussed took place prior to these changes the original name has been used here. Specifically, the paper examines the Review of Student Finances launched by the Department of Higher and Further Education, Training and Employment (DHFETE), how the Committee tackled the issue, tensions within the Committee, the relationship between the Committee and the Minister, between the Minister and the Department, the public debate, how the Committee Report was subsequently dealt with in the Assembly and the Minister's response. It is suggested that this example provides some insights into the operation of the distinctive devolved institutions in Northern Ireland and some early evidence of how such Statutory Committees may develop.     

When every relationship is above average

Marriage license applicants and law students were surveyed about their knowledge of divorce statutes, knowledge of the demographics of divorce, and expectations for their own marriage. Both groups had largely incorrect perceptions of the legal terms of the marriage contract as embodied in divorce statutes, but they had relatively accurate, if sometimes optimistic, perceptions of both the likelihood and the effects of divorce in the population at large. These same individuals expressed thoroughly idealistic expectations about both the longevity of their own marriages and the consequences should they personally be divorced. Increasing individuals' knowledge of divorce statutes through a course on family law did not diminish this unrealistic optimism. Both groups largely approved of the existing divorce statutes, although there was substantial agreement about a few important respects in which the laws should be changed. These findings suggest that the sense of unfairness and surprise that frequently attend divorce may be a result of systematic cognitive biases rather than of a lack of information about divorce.     

State Courts, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Protection of Civil Liberties

Advocates of federalism, both in the United States and elsewhere, often cite the potential for enhanced protection of individual civil liberties as an emerging rationale for a federal system dividing governmental responsibilities between central and regional governments and central and regional judiciaries. Echoing this, some judicial officials and scholars, confronting an increasingly conservative U.S. Supreme Court, have called for state supreme courts to use the state constitutional grounds to preserve and increase the protections of the Bill of Rights. Using event count analysis, we examine state search-and-seizure cases for 1981 to 1993 to ascertain under what circumstances state courts would use this opportunity to eliminate Supreme Court review. We find that the relative ideological position of the state supreme courts and the U.S. Supreme Court often prevents, or does away with the need for, liberal courts to use the adequate and independent state grounds doctrine to expand the rights of criminal defendants and that state supreme court justices react more predictably in the assertion of constitutional protection law than the general consensus suggests.