Environmental crime prosecutions in Ireland, 2004–2014

Despite increased interest in environmental crime and green criminology, few studies address the use of criminal penalties in response to environmental crimes. A handful of published examples employ data from the United States or the Flanders court system, and little is known about how other nations punish environmental violations. Addressing this issue, the current study examined the use of criminal environmental penalties in Ireland from 2004 to 2014. Few criminal environmental cases (N = 147) and few environmental offenders (N = 154) were represented in these data over time. Consistent with the expectations of green/environmental crime researchers, mean penalties for environmental violations, which in Ireland only include fines and investigative cost recovery penalties, were rather small. Unlike in the US or Flanders, the majority of offenders were corporate offenders as opposed to individuals. Contextual factors related to Ireland’s economy, history and use of criminal sanctions should be used to interpret these factors, and prevent generalising from these data.     

The call to citizens of Ghana to defend Ghana’s Fourth Republican Constitution: a death trap?

The 1992 Constitution of Ghana grants citizens the right and duty to employ any means to protect the Constitution. It also seeks to protect those who respond to the call to resist usurpers. However, in Ekwam v Pianim (No 2) the Supreme Court of Ghana ruled that a person who failed in his attempt to defend the Constitution against usurpers could not rely on the Constitution he unsuccessfully sought to defend for protection. The issue of the unsuccessful resister is an ‘unanswered question’ of the Constitution. This is a hard case and Dworkin’s adjudicative theory offers insights into resolving it.