Description
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Public Inquiries: Wrong Route on Bloody Sunday by Sir Louis Blom-Cooper
Throughout the twentieth century administrations have wrestled with public concerns over national disasters and social scandals. The history and function of public inquiries are discussed generally in this book depicting the dominant habit of lawyers up to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry ill-directed in 1998 for twelve-and-a-half years. The author became the legal representative for the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association in December 2000 two years into the public inquiry. Modernisation of public inquiries took place in the Inquiries Act 2005 heralded as a good piece of legislation. The result is a system of public inquiries conducted uniformly by Commissioners of Inquiry. Judges and leading lawyers are often Commissioners of Inquiry although public inquiries are as they always were sterile of legal effect. They are the long arm of the sponsoring Minister; as Lord Bingham stated ‘unlike any court of law’.