Max Barrett – författare

Justice begins in the fragments. While the legal system excels at classification and resolution, it often fails at recognition. Written from the bench by an Irish High Court judge, this book challenges the administrative sublime of modern bureaucracy, which sees persons too often converted into risk scores and bullet points.Blending lived judicial experience with queer theory, literature, and philosophy, this book proposes a jurisprudence of attentive refusal to let the human disappear into procedural fluency. From piccolo paeans to global postage stamps to reflections on the moral motion of the soul, this book re-defines the judge’s task as being not just to decide, but to listen for the stutter and the shimmer that the official record can forget. Structured as a reflective journey across hemispheres – from the Global North to the Global South and back to Ireland – the book weaves the thoughts of various thinkers, from Aquinas and Baldwin to Butler and Muñoz, into a form of lyrical jurisprudence. Reflecting on the inner life of judging, that is to say the moral and imaginative dimensions of law as they unfold in attention, silence, and refusal, the book offers a companion to legal practice that invites readers to think again about what it means to judge, to recognise, and to stay near the lives that law touches. Judgment, it maintains, is not mere decision but an act of ethical attention, a form of seeing that keeps the human in view.This book will appeal to academics and advanced students in the areas of jurisprudence, legal theory, ethics, and law and literature, as well as others with an interest in the ethics and practice of legal judgment.

Legal prose is often a more pedestrian venture than a novel or a poem. However, even the pedestrian can be done well. The views of the professional writers considered in this book identify how lawyers can write legal prose well, and sometimes even beautifully.This book provides key lessons on legal writing that can be gleaned from various leading authors of the past and brought to bear in crafting more polished legal texts. Among the great authors considered are Joseph Conrad, Guy de Maupassant, E.M. Forster, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, D.H. Lawrence, Robert Louis Stevenson and Virginia Woolf. Central themes identified are:Legal writing should never be too difficult to understand;Great writers have much to teach the legal writer;Good writing requires hard work;Professional jargon is generally best avoided; andThe truth is always pure, often simple, and generally best expressed in plain English.This book contains invaluable guidance to help all those involved in legal writing to hone their writing skills, while providing an engaging tour through the works of great authors from the past.All after-tax author royalties from this book will be donated to the Ukrainian relief efforts of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent movement.

Written by Max Barrett, a judge of the High Court of Ireland, Online Dispute Resolution: Law’s Future in the Digital Age looks at the impact of digitalisation on legal services provision and considers how, increasingly, a worldwide revolution in dispute resolution is unfolding, with many legal disputes now being resolved remotely. Further, it explores how, as part of this global ‘resolution revolution’, courts are undergoing change as public justice systems turn to offer fairer access to justice, via online dispute resolution mechanisms.Key topics featured address: • the ongoing transformation of legal services: addressing how digitalisation is transforming the traditional legal ecosystem and changing the very nature of court-administered justice; • the global revolution in dispute resolution: examining the worldwide shift towards online dispute resolution (ODR) and how legal disputes are increasingly resolved remotely through digital platforms; • the continuing evolution of court systems: suggesting that traditional court systems are becoming to some extent obsolete as public justice systems transition to online platforms; • the access-to-justice implications of e-justice: exploring how ODR ensures broader access to justice as a fundamental human right, making legal resolution more accessible to people regardless of location; and • the future of public justice systems: providing insights into the future trajectory of public justice systems, highlighting the shift towards digital solutions and the implications for the future administration of justice.This insightful edition is essential reading for anyone with a professional interest in the effects of digitalisation on the future of court-administered justice systems, including judges, lawyers and court administrators.

In this second edition of The Art and Craft of Judgment Writing, Max Barrett, an experienced and practising judge working in Ireland, will not only enhance your judgment writing skills but elevate them to a new level of clarity, precision and style. With the first edition already used by judges around the globe, this new edition goes beyond the fundamentals to dive into cutting-edge areas of interest that today’s judges need to navigate. Subjects new to the second edition:The use (and misuse) of artificial intelligence in judgment writing. Stay ahead of the curve as AI begins to influence legal writing.Visual aids in judgments: learn how diagrams, graphs and infographics can make judgments more comprehensible and memorable.Effective use of precedent: read about the challenging balance between being thorough and overwhelming your readers.The power of storytelling: discover how narrative techniques can make your judgments clearer and more powerful.Structured writing and editing: develop a process that ensures your judgments are well-organised and polished.Proper use of footnotes and gender-inclusive language: enhance the professionalism and inclusivity of your work.Collaborative judgment-writing: understand better the dynamics of working on a judgment-writing team. With more real-world examples from case law, a 'key learnings and question' section with each chapter to help judges turn theory into practice and an entirely new exploration of what great fiction writers have taught about writing, The Art and Craft of Judgment Writing is not just a book: it's a roadmap to becoming a better writer and a more effective judge.