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Papers by Michael Foran

The Modern Law Review

Common good constitutionalism seeks to ground and legitimate choices of constitutional design and... more Common good constitutionalism seeks to ground and legitimate choices of constitutional design and interpretation in a manner committed to pursuing the flourishing of all members of the community. This raises important questions relating to the separation of powers and fundamental rights protection. This paper seeks to advance and defend an account of rights-based judicial review from within a common good constitutional framework. It will argue that rights and the common good are co-constitutive: a genuinely common good will ensure the protection of fundamental rights and genuinely fundamental rights will help constitute and further the common good. With this in mind, a conception of the separation of powers will be advanced wherein different organs of state act collaboratively to ensure both that fundamental rights are protected and that the state can pursue goals which help to further the common good.

Edinburgh Law Review

Judicial review of the executive faces a constant threat of constitutional illegitimacy. Historic... more Judicial review of the executive faces a constant threat of constitutional illegitimacy. Historically, this manifested in a conflict between the common law and the royal prerogative, with the judiciary needing to justify its authority to set legal limits on the powers of a divinely authorised monarch. This conflict has now transformed into a clash of political and legal conceptions of democratic governance: executive discretion to decide upon and efficiently pursue the common good conflicting with judicial enforcement of foundational constitutional norms designed to ensure that this pursuit is lawful. This article will look to the founding of the law of judicial review and the writings of Sir Edward Coke to illuminate some of the dark corners of the modern law of reasonableness review. Coke’s theory of the common law as a body of artificial reason will serve to place reasonableness review within its appropriate constitutional context, solidifying the connection between the rule of l...

The Cambridge Law Journal

Equality before the law is a foundational principle of the common law and is of particular import... more Equality before the law is a foundational principle of the common law and is of particular importance for administrative law, given the connection between judicial review and the rule of law. Analysis as to the precise requirements of this principle can help us better to understand the role that obligations to act consistently play within judicial review. This article will examine whether consistency ought to be classed as a separate ground of review and argue that this is unnecessary. Examination of the role that legal equality plays within common law reason generally will shed light on the role that it plays within administrative law in particular. Consistency is best conceived as a background principle, informed by the value of legal equality, housed within reasonableness review and not as a separate ground of review that could elide the distinction between review and appeal.

Edinburgh Law Review, Aug 31, 2021

A Review of Sir John Laws, The Constitutional Balance (Hart 2021

Edinburgh Law Review, 2022

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2021

Nowadays, lithium−sulfur (Li−S) batteries have attracted considerable attention as a potential ca... more Nowadays, lithium−sulfur (Li−S) batteries have attracted considerable attention as a potential candidate for next-generation rechargeable batteries due to their high theoretical specific energy and environmental friendliness. One of the main problems with Li−S batteries is that the lithium polysulfides (LiPSs) easily decompose in the electrolyte which is known as the shuttle effect. Recently, the polypeptoid nanosheet crystal structure has been experimentally synthesized which is very useful for tremendous advances in soft material imaging as well as enabling to design biomimetic nanomaterials. Due to the very interesting properties of the polypeptoid material, we have investigated the electronic structure and charge-transfer mechanism for the lithium−sulfur batteries for the cathode material. The calculated adsorption energies of LiPSs on the surface of the polypeptoid material are in the range of −4.41 to −4.64 and −0.91 eV for the sulfur clusters. Also, the adsorption energies between the interaction of LiPSs and electrolytes (DME and DOL) are 0.75−0.89 eV. It means that the polypeptoid material could suppress the shuttle effect of LiPSs and significantly enhance the cycling performance of Li−S batteries. From these investigated results, the polypeptoid material will be a promising anchoring material for Li−S batteries.

Introduction: Spinal manipulation is a widely used method in the treatment of neck pain, but it h... more Introduction: Spinal manipulation is a widely used method in the treatment of neck pain, but it has the potential for serious complications. Although controversial, stroke can occur especially after cervical manipulation. Stroke secondary to self-cervical manipulation is rare and only a few cases have been reported. Case Report: We reported a 28-year-old male patient with complaints of dizziness, neck pain and right hemiparesthesia. Except the cerebellar gait and right hemiparesthesia, his neurological examination was normal. It was learnt that his complaints started an hour after the self-cervical manipulation. His brain computed tomography, brain and cervical computed tomography angiography were normal limits. The brain diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed an acute infarction area. He was discharged without sequelae with antiaggregant treatment, after 8 days of follow-up in the hospital. Conclusion: Although it is controversial whether the risk of stroke increases after cervical manipulation, we believe the risk of stroke may increase, especially when the manipulation is performed by non-professionals. Especially in younger patients with a history of cervical manipulation and neurological complaints, stroke should be suspected even if the neurological examination is normal.

The principle of equality before the law is often characterized as procedural or formal in nature... more The principle of equality before the law is often characterized as procedural or formal in nature and consequently of minimal value. Recent scholarship has offered a more nuanced representation of this critique, maintaining that the principle is procedural in nature but emphasizing its instrumental importance. This paper challenges that characterization, arguing that equality before the law is best interpreted as a foundational constitutional principle which manifests substantive restrictions on the content of legal rules. Equality before the law, as an independent constitutional principle, should not be confused with the broader value of equality, nor with the rule of law: it incorporates aspects of both, mandating that legal subjects, including legal officials, be treated as prima facie equals in the creation, interpretation, and application of the law. As such, it in an integral normative foundation for the common law constitutional order. Any analysis of the common law constitut...

The Cambridge Law Journal, 2020

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2020

The Covid-19 pandemic has presented an extreme challenge to legal and political structures around... more The Covid-19 pandemic has presented an extreme challenge to legal and political structures around the globe. Institutions are struggling to cope with this new reality, none more strenuously than our legal systems which have rapidly introduced and frequently amended criminal and other sanctions in the hopes of curbing the spread of the virus. In such circumstances, the old adage that desperate times call for desperate measures rings true, prompting calls for a loosening or suspension of previously held legal norms. This paper explores the role that the concept of an emergency plays in our interpretation of fundamental constitutional principles such as the rule of law. Emergencies are, ironically, commonplace. Fires break out and road accidents occur on a daily basis. Indeed, so frequently that we employ full-time emergency services to respond to them. The normalcy of emergencies reveals a descriptive paradox, given that emergencies are often defined as abnormal instances demanding extraordinary responses. As Greene puts it, "emergencies are simultaneously a universal, inevitable reality but also unforeseen, exceptional events invariably requiring equally exceptional responses". 1 If our contention is that an emergency is something exceptional, which requires an exceptional response, it becomes difficult to see how fires or road accidents qualify. In most cases, there is actually not much which is exceptional about an emergency, particularly from the perspective of the law. Even large-scale crises such as natural disasters or viral outbreaks can and have been addressed within the ordinary confines of existing institutional structures, with, at most, a fast-tracked timeline or loosening of some procedural red tape. And yet, these examples do often warrant a different response, even if it is not a wholly exceptional one. The difficulty then arises as to how emergencies interact with our constitutional norms, particularly those relating to the interpretation of legal concepts. Crises such as these force us to reconcile the exceptional with the fundamental. If emergencies are to have any legal significance such that they might trigger a state of exception, they must amount to more than simply natural concepts; they must also be legal concepts, interpreted harmoniously with 1 A Greene, Permanent States of Emergency and the Rule of Law: Constitutions in an Age of Crisis (2018) 1.

The Cambridge Law Journal, 2019

This paper explores the effect that conformity to the rule of law has on the ends which might leg... more This paper explores the effect that conformity to the rule of law has on the ends which might legitimately be pursued within a legal system. The neat distinction between formal and substantive conceptions of the rule of law will be challenged: even apparently formal conceptions necessarily affect the content of law and necessarily entail the protection of certain fundamental rights. What remains of the formal/substantive dichotomy is, in fact, a distinction between conceptions of the rule of law which guarantee the substantive justice of each and every law and those which entail some commitment to basic requirements of justice while nevertheless leaving room for unjust laws. Ultimately, the only significant distinction between competing theories of the rule of law concerns the nature of the connection between legality and justice, not whether there is any such connection at all.