This chapter is concerned with modest legal details. It examines issues such as the expansion in the use of video-link testimony, the use of intermediaries to contend with the harsh effects of adversarialism, the provision of legal assistance and representation, and the use of out-of-court statements to reduce the need to give viva voce evidence. The issues also include the reliance on prior statements to deal with the spectre of witness intimidation, the socialisation of law through victim impact statements, the development of more relaxed requirement regarding the competence of a witness to testify, and greater recognition of the independence of married spouses. The chapter documents variety of ways in which victims of crime are being accommodated via legal provisions. What must be guarded against in the juridical accommodation of victims is constructive interpretation of process fairness which unites the public interest with victims and against those accused of crime.

The re-emergence of the crime victim in Ireland was due to four principal influences that created pressure on the Irish government to alter the status of crime victims. These principal influences were: victimology research; the victims' movement; the recognition and expansion of human rights; and crime became a national election issue, with a contemporaneous decrease in public satisfaction with the criminal justice system. This chapter outlines these four principal influences that transformed the victim of crime in Ireland from a piece of evidence to a stakeholder in the criminal justice system worthy of consideration, requiring the scales of justice to be balanced. In doing so, it highlights an apparent paradox: many of the activities that transformed victims of crime into recognised criminal justice stakeholders were the result of initiatives and efforts meant to aid offenders.

The preoccupation with Martin Luther King in early studies on the post-war Civil Rights Movement can be explained by a number of factors. When eschewing a biographical approach, early historians of the Civil Rights Movement typically sought to achieve insights into their subject through traditional political and institutional studies. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s raised difficult ethical issues for religious leaders of all faiths, but the moral challenge was perhaps most painful of all for southern Jewish communities. The relationship between black civil rights and US foreign policy was another little-explored area that attracted the attention of scholars in the 1990s. Members of a long persecuted minority it was easy for Jews in the region to empathize with the experiences of African Americans. At the same time active support for the civil rights campaign carried the risk of provoking anti-Semitic violence and retaliation by segregationist groups.

Although Martin Luther King had been martyred in 1968, he had at least claimed to have a vision of a future promised land. The advances achieved in desegregation and black voting rights since the 1950s suggested that this was a destination that King's children, and African Americans as a whole, would ultimately reach. Booker T. Washington's autobiographies had a fascination for his fellow citizens of all races, in that American social values at the turn of the century tended to lay undue emphasis on individual achievement at the expense of group experience. The painstaking quality of Louis Harlan's research, combined with his prolific scholarly output, established him as unquestionably the leading modern authority on Washington by the 1980s. Although careful to present a balanced picture of his subject, it was also clear that Harlan himself was generally unsympathetic to the Tuskegeean's accommodationist philosophy.

This chapter focuses on four broad chronological periods of the study of black American history. The first era of scholarship in African American history lasted from 1882 down to 1909. The leading writers on black history in this period were African Americans. The second era of scholarship lasted from 1909 through to the mid-1930s. W. E. B. Du Bois was one of the leading figures of this period. The third era of African American scholarship lasted from the mid-1930s through to the end of the 1960s. In the late 1930s and early 1940s a new generation of black historians such as Benjamin Quarles and John Hope Franklin, began to take over academic leadership in African American history. The fourth era of scholarship in African American history dates from around 1970. The post-war Civil Rights Movement continued to have a profound influence on the development of African American historiography.

There are a number of reasons why earlier scholars neglected the 1930s and early 1940s. When African American history began to command more serious attention in the mid-1960s, the generation of historians who, as young adults, had had direct personal experience of the Great Depression and the Second World War began to reach the age of retirement. Growing awareness of the acute economic problems suffered by many African American communities during the 1980s and the 1990s perhaps drew some scholars to the 1930s, a decade when economic deprivation was also one of the most pressing problems experienced by black Americans. One consequence of the new interest in the 1930s has been a growing awareness of the efforts of civil rights activists of the period, both white and black Americans, whose work had previously gone largely unrecognized by historians.

Chapter 9 provides a background to the formation of Yes Equality, a group dedicated to establishing marriage for same-sex couples. This chapter continues with the announcement of the referendum on marriage equality and an assessment of the campaign in the immediate run-up to the referendum.

An overview of the Constitutional Convention which was established to ensure ‘participative democracy’ in considering changes to the Irish Constitution. This chapter examines how in April 2013 delegates overwhelmingly called for a constitutional change to extend civil marriage to same-sex couples and, significantly, to include amendments for parental rights in this regard. The chapter also describes the beginning of a great controversy, popularly referred to as ‘Pantigate’, which placed the issue of marriage equality centre stage in an open debate about homophobia.

Shortly after civil partnerships came into effect the coalition government collapsed. This chapter outlines how the general election of 2011 helped progress the campaign for marriage equality. This was a time ripe for political reform. Each of the main political parties recognised a need for constitutional change which was reflected in their election manifestos.