Ireland's Evolving Constitution 1937-1997: Collected Essays

Description

To mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Constitution of the Republic of Ireland, this important collection of essays includes a wide range of contributions on the most significant aspects of Irish constitutional law and jurisprudence. In addition to political and legal commentators, leading academics in the fields of philosophy, history and political geography assess the history and future of the Constitution from the perspectives of their particular disciplines. The resulting blend of arguments offers a serious and sometimes controversial set of insights into the changing role of the constitution in light of social and political change in Ireland over the past 60 years. The overall result is a detailed contextual analysis of Ireland's basic law aimed at a readership interested in the Irish Constitution and constitutional matters generally. Contributors: Garrett Barden, Dr. Noel Browne, Professor Tony Carty, Bozena Cierlik, Desmond Clarke, Michael Cronin, Dolores Dooley, Garret Fitzgerald, Leo Flynn, Adrian Hunt, Stephen Livingstone, Irene Lynch, Frank Martin, David Gwynn Morgan, Siobhan Mullally, Tim Murphy, John A. Murphy, Dr. Siofra O'Leary, Dr. Paul O'Mahony, Brendan Ryan, Niamh Nic Shuibhne, Patrick Twomey, Anthony Whelan, Gerry Whyte.

Tim Murphy is a Lecturer in Law at University College, Cork. Patrick Twomey is a lecturer in law at the University of Nottingham

It is an enormous pleasure to welcome this first-class collection of essays on Ireland's fascinating, endlessly controversial, but doggedly durable constitution....The editors of this volume have had the brilliant idea of hanging their collection on the sixtieth anniversary of the adoption of Bunreacht na hEireann. Their choice of contributors is particularly to their credit, since it reflects very well the breadth and range of modern Irish constitutional studies. We have essays from an historian.., a comparativist..., and a philosopher.., as well as three stimulating pieces from erstwhile and contemporary practitioners of politics, to remind us that even under a written constitution the government must not become the intellectual property of the lawyers.... So who should read this book? The obvious answer is students of Irish constitutional law. But clearly it will also be immensley valuable to the comparativist, who seeks an intelligent and stimulating rather than a rigidly black-letter introduction to a constitutional system of which he or she desires to know more. -- Conor Gearty * Cambridge Law Journal * ...this collection deserves to be purchased by every lawyer with even a passing interest in Irish constitutional law. -- Gerard Hogan * The Bar Review * Many of these essays...are so interesting and well written that they deserve not a short review, but a long monograph by way of response. -- Gerard Hogan * Legal Studies *