Northern / Irish Feminist Judgments: Judges' Troubles and the Gendered Politics of Identity

Description

The Northern/Irish Feminist Judgments Project inaugurates a fresh dialogue on gender, legal judgment, judicial power and national identity in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Through a process of judicial re-imagining, the project takes account of the peculiarly Northern/Irish concerns in shaping gender through judicial practice. This collection, following on from feminist judgments projects in Canada, England and Australia takes the feminist judging methodology in challenging new directions. This book collects 26 rewritten judgments, covering a range of substantive areas. As well as opinions from appellate courts, the book includes fi rst instance decisions and a fi ctional review of a Tribunal of Inquiry. Each feminist judgment is accompanied by a commentary putting the case in its social context and explaining the original decision. The book also includes introductory chapters examining the project methodology, constructions of national identity, theoretical and conceptual issues pertaining to feminist judging, and the legal context of both jurisdictions. The book, shines a light on past and future possibilities - and limitations - for judgment on the island of Ireland. 'This book provides a rich and expansive addition to the feminist judgments catalogue. The ... judgments demonstrate powerfully how Northern/Irish judges have contributed to the gendered politics of national identity, and how the narrow subject-positions they have created for women and 'others' could have been so much wider and more open.' Professor Rosemary Hunter, School of Law, Queen Mary University London. 'The Northern/Irish Feminist Judgments Project is inspirational reading for anyone interested in feminism or Irish studies ... It is a model of how to conduct feminist enquiry. Its most innovative contribution to scholarship and politics is how the rewriting of landmark legal judgments from a feminist perspective allows us to imagine (and therefore begin to construct) a more egalitarian, a more just, future.' Associate Professor Katherine O'Donnell, School of Philosophy, University College Dublin. If you let it, this book will make you think. ... It made me think - it reminded me, I suppose - that legal writing can be wonderful: rigorous, creative, deeply observant, provocative. Read it and see what it makes you think. Professor Therese Murphy, School of Law, Queen's University Belfast

Mairead Enright is a Senior Lecturer at Birmingham Law School. Julie McCandless is Assistant Professor at the Law Department of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Aoife O'Donoghue is a Senior Lecturer at Durham Law School.

The need for such a work is apparent: women have been under-represented in Irish courts before and after independence, meaning that their voices have been absent. The depth of research that went into this work is admirable and gives it credibility...This book is wonderfully insightful and is an essential and highly recommended companion reader to one-sided cases which do not truly do justice. -- Maureen O'Sullivan, National University of Ireland, Galway * Irish Jurist * This fascinating book will be much used educationally, since it is deeply instructive to compare the re-judgments with the official judgments. -- Bartholomew Begley * Books Ireland *