This book deals with the role, development, and legacy of the first Constitution of independent Ireland within the wider context of the establishment of the State. After decades of relative neglect, the 1920s have been receiving increased attention from historians recently thanks to the centenary of the State’s foundation. This book continues this trend of re-examination of this period and looks at key themes, such as the establishment of institutions under the Irish Free State Constitution and the focus on the ideals of popular sovereignty and democracy. It does so from novel and cross-disciplinary perspectives, and it also looks at areas which have received little to no previous attention; from individual aspects like property rights, the Irish language and environmental rights to aspects such as opposition and partition.
Table of Content
1. Introduction.- 2. The 1922 Constitution; Constituting a Polity.- 3. The Partition of Ireland and the 1922 Constitution.- 4. ‘The Supreme Legislative Authority Speaking as The Mouthpiece of the People’: Constituent Power and the Irish Free State.- 5. Opposition to the Constitution of the Irish Free State in 1922.- 6. The Representative of the Crown and the Governor-General of the Irish Free State: Text and Context.- 7. The National Language and Article 4 of the 1922 Constitution.- 8. A new Constitution; a new language? How the new Courts talked about the Free State Constitution 1922.- 9. ‘Environmental Stewardship’ and Article 11 of the 1922 Constitution.- 10. The 1922 Constitution as a failed attempt to break with Westminster tradition.- 11. Property Rights and Democratic Decision-Making: Lessons from the 1922 Constitution.- 12. The Civil War, the Constitution and the Collapse of the Rule of Law.- 13. Amending the 1922Constitution: how the process shaped the politics of a new state.- 14. What the drafters learnt in 1937 from the 1922 experience.- 15. The Afterlife of the Constitution of the Irish Free State: Constitutional Echoes in South Asia.
About the author
Laura Cahillane is Senior Lecturer in the School of Law at the University of Limerick, Ireland.
Donal Coffey is Assistant Professor in the School of Law and Criminology at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.
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