The Centenary of the Courts of Justice Act 1924

Members of the UCD Legal History Group joined academics from across the island and members of the judiciary for an event to mark the centenary of the establishment of the Irish courts system. The event was hosted in Dublin Castle, where the courts sat in the 1920s following the destruction of the Four Courts.

Papers were delivered by members of the Legal History Group (Dr Thomas Mohr (The Dail Courts), Dr Kevin Costello (The Bar’s opposition to the Circuit Court), and Dr Mark Coen (the impact of the change of regime on the ceremonials and artefacts of the courts). These papers will appear as chapters of a book edited by Dr Niamh Howlin: (opens in a new window)A Century of Courts(opens in a new window) (Four Courts Press, 2024 ISBN: 978-1-80151-137-7).

The event also included a multimedia exhibition which included contemporary court sketches, Pathé footage, illustrations of various proposed judicial robes by Charles Shannon and the Dun Emer Guild, and an exploration of the courts in Dublin Castle in the 1920s. Special commemorative stamps were launched by An Post marking not only the Courts of Justice Act 1924, but also the Ministers and Secretaries Act of the same year, which established the modern civil service.

This event involved collaboration between the UCD Legal History Group, UCD Library and Archives, the Office of Public Works, An Post, the Courts Service, Four Courts Press, the Irish Legal History Society and the judiciary’s 1924 Commemoration Committee.

A number of members of the undergraduate Legal History module participated as student helpers for the event.

Review of Law and Religion in Ireland 1700-1970 by Ciaran McCabe in (2023) 44 Journal of Legal History  214

The Group’s most recent publication was reviewed in the Journal of Legal History. Here is part of the opening paragraph of the review:

Collective volumes which arise from a conference or workshop — such as the subject volume — oftentimes do not present a coherent structure, as the editor(s) are inevitably bound by the research interests and papers presented by speakers. This is, however, not a feature of Law and Religion in Ireland, which explores the legal history of religion in Ireland and presents an intelligible structure of four sections: (1) the impact of the Penal Laws of 1691–1829 on catholic religious practice and landowning; (2) the position of presbyterians in respect of the law, in contrast to the privileged position of the established church; (3) the disestablishment of that same established church; and (4) the position of religion in the Irish Free State. In this regard, WN Osborough’s essay on the role of church briefs in serving as the foundation of societal responses to disaster relief, through the case study of two fire-damaged Ulster towns in the eighteenth century, acts as an outlier within the wider volume. Yet it constitutes, nonetheless, an important contribution to the history of church briefs, ….Poignantly, this essay by Osborough, who died in December 2020, draws to a close the publishing career of the most significant contributor to modern Irish legal history, while Keith Robbins’s death also occurred (2019) while the volume was being prepared.

Law and Religion in Ireland, 1700 - 1970

The Legal History Research Group is delighted to have published its latest book (opens in a new window)Law and Religion in Ireland 1700-1970 (Palgrave Macmillan). The book is edited by Dr Niamh Howlin and Dr Kevin Costello, and includes chapters by several members of the research group, including Dr Tom Mohr, Dr Ivar McGrath and Dr Emma Lyons. It also includes a chapter by our recently deceased colleague Professor Nial Osborough.

This book builds on a roundtable workshop hosted in the School of Law in 2017. It focuses, from a legal perspective, on a series of events which make up some of the principal episodes in the legal history of religion in Ireland: the anti-Catholic penal laws of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century; the shift towards the removal of disabilities from Catholics and dissenters; the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland; and the place of religion, and the Catholic Church, under the Constitutions of 1922 and 1937.

Law and Religion in Ireland 1530 - 1970

‌The group’s current project will examine the ways in which law has regulated religion, and the law of religious institutions, in Ireland from the Reformation to the 1970s. The following topics fall within the scope of the project: The Legal Foundations of the Protestant Reformation in Ireland; The Penal Laws and Catholic Landholding, 1700-1793; The Penal Laws in the Long Eighteenth Century; The Catholic Relief Acts 1781 to 1793; Tithe in Ireland; The Catholic Emancipation Act 1829; Religious Disabilities after Catholic Emancipation: 1829-1920; Disestablishment and the Church Act 1869; Church Influence on Law Making in the Irish Free State; Article 44.1 of the Constitution 1937-1973; The Ecclesiastical Courts in Ireland in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries; Constitutional Aspects of the Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century.

A roundtable conference, with contributions on these topics, will be held in the Sutherland School of Law on 6 June 2018.

Persons who are interested in contributing to this project are encouraged to contact, Dr Kevin Costello ((opens in a new window)Kevin.Costello@ucd.ie).

Legal History Group Book Launched

The first research project undertaken by UCD’s Legal History Group was a study of the interaction between the law and the family in Ireland in the period 1800-1950. The project began as a roundtable conference on the legal history of the family in Ireland, held in the Sutherland School of Law in March 2015. The papers delivered at that conference have been collected in a book entitled Law and the Family in Ireland 1800-1950 edited by Dr Niamh Howlin and Dr Kevin Costello. The book, which appeared in June 2017, is the first volume in the Palgrave Modern Legal History series. The twelve papers which make up the book cover the principal stages of family life in Ireland 1800-1950: from engagement to divorce, and touching on issues like the legal history of adoption, the legal definition of infanticide in nineteenth century Ireland, married women’s property, inter-family homicide trials in Ireland, the action for breach of promise of marriage, and the place of the family in the Irish Constitution.