Mohr on Leo Kohn and the Law of the British Empire @UCDLawSchool

Thomas Mohr, Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin, has published Leo Kohn and the Law of the British Empire as UCD Working Papers in Law, Criminology & Socio-Legal Studies Research Paper No. 12/2019. Here is the abstract.

Leo Kohn’s 1932 publication, The Constitution of the Irish Free State, is widely recognised as the leading textbook on the Irish 1922 constitution. Many aspects of this constitution have been reproduced or have influenced the provisions of the current Irish constitution of 1937. This ensures that Kohn’s book continues to be cited in major Irish court cases and scholarly works on law and history. Yet the 1922 constitution also contained a large number of provisions that were not reproduced in the 1937 constitution. These provisions concerned important aspects of British Imperial law and reflected the demands of the 1921 Treaty that created a special constitutional link between the Irish Free State and Canada and a secondary link to the other Dominions of the British Commonwealth and Empire. Kohn’s analysis of these provisions constitutes one of the most radical and politicised aspects of his book. While this article focuses on Kohn’s book and other legal works produced by him it does not purport to serve as a definitive biography of the man himself. Instead, this article challenges the accuracy of Kohn’s analyses relating to points of British Imperial law. In some instances, Kohn’s analyses were accurate in the context of 1932 when his book was published, but attempts to backdate these conclusions to the time of the birth of the Irish Free State constitution in 1922 are open to serious challenge. Despite these realities, Kohn’s conclusion that aspects of British Imperial law were nothing more than “archaic symbols” whose “meaningless for Ireland was writ large on every page” have had a profound impact on Irish law and historiography. This article also argues that Kohn’s attempts to minimise the significance of these aspects of British Imperial law may also have been influenced by his long-term ambition to draft a constitution for a Jewish State within the British Mandate of Palestine.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Howlin on The Trials of Peter Barrett @N_Howlin @ucddublin

Niamh Howlin, Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin, has published The Trials of Peter Barrett: A Microhistory of Dysfunction in the Irish Criminal Justice System as UCD Working Papers in Law, Criminology, & Socio-Legal Studies Research Paper No. 0218. Here is the abstract.

In 1869 an assassination attempt was made on Captain Thomas Eyre Lambert, a prominent Galway landowner. Lambert was returning home from visiting his brother, Giles, who resided at neighbouring Moor Park. He spotted a man lurking beneath some lime trees near the entrance to his house, Castle Lambert. He was fired at a number of times, and was eventually felled by a shot to the forehead. He staggered to the door of his house, later stating: ‘[w]hen I reached the hall door I knocked violently, my butler opened the door and I fell into his arms.’ He soon sent for his brother. Given a description of the assailant, Giles hastened to the Athenry constabulary station, a mile or two away, and relayed the information to acting constable John Griffith. Sub-constable Edward Hayden was quickly dispatched, in plain-clothes, to take the midnight train to Oranmore, ten miles away, to try to apprehend the suspect. He returned around 5 a.m. the following morning with Peter Barrett in custody. He had spotted Barrett sleeping in his train compartment, and he matched the description provided by Giles Lambert. On being asked a few questions by sub-constable Hayden, his answers were ‘both evasive and contradictory’, and he was arrested. Barrett appeared to match the description given by Lambert: ‘I described the assassin as a man of slight figure dressed in dark clothes sharp features with not much hair on his face darkish complexion’. Furthermore, Lambert said he told his brother that ‘if Peter Barrett was in the country he was the man.’ Lambert, as will be seen, had reason to suspect that Barrett might have had a motive for the assault. Barrett was committed for trial at the next assize in August. On the face of it, it had the appearance of a relatively straightforward case destined for a quick resolution. However, this was not to be. What ensued was three trials, a change of venue to Dublin, allegations of jury intimidation, extensive press coverage around the United Kingdom, enormous expense and, ultimately, an acquittal.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Howlin on Maamtransna: The Trial of Miles Joyce in 1882 @N_Howlin

Niamh Howlin, Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin, has published Maamtrasna: The Trial of Myles Joyce in 1882 as UCD Working Papers in Law, Criminology, & Socio-Legal Studies Research Papers No. 1817. Here is the abstract.

At Maamtrasna, County Galway, five members of the Joyce family were brutally killed in August 1882. The initial victims were John Joyce his mother, Margaret Joyce, his wife, Bridget Joyce, his daughter, Margaret Joyce (also known as Peggy). John’s son, Michael Joyce, died of his injuries the following day. The sole survivor of the attack was Patsy Joyce, John’s youngest son, aged around nine or ten years. Myles Joyce was convicted in November 1882 of murdering his cousin, Margaret Joyce. He was one of ten men arrested. Two of these men, Anthony Philbin and Thomas Casey, later testified against the others. Five pleaded guilty and received prison sentences; these were Michael Casey, Martin Joyce (Myles’s brother), Patrick Joyce (another brother of Myles), Tom Joyce (Patrick’s son) and John Casey. Three men, Myles Joyce, Patrick Joyce and Patrick Casey were tried, convicted and hanged. Given the number of victims, accused persons and accusers, and the remote, tight-knit nature of the area, it is unsurprising that there were various relationships between the main protagonists. They were neighbours, cousins, brothers, fathers and sons, many of whom shared the same names and surnames. Myles Joyce’s death sentence was executed at Galway Gaol in December 1882. Right up until the point of death Myles protested his innocence, and is now widely accepted as having been innocent of the offence. Two other men who were hanged alongside Myles, (Patrick Joyce and Patrick Casey), claimed responsibility for the murders before they were executed. Both emphasised Myles Joyce’s innocence. The question for this paper is whether the circumstances Myles’s conviction were inconsistent with the legal standards of the period.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Mohr @ucddublin on The Irish Question and the Evolution of British Imperial Law, 1916-1922

Thomas Mohr, Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin, has published The Irish Question and the Evolution of British Imperial Law, 1916-1922 as UCD Working Papers in Law, Criminology & Socio-Legal Studies Research Paper No. 12. Here is the abstract.

By the early twentieth century Dominion status seemed ideally suited as the answer to the perennial ‘Irish question’. It offered Ireland a generous measure of autonomy while maintaining the territorial integrity of the British Empire. Nevertheless, the prospect of granting Dominion status to Ireland remained little more than a fantasy on the eve of the outbreak of the First World War. This reality was altered by two parallel historical developments. The first of these was the 1916 Easter rising that killed any possibility of an effective home rule settlement for the entire island of Ireland. The second was a rapid acceleration in the evolution of the self-governing Dominions of the Empire towards greater autonomy in the constitutional sphere. In the aftermath of the First World War these two developments came together in the signing of the 1921 Treaty that permitted the Irish Free State to emerge with the status of a self-governing Dominion, the same constitutional status held by Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. This article will examine the legal and constitutional developments that took place between 1914 and 1922 that removed the possibility of an ‘Irish Dominion’ from the realms of fantasy and allowed it to play a vital role in the emergence of the self-governing Irish state. It also examines the important role of Hessel Duncan Hall’s book The British Commonwealth of Nations (1920) in influencing this process.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Howlin on Adultery in the Courts: Criminal Conversation in Ireland in the Nineteenth Century

Niamh Howlin @N_Howlin, Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin, has published Adultery in the Courts: Criminal Conversation in Ireland as UCD Working Papers in Law, Criminology & Socio-Legal Papers Research Paper No. 0716. Here is the abstract.

In April 1806, Valentine Browne Lawless, the second baron Cloncurry, noticed his young wife Eliza walking arm-in-arm with his friend, Sir John Bennett Piers, a notorious womanizer, spendthrift and gambler. His suspicions aroused, Cloncurry confronted his wife, who confessed to having an affair with Piers, then staying as a guest on their estate at Lyons, Co. Kildare. A miniature portrait of Piers and a lock of his hair were found among Lady Cloncurry’s possessions. Piers, unsurprisingly, made a hasty departure, but wrote several times to Cloncurry denying the affair and making vague offers to duel. Cloncurry and Piers had been friends since their school days; furthermore, Piers owed Cloncurry a sum of money. While nothing, presumably, could entirely assuage the hurt feelings and wounded pride of the husband in such circumstances, the subsequent award of £20,000 damages by a King’s Bench jury may have helped. Represented by John Philpot Curran and Charles Kendal Bushe, he sued Piers for ‘criminal conversation’. Meanwhile, Lady Cloncurry, having been portrayed as ‘an artless and weak girl of nineteen’, left the country, her reputation in tatters, and later gave birth to a son presumed to be Piers’. Criminal conversation or ‘crim con’ was a ‘notorious’ civil action which allowed a cuckolded husband to recover damages from his wife’s lover. It evolved out of de facto blackmail agreements in the late seventeenth century and gained popularity among the English nobility in the eighteenth century until its abolition by the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act 1857, but because this Act did not extend to Ireland, Irish crim con actions endured until the twentieth century.

Download the article from SSRN at the link. 

Mohr on Ireland and the British Empire, 1916-1937: A Relationship Reflected in Law Journals

Thomas Mohr, Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin, has published Ireland and the British Empire, 1916-1937: A Relationship Reflected in Law Journals as UCD Working Papers in Law, Criminology & Socio-Legal Studies Research Paper No. 04/16. Here is the abstract.

The purpose of this article is to assess the value of law journals as sources for the analysis of modern Irish history. It examines how two periods of obvious political transition in Irish history are reflected in law journals. The article covers the period between 1916 and 1922, which saw the secession most of the island of Ireland from the United Kingdom, and the period between 1922 and 1937, which saw the gradual secession of the Irish Free State from the British Empire. It examines how military conflict, partition and the 1921 Anglo Irish Treaty influenced the content, nature, and editorial policies followed by Irish law journals. Important non-Irish law journals, in particular the Canadian Bar Review and the Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law, are also examined in the context of the constitutional relationship between the Irish Free State and Dominion status. These examples are used to support the conclusion that law journals remain important sources in charting and evaluating political transitions in early twentieth century Ireland.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Howlin on the Politics of the Nineteenth Century Irish Jury Trial

Niamb Howlin, Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin, is publishing The Politics of Jury Trial in Nineteenth-Century Ireland in the 2015 volume of Comparative Legal History. Here is the abstract.

This article considers aspects of lay participation in the Irish justice system, focusing on some political dimensions of the trial jury in the nineteenth century. It then identifies some broad themes common to systems of lay participation generally, and particularly nineteenth-century European systems. These include perceptions of legitimacy, State involvement and interference with jury trials, and issues around representativeness. The traditional lack of scholarship in the area of comparative criminal justice history has meant that many of the commonalities between different jury systems have been hitherto unexplored. It is hoped that this paper will contribute to a wider discussion of the various commonalities and differences in the development of lay participation in justice systems.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

A Conference On Law and Revolution In Ireland, November 2014

Playlist of podcasts from Law and Revolution in Ireland: "law and lawyers before, during, and after the Cromwellian Interregnum. This conference took place in the House of Lords Dublin on the 27th and 28th of November 2014. It was organised by Dr Coleman Dennehy in association with the Irish Legal History Society, and generously supported by the society, the Bank of Ireland, UCD Humanities Institute, University College London Department of History, and UCD School of History and Archives. The event was recorded for podcasting by Real Smart Media."