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LAW AND THE IDEA OF LIBERTY IN IRELAND FROM MAGNA CARTA TO THE PRESENT

PETER CROOKS and THOMAS MOHR (eds)
Four Courts Press
€55
ISBN 9781846827402

Reviewed by James Meighan

James Meighan is a solicitor and a Ph.D candidate at the University of Limerick.

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The editors open this book with a reference to the address of President Michael D. Higgins to the joint houses of parliament in Westminster in April 2014, in which the president quoted from one of the most seminal sections of Magna Carta, chapter 40: ‘to none will we sell, to none will we delay or deny justice’. This simple statement went on to form the cornerstone of many legal systems, creating the concept of fundamental rights and a (slow) move away from absolutism. This book is long overdue, not because it seeks to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the Great Charter, penned in 1215 at Runnymede by King John at the insistence of his barons, but because it is the first authoritative text to consider the influence of the charter on modern Ireland.

The lead-up to the 800th anniversary of the charter in 2015 saw a significant addition to the literature on the topic. In the main, the new works built on important earlier studies by authors such as J.C. Holt and Ralph Turner. Crooks and Mohr’s study does not, however, follow this trajectory. It examines uncharted territory—Ireland’s relationship with the charter since its enunciation by King John—and an examination of this nature is long overdue, given the significance of the Magna Carta to the establishment of international constitutionalism. The work is book-ended by Peter Crooks’s chapter on Ireland’s Magna Carta and Bláthna Ruane’s chapter on influences of the Magna Carta on modern Irish constitutionalism.

Edited works can sometimes result in a disjointed text, but the masterstroke of this book is the fast-paced narrative running through the entire work and the treatment of the Great Charter regarding certain important aspects of an 800-year legal and political history. The authors note that there is nothing anywhere in the 1215 charter concerning the lordship of Ireland, but the book claims Magna Carta for the Irish in the sometimes surprisingly little-known Magna Carta Hiberniae. Following King John’s death in 1216, his son, Henry III, issued Ireland’s own charter in 1217. The detailed analysis of Magna Carta Hiberniae must be considered the magnum opus of this book. The chapters particularly relevant on the Irish document are Paul Brand’s ‘Magna Carta in Ireland, 1215–1320’, Adrian Empey’s ‘Conquest and Common Law’, and ‘The Charter Reforged: The Red Book, materiality and Ireland’s Magna Carta’ by Peter Crooks. With vivid imagery, Crooks enunciates the importance of the Red Book (a manuscript compilation of precedents and office memoranda of the Irish Exchequer) to the history of the Irish charter and its loss and demise, down to the role of the washerwoman in the saga.

Magna Carta significantly advanced fundamental rights in the area of criminal law and legal procedure. Coleman Dennehy conducts an analysis of the implications of these advancements of rights in seventeenth-century Ireland. Colum Kenny, arguably the unofficial historian for the profession of barristers in Ireland, contributes a chapter on Audley Mervyn. Through the person of Mervyn and the role of the King’s Inns, he argues that a number of powerful individuals in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries championed Magna Carta and its ideals, at least in principle.

The renowned Emmet scholar and expert on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Irish history Patrick Geoghegan considers the battle between Daniel O’Connell and the Chartists, a nineteenth-century movement established in Glasgow with the admirable objectives of advancing the ideals of Magna Carta. Geoghegan explains the somewhat confused position of O’Connell on the Chartists, especially since O’Connell was initially a supporter of the organisation. Thomas Mohr, an expert in early Irish constitutional law, addresses the role of the charter in the lead-up to the Irish Free State, including the links between the charter, Home Rule and the Anglo-Irish Treaty. In an interesting study he considers the charter and the Irish Free State constitution. Saorstát Éireann was Ireland’s opportunity to acknowledge and own the charter. Mohr conducts this survey under two broad headings: sovereignty and human rights; and liberty as access to agrarian resources. He supports his arguments through contemporaneous case-law, illustrating the direct link between the case-law and the Great Charter.

In the concluding chapter, Bláthna Ruane SC concludes the 800-year survey with a study of the continued relevance of the document in modern Ireland. She conducts this examination from the enactment of Bunreacht na hÉireann in 1937 and concludes with an apt synopsis of not only the historical importance of the charter but also its continued relevance in the evolution of international constitutionalism:

‘Magna Carta’s principles have travelled a long way since the thirteenth century and still influence our lives today. Their future development and implementation in Ireland will not just be a matter for national jurisprudence, but will also be influenced by the constitutional cultures of Europe, America and elsewhere.

This book will appeal to not only the reader with an interest in legal history but also any reader who has an interest in the structural evolution of Ireland legal, political or social, from the early thirteenth century to the twenty-first century. With the modern threats to not only human rights in certain countries but also the undermining of legal and political systems, the reader is left in awe of the significance, longevity and modern relevance of Magna Carta and its Irish counterpart, Magna Carta Hiberniae.’