Irish Legal Heritage: The first Irish witch and her maid who became a martyr

Dame Alice Kyteler was the first woman to be condemned for witchcraft in Ireland, having been tried for seven charges by the Bishop of Ossory, Richard de Ledrede in 1324.

Irish Legal Heritage: No sport on a Sunday

Anybody who has arrived at a “24-hour” supermarket in Northern Ireland after 6pm on a Sunday will suspect that the closed doors have something to do with observing the Sabbath in Christian tradition. What you might not know is that this rule has its origins in the Sunday Observance Act 1695, passed by the Parliament of Ireland as An Act for the better Observation of the Lord’s-Day, commonly called Sunday.

Irish Legal Heritage: Penal Laws and Mass Rocks in Ireland

The first two Irish penal laws of 1695, for disarming papists and prohibiting ‘foreign education’, were acts which propagated the repression of Catholicism in Ireland.

Irish Legal Heritage: Éraic reparation in Brehon law

The native system of law in Ireland, Brehon law, was first written down in the 7th century and survived until the 17th century. The law was administered by Brehons, and Redwood Castle in Tipperary (pictured) is said to have been where the MacAodhagáin clan, as hereditary Brehons, established the first school of law.

Irish Legal Heritage: Grounds for Divorce

Brehon law, which was codified in the 7th and survived until 17th century, has been described in some instances as being moderately progressive in regards to women’s rights and issues like divorce. Given that divorce was prohibited in Ireland from 1937 until the marriage referendum in 1995, the numerous grounds for divorce recognised in ancient Ireland were comparably liberal to our more recent history.

Irish Legal Heritage: Interpretation of the term ‘family’ in the Constitution

In the State (Nicolaou) v An Bord Uchtála, the Supreme Court heard the case of an unmarried father who sought an order of certiorari to quash an adoption order made by An Bord Uchtála.

Irish Legal Heritage: Penal Transportation

The practice of penal transportation as a form of criminal punishment used by the British began in the early 1600s and “did not formally cease until the penal settlement on the Andaman Islands was wound up in 1945”.

Irish Legal Heritage: Criminal Conversation

Criminal conversation gave a man a right of action for damages against anyone who had sexual relations with his wife, and the consent of the wife did not affect his entitlement to sue. It was not necessary that adultery resulted in separation, however if the couple was already separated the man was only entitled to sue if the separation was caused by the actions of the defendant.

Irish Legal Heritage: Hanged by a comma

Irish revolutionary Roger Casement, the ‘father of 20th-century human rights investigations’, was knighted in 1911 for his investigations into human rights abuses in the Congo and Peru while he worked a British Consul.

Irish Legal Heritage: Ireland v United Kingdom

Between the 9th and 10th of August 1971, the British Army initiated ‘Operation Demetrius’ in Northern Ireland – which involved the arrest and internment of hundreds of people suspected of being associated with the IRA. Of those arrested and interned during Operation Demetrius, fourteen men were interrogated with the use of the ‘five techniques’ which had been authorised for ‘interrogation in depth’.

Irish Legal Heritage: Marital Rape

Marital rape only became a crime under section 5 of the Criminal Law (Rape) (Amendment) Act 1990, which abolished ‘any rule of law by virtue of which a husband cannot be guilty of the rape of his wife’.

Irish Legal Heritage: Well-heeled articulate women

In Murphy v Attorney General [1982] IR 241, a married couple challenged the constitutionality of ss. 192-198 of the Income Tax Act 1967 which deemed the income of a married woman, living with her husband, be her husband’s income for tax purposes and not her own. The case was supported by the Married Persons Tax Reform Association (MPTRA), which had been established in 1977 to campaign against the law which discriminated against married women who worked.

Irish Legal Heritage: The Case of Tanistry

On 4 April 1603, the Treaty of Mellifont officially finalised the Tudor conquest of Ireland, however by 1606 it became clear to the British Crown that Brehon law, or ‘the common law of the Irishry’, was still being administered in Ireland. In particular, reliance on the customs of ‘tanistry’ and ‘gavelkind’ meant that British control of Ireland was limited to port towns and an area around Dublin.

Irish Legal Heritage: One Man, One Vote

The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) was established in 1967, and one of its main goals was to achieve ‘one man, one vote’ in Northern Ireland. The plural voting system, which gave business owners and university degree holders an extra vote, had been abolished in the rest of the UK by the Representation of the People Act 1948, but this did not extend to local council elections in Northern Ireland.

Irish Legal Heritage: Blasphemy law in Ireland

Under Article 40.6.1(i) of the Constitution of Ireland, the ‘publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law’. Pursuant to this mandate, Section 31(1) of the Defamation Act 2009 states that ‘a person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €25,000.

Irish Legal Heritage: President Ó’Dálaigh’s resignation

With the sudden passing of Erskine Childers in November 1974, Cearbhall Ó’Dálaigh was nominated as the sole presidential candidate by the three main political parties of the time, becoming the fifth President of Ireland in December 1974. During Ó’Dálaigh’s presidency, Liam Cosgrave served as Taoiseach in the Fine Gael-Labour Government. The tensions between Cosgrave as the leader of Fine Gael, and Ó’Dálaigh as a president with a Fianna Fáil background, ultimately led to a constitutional crisis and Ó’Dálaigh’s resignation.

Irish Legal Heritage: Pitchcapping

During the United Irishman Rebellion of 1798, one of the forms of torture used by the British on suspected Irish rebels – or Croppies – was pitchcapping. Victims were subjected to “caps” full of boiling tar, or “pitch”, and gunpowder, forced on their heads and set alight.

Irish Legal Heritage: The Ballot Act of 1872

The secret ballot was introduced in Britain and Ireland in July 1972 by the Ballot Act of 1872, with the aim of mitigating the effects of bribery, intimidation, and coercion in elections.

Irish Legal Heritage: Typhoid Mary

November 2018 marked 80 years since the death of Mary Mallon, who, after over 26 years of imprisonment, died in an isolation hospital on North Brother Island in New York. Mary’s incarceration was not the consequence of being convicted of any crime, but was instead the reaction to her being identified as an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever.

Irish Legal Heritage: Sir Edward Carson at the Bar

Sir Edward Carson’s controversial role in Irish history and status as a unionist icon has obscured his reputation as one of Ireland’s great legal figures.

Irish Legal Heritage: Billy in the bowl

Navigating the streets of Dublin in a wooden bowl fortified with iron, “Billy in the bowl”, as he was so nicknamed, was born without legs and said to have been blessed with a handsome face. Using this to his advantage, Billy was “one of those curious beggars who frequented fairs and public places, where he picked up a good deal of money”. However, Billy wanted more and so he created a cunning act to part people from their possessions.

Irish Legal Heritage: Constance Markievicz

The general election of December 1918 was the first time that women were able to exercise their right to vote in Britain and Ireland. Although the Representation of the People Act 1918 did not provide for equal voting rights – it was only female property owners over the age of 30 who were allowed to vote – it was a momentous victory for British and Irish Suffragettes. Of seventeen female candidates in Britain and Ireland, Constance Markievicz was the first woman to be elected to the House of Commons.

Irish Legal Heritage: Irish Women’s Franchise League and the Irish Citizen

In November 1908, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington and Margaret Cousins, along with their husbands Francis and James, founded the Irish Women’s Franchise League (IWFL). The primary aim of the IWFL was for women to be afforded the right to vote on the same terms as men, and a particular aim was to guarantee this was included in the Irish Home Rule Bill. Reflecting the aims of the non-party society, their slogans were “Suffrage First – Before All Else” and “Home Rule for Irishwomen as well as Irishmen”.