Attorney General gives lecture on constitutional interpretation and comparative law
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Attorney General Paul Gallagher SC giving his lecture
The Attorney General, Mr Paul Gallagher SC explained to students on 23 February how the unique nature of the Constitution of Ireland still allows the appropriate use of legal ideas and arguments from other countries, because of the common pursuit of justice through constitutional law, across different times and cultures.
Law students from various stages of study and academic staff, as well as the first-year constitutional law students, were invited to this special lecture, which the Attorney General gave as a member of the adjunct faculty. Mr Gallagher is a UCD alumnus (BCL 1975 BA 1978) and also holds an LLM from the University of Cambridge.
The Attorney General began by setting out the main features of the Constitution, with its historical background and emphasised that the task of the courts, especially the Supreme Court, is to interpret that text according to well established rules and principles of interpretation and a settled body of case, rather than the political, social or moral views of each judge. He also highlighted to areas, such as the Directive Principles of Social Policy contained in Article 45, where the Constitution has important things to say about current economic and social issues, even though these may not be directly relevant to how constitutional cases are decided by the courts. The Attorney General stressed that constitutional law in particular involves the pursuit of justice and that the justice cannot be treated in a relativist manner. He cited Professor Amartya Sen’s recent work The Idea of Justice (2009) as a lucid account of the practical value and relevance of the concept of justice, as opposed to what Professor Sen claims to be the late John Rawls’s transcendental account of it.
The Attorney General noted that some critics, such as the Chief Justice of the United States, Justice John Roberts oppose use of comparative law in constitutional adjudication and he explained why he disagreed. The practical pursuit of an objective concept of justice by constitutional lawyers and judges, through the use of established techniques of legal interpretation, shows how constitutional interpretation can and should respond to changes in the prevailing political, social and moral ideals of our society and to the lessons which could appropriately be drawn from other constitutional democracies. He finished by reviewing the use of comparative law in some recent decisions of the Supreme Court, such as CC v Ireland and A v Governor of Arbour Hill Prison, to illustrate the use which he thought could legitimately be made of it.
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(L-R) John O’Dowd, UCD School of Law; Professor Paul O’Connor, Editor, Irish Jurist; Paul Gallagher, SC, Attorney General; Suzanne Egan, UCD School of Law; Professor John Jackson, Head of UCD School of Law
