The Irish Constitution

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Figgis Darrell. The Irish Constitution

Introduction. IRELAND AND A COMMUNITY OF NATIONS

The Irish Constitution

I. WHAT IS A CONSTITUTION?

II. THE PLAN OF THE CONSTITUTION

III. THE MAKING OF LAWS

IV. THE PEOPLE AS LAW-MAKERS

V. THE EXECUTIVE POWER

VI. THE JUDICIARY

VII. THE QUESTION OF APPEALS

VIII. FUNCTIONAL COUNCILS

Draft Constitution of the Irish Free State

SCHEDULE

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During the early days of the second French Republic a customer entered a bookseller’s and asked: “Have you a copy of the French Constitution?” “We do not,” the bookseller politely replied, “deal in periodical literature.”

Now, to any student of history such a story is a sure indication of the time of which it is told. He need not inquire to know that the time was one of revolution, change, and unsettlement. He also knows the mind of the people of that time, for insecure conditions beget a nervous, restless fear. And these things are significant. They reveal a quality of constitution-making that is not always, or easily, remembered. For whatever changes may proceed in legislation – however many and rapid they be – as long as the Constitution, written or unwritten, remains intact, the State at least is stable and its foundations are secure.

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That is a sovereign act; and that act will differ in no degree from a similar act by any other sovereign people. From this, however, one last consideration follows; and, though it is simple, it is not usually remembered. For if the passing of a Constitution is an act of full sovereignty, and if that Constitution, being a Fundamental Law, restricts and limits all future law-making, then the assemblies to come which will pass those future laws will not be sovereign.

They will not be able to do what they will, and they will not be able to act as they will, for they must obey the requirements and act within the limits of the Constitution, as prescribed by the first Assembly, which alone was of full sovereignty. For this reason every nation has gone to great care to choose persons of special competence for the body which is to act as a Constituent Assembly – the body, indeed, which is to act as the first, and, so long as that Constitution shall remain, the last Sovereign Assembly of the nation. The act of prescribing a Constitution being the highest act that a nation can make, care has always been taken to make it the fullest and the freest. For, once done, it cannot be undone, except at great trouble, and perhaps as the result of great convulsion.

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