The Judges of Ireland, 1866-1921

The late 1860s and the 1870s are important years in the history of the Irish judiciary, and for the structure and culture of the courts. On New Year's Day 1878 the judicial framework was significantly modernised by the establishment of a single new High Court and Court of Appeal, in succession to a number of historic courts. In turn the political settlements, north and south, of the early 1920s resulted in new court systems. This book is both an account of all those new court systems, and their origins, and a biographical study, individual and collective, of the senior judges of Ireland (approximately 80 men in total) in the last third of the 19th century and the initial decades of the 20th century. It is an overall narrative of appointments, retirements and judicial issues in that era. This exploration of how the courts and judges worked, and the nature of their connection to wider civic and political society, renders them and their relation to that wider society more accessible outside the field of legal history itself.