Full Description
This book examines intermediate appellate courts by using the Irish Court of Appeal as a case study.
The operation and contribution of intermediate appellate courts are often overlooked in legal scholarship, which tends to focus on apex courts, most frequently national supreme courts. However, intermediate appellate courts perform a series of vital functions, including error prevention, the development of doctrine, and ensuring that apex courts are free to concentrate on issues of exceptional public importance. The significance of intermediate appellate courts has increased in recent decades in tandem with an increase in the volume and complexity of litigation in many countries.
The Irish Court of Appeal was established in 2014 and this enables a number of dimensions of non-apex courts to be examined, including the rationales for, and challenges of, inserting such a court into an existing and well-established legal system. Institutional aspects of the court such as the appointment and promotion of its judges and its rules on dissent are analysed. The process of 'setting up court' is described. In addition, its contribution to some areas of substantive law over the first 10 years of its operation is evaluated. Interviews with judges who have served on the Court enrich the book's account of its operation and development. In addition, comparative perspectives from Northern Ireland and England and Wales enhance the analysis of an integral part of many legal systems.
Contents
1. Introduction, Mark Coen and Noel McGrath (University College Dublin, Ireland)
Part One: The Court of Appeal in Context
2. The Political and Constitutional Background to the Establishment of the Court of Appeal, Jamie McLoughlin (University College Dublin, Ireland)
3. The Early Days of a New Court: Its First Ten Judges Look Back, Mark Coen (University College Dublin, Ireland)
Part Two: The Court of Appeal: Institutions and Challenges
4. The Judges of the Court of Appeal, Laura Cahillane (University of Limerick, Ireland)
5. The Culture and Practice of Dissent in the Court of Appeal, Brian Barry (Technological University Dublin, Ireland)
Part Three: The Contribution of the Court of Appeal to Substantive Law
6. Criminal Appeals: Past and Present, Jamie McLoughlin and Mark Coen (University College Dublin, Ireland)
7. Guiding Judicial Discretion in Private Family Law: The Role of the Court of Appeal, Deirdre McGowan (Technological University Dublin, Ireland)
8. A Decade of Distinctive Doctrinal Developments in Tort Law in Ireland: Analysing the Case Law of the Court of Appeal in Comparative Perspective, Desmond Ryan (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)
9. "Tending the Gardens of Equity": Vulnerable Sureties and the Court of Appeal, Oonagh Breen (University College Dublin, Ireland)
10. The Court of Appeal as a Court of Union Law, Stephen Coutts (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Part Four: The Court of Appeal in Comparative Perspective
11. Ten Years of the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland, Brice Dickson and Conor McCormick (Queen's University Belfast, UK)
12. The Court of Appeal of England and Wales, Graham Lewis (University of Oxford, UK)
Part Five: The Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court
13. No Longer a Court of Error: Leave to Appeal to the Supreme Court, Noel McGrath (University College Dublin, Ireland)
14. The Supreme Court after the establishment of the Court of Appeal, Conor Casey (University of Surrey, UK) and Oran Doyle (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)
