Volume sketches emergence of Court of Appeal
Reflecting on his time as first president of the Court of Appeal, Justice Sean Ryan described it as “a hugely happy time”, marked by collegiality, pressure, and institutional innovation.
Judge Ryan was speaking at the launch of The Irish Court of Appeal – The First Decade of an Intermediate Appellate Court, edited by Dr Mark Coen and Dr Noel McGrath of the Sutherland School of Law in UCD (13 April).
In her introduction to the event, Professor Imelda Maher (Dean of Law at UCD), said that universities and courts were “both institutions that are essential to a live and effective democracy”.
She stressed that both depended on “integrity” and “independence” and welcomed the publication as a reminder that “we live in a jurisdiction that still has those kind of institutions”.
She cautioned that “they're precious, and we need to work to maintain that independence and integrity through the future”.
Mr Justice Ryan described the book as “original, collaborative and very interesting”.
He observed that it was “pleasingly readable and informative, not always the case with either legal or academic publications”.
Real candour
He outlined that “the book explains the background to the setting up of the Court of Appeal and then discusses the experience of the first judges”, adding that it reflected “real candour”.
He recalled the policy debates preceding the court’s establishment, “about whether we would have more judges in the Supreme Court or a new court”.
The eventual decision followed “the recommendations of Judge Denham's group” and required “a huge amount of work… putting all this elaborate scaffolding together”, which he described as “quite some achievement”.
On his own appointment, he said it was “a flattering surprise” and added, “I had no idea how interesting it was going to be… It was extremely busy, it was hard working”.
He highlighted the role of colleagues, describing them as “exceptionally able and pleasant and companionable”.
The workload was described as intense, but the decision was to prioritise criminal appeals, with “all hands on deck” to address “a very long backlog”.
Dr Mark Coen remarked on the substantial undertaking of putting in a new appellate court in “a very well-established, very well-developed court system of 90 years standing”.
He described the book as containing a very varied selection of authors and chapters covering various aspects of the Court of Appeal, including the background to the creation of the court, its institutional features, and doctrinal areas such as family law, European Union law, and tort law.
The book also examines the effect of the creation of the Court of Appeal on the Supreme Court.
Dispassionate and objective account
Dr Coen noted that “we were able to get all ten of the original judges”, capturing “their impressions and their experiences” of the court’s establishment and expressed the hope that the work provided “a dispassionate and objective account of the court in its first decade”.
Dr Noel McGrath referred to the empirical dimension of the project, noting the “enormous undertaking” (by research assistant Rory Clarke) of analysing the Court’s judgments, work that provided “a solid foundation” for the book’s largely positive conclusions.
Notable among these is their assertion that: “The Court of Appeal has established itself as a quiet workhorse of the legal system”.