RIP, Bunreacht, (1937-2022)
After a long illness. At the Four Courts, Dublin, July 5th 2022. Sadly missed by the remaining sentient citizens of the former Irish Republic. Funeral arrangements later. American papers please copy.
The ultimate meaning of the manner of the Irish Supreme Court's dismissal of the challenge to the constitutionality of lockdown measures known as O'Doherty and Waters v. The Minister for Health and others is that any meaningful right of Irish citizens to challenge in future any legislative right-intrusion by their government is almost inevitably doomed to failure because the procedures have been rendered radically more restricted than before.
Extract:
It is clear that O’Donnell C.J. has effected in our case a sleight-of-hand in which he has deprived citizens the benefit of the pre-existing low-bar placed before applicants for judicial review of Oireachtas legislation, in effect abolishing the leave process in such cases and all but certainly replacing it — in virtually all such future cases — with what is termed a ‘rolled-up hearing’, where the leave issue and substantive case will be heard at the same time, in effect a contradiction in terms. The only kinds of challenges to be excepted from this new dispensation will be ones in which the challenger more or less accepts the broad justification of the State for the impugned legislation, even after it has become clear that prima facie unconstitutionality has occurred. If the challenger’s case is stronger than that — if, for example, he challenges the very basis of the justification — he must prove his entire case at the leave stage, in which instance a judicial review would become redundant.