Laws and Justice in Irish History
A summary of Irish laws and justice through history.
Location: Ireland
The Brehon Laws of Gaelic Ireland
Early Irish society kept order through a class of legal scholars called brehons. Acting as judges and lawyers, they created a complex civil code, the brehon laws, to govern the kingdoms of Ireland. First an oral tradition, the laws were written down in the early Christian era. They covered everything from the value of embroidery to the duties and limits of a king. Over the centuries, they evolved and expanded through several texts.[1][2][3]
Unlike many legal codes of the time, the brehon laws avoided the death penalty when possible. Instead, they dispensed justice through fines determined by the crime and honor-price of the injured party. Cases were decided by brehons. There is some evidence that women could become brehons in ancient Ireland, but this ended with Christianity. Under the law, women were always under the charge of their husbands or male relatives. They could, however, own and inherit their own property and divorce their husbands for a variety of reasons.[4][5]
Laws and Justice Under the British Empire
Even after the Anglo-Norman invasion, brehon law governed Gaelic Ireland. The main changes to Irish law during the Middle Ages were religious in nature. When Anglo-Irish lords assumed control of their estates, many practiced brehon law and kept brehons in their courts. English King Henry VIII finally extinguished the laws as part of his Irish reforms in the early 17th century.[6]
Over time, the new laws of Ireland came to reflect the goals of the British Empire; namely, to suppress Irish-Catholic culture. They were punished for wearing their traditional clothing, speaking their native language, and growing long hair or mustaches. Inheritance laws forced Catholic families to divide their lands into smaller parcels with each new generation. When violent unrest broke out, the British responded with force and seized rebel lands. The island fell into a long period of famine and bloodshed, until the old Gaelic lords were defeated.[7]
When rebellion failed, the Irish turned to the legal system for relief. Activists pushed for greater Catholic protections on issues ranging from education to rent control. Although marked by violence on both sides, the movement focused on non-violent protests such as rent boycotts. Their efforts proved successful, but only after many families were evicted and their homes destroyed.[8]
Rebellion and Independence in Ireland
For many Irish people, however, reform came too slowly under the United Kingdom. Between 1919 and 1922, rebel forces waged a war of independence against British troops and loyalists. The conflict ended with the partition of the independent Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland remains a part of the United Kingdom. Today, Ireland follows a democratic parliamentary system outlined in the Bunreacht na hÉireann, its Constitution.[9]
Bibliography
Joseph C. Walker, An Historical Essay on the Dress of the Ancient and Modern Irish (Dublin: Printed for the author by George Grierson, 1788), 6-19.
Patrick W. Joyce, A Smaller Social History of Ancient Ireland (London, NY, and Bombay: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1906), 70-93.
Ibid., 22-30.
Ibid., 286.
Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, Early Medieval Ireland, 400-1200 (London: Longman, 1995).
Henry Duff Traill, Social England: From the Accession of Henry VIII to the Death of Elizabeth (New York, NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1897), 294-295.
Ibid., 420-425.
Marcus Tanner, Ireland's Holy Wars: The Struggle for a Nation's Soul, 1500-2000 (New Haven, CT: Yale Nota Bene, 2003), 254-257.
Michael Hopkinson, The Irish War of Independence (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2004).
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