Explain the historical background and the structure of the courts' system in Northern Ireland. Does this system need any changes to meet the growing challenges of an increasingly litigious modern society?

Authors Avatar

Explain the historical background and the structure of the courts’ system in Northern Ireland.  Does this system need any changes to meet the growing challenges of an increasingly litigious modern society? (Give reasons for your answer.)

Law is one part of a set of processes, social, political, economic and cultural, which shape and direct the development of society. Like all other mechanisms the law seeks to govern human behaviour. The legal history of Northern Ireland is long and complex for this reason alone.  The history helps us to identify the aspects of the system that are overdue for change, the importance of a historical approach will be made particularly apparent when I look at the sources of law in Northern Ireland.  The first three sections provide a brief sketch of the general legal history of the area, while the subsequent three sections describe the bodies and persons who have inherited the political and professional responsibility for operating the legal system in Northern Ireland.

Passed down for centuries, the Brehon Laws have made it to the present day. Although no longer in practice, the Brehon Laws give us a glimpse of what things were like in Ireland centuries and centuries ago. The actual technical term for the law tracts is Fenechas, which basically means the law of the Freemen. These laws are probably the oldest European laws that we know of. They were originally composed in poetic verse and were memorized by the Filid. Years later they were written down and preserved in several books of law, such as the Senchus Mor, the Book of Acaill, and the Uraiccecht Becc. The Brehon Laws are believed to have existed as early as the common Celtic Period (c. 1000 BCE). According Alix Morgan MacAnTsaoir, author of Introduction to the Brehon Law, “The Brehon Law was ordered codified in 438CE by Laighaire, High King of Ireland. This work was done by three kings, three Brehons and three Christian missionaries, and is contained in the Senchus Mor. The texts originate in the 7th and 8th centuries CE and are found in manuscripts written in the 14th-16th centuries. Ireland is well known for their legends and myths and their laws seem to have mingled within them as well. Legends have become intermingled with almost every aspect of Irish living.  Brehon law was a legal system based on traditional custom, the laws being formulated and applied by respected native jurists called Brehons.  Brehon law continued to apply after 1169 in areas outside the Normans’ control and even in areas within their control it continued to govern the native Irish.  The Normans themselves were subject to the English “common law” system, which at that time was already unifying the various local legal systems throughout England, that is, it was making them “common” to the whole of the country.  

Join now!

The system of law that has existed throughout Ireland since the seventeenth century is called the common law system, though it is important to note that this is only one sense in which the expression “common law” can be used.  The most fundamental feature of the common law system is the doctrine of binding precedent, once judges have made a ruling on a particular point of law, that ruling must be applied whenever judges in lower courts are dealing with the same point in subsequent cases.  The ruling is said to have become a “binding legal authority” or a “precedent”. ...

This is a preview of the whole essay