Decision Making in the Irish Judiciary

• In Event: Comparative Judicial Politics

Abstract

The Irish judiciary was only recently changed to include an intermediate appellate court. Prior to the establishment of the Court of Appeal in 2014 (pursuant to a constitutional referendum), backlogs on the Supreme Court’s docket meant that cases could languish for more than four years. Further, the lack of an intermediate appellate court arguably hampered the Supreme Court’s ability to be a co-equal actor in the separation of powers game. Now, with several years of cases decided by the Supreme Court after the institutional redesign, we take the opportunity to assess changes in the dynamics of decision making on Ireland’s highest court before and after the adoption of the Court of Appeal. We offer early evidence as to changes in the Supreme Court’s docket as well as its decisional outputs.

Authors

• Jolly A. Emrey, University of Wisconsin, Whitewater

• Wendy L. Martinek, SUNY, Binghamton University