This book examines intermediate appellate courts by using the Irish Court of Appeal as a case study.
The operation and contribution of intermediate appellate courts are often overlooked in legal scholarship, which tends to focus on apex courts, most frequently national supreme courts. However, intermediate appellate courts perform a series of vital functions, including error prevention and the development of doctrine, and ensuring that apex courts are free to concentrate on issues of exceptional public importance. The significance of intermediate appellate courts has increased in recent decades in tandem with an increase in the volume and complexity of litigation in many countries.
The Irish Court of Appeal was established in 2014 and this enables a number of dimensions of non-apex courts to be examined, including the rationales for, and challenges of, inserting such a court into an existing and well-established legal system. Institutional aspects of the court such as the appointment and promotion of its judges, its rules on dissent, and its experience of appellants in person are analysed. In addition, its contribution to substantive law over the first 10 years of its operation is evaluated. Interviews with judges who have served on the Court enrich the book’s account of its operation and development. In addition, comparative perspectives from Northern Ireland, England and Wales, Scotland and the Netherlands enhance the analysis of an integral part of many legal systems.
1. Introduction, Mark Coen and Noel McGrath (University College Dublin, Ireland)
Part One: The Court of Appeal in Context
2. The Political and Constitutional Background to the Establishment of the Court of Appeal, Jamie McLoughlin (University College Dublin, Ireland)
3. The Early Days of a New Court, Mark Coen (University College Dublin, Ireland)
Part Two: The Court of Appeal: Institutional Features and Challenges
4. The Judges of the Court of Appeal, Laura Cahillane (University of Limerick, Ireland)
5. The Culture and Practice of Dissent in the Court of Appeal, Brian Barry (Technological University Dublin, Ireland)
6. Fools Rush In? Litigants in Person in the Irish Court of Appeal - Towards a Best Practice Guide, Patricia Brazil (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)
Part Three: The Contribution of the Court of Appeal to Substantive Law
7. Guiding Judicial Discretion in Private Family Law: The Role of the Court of Appeal, Deirdre McGowan (Technological University Dublin, Ireland)
8. Criminal Appeals, Mark Coen and Jamie McLoughlin (University College Dublin, Ireland)
9. A Decade of Distinctive Doctrinal Developments in Tort Law in Ireland: Analysing the Case Law of the Court of Appeal in Comparative Perspective, Des Ryan (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)
10. “Tending the Gardens of Equity”: Vulnerable Sureties and the Court of Appeal, Oonagh Breen (University College Dublin, Ireland)
11. The Court of Appeal as a Court of Union Law, Stephen Coutts (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Part Four: The Court of Appeal in Comparative Perspective
12. The Court of Appeal of Northern Ireland, Brice Dickson and Conor McCormick (Queen’s University Belfast, UK)
13. “Scotland, Uniquely Among the Major Jurisdictions of the British Isles, as no Proper Hierarchy of Courts”: Evaluating the Impact of the Courts Reform (Scotland) Act 2014, Andrew Tickell (Glasgow Caledonian University, UK)
14. The Court of Appeal of England and Wales, Graham Lewis (University of Oxford, UK)
Part Five: The Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court
15. Dancing the Two-Step: Appellate Practices in Ireland following the Establishment of the Court of Appeal, Noel McGrath (University College Dublin, Ireland)
16. The Supreme Court after the establishment of the Court of Appeal, Conor Casey (University of Surrey, UK) and Oran Doyle (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)
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