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Foreword to the book entitled "The Statute Law of The Irish Free State" written by Hugh Kennedy

The following is the text of the foreword to “The Statute Law of the Irish Free State, 1922 to 1928" by Mr. Justice Hanna, Judge of the High Court, Saostát Éireann. The author of the foreword is The Hon. Mr Hugh Kennedy, the first Chief Justice of Saorstát Éireann. The book was published in Dublin by Alex Thom & Company, Limited, Crow Street, in 1929. The book was dedicated to The Hon. Hugh Kennedy.

FOREWORD

By The Hon. Hugh Kennedy

Chief Justice of Saorstát Éireann

A story is told of a certain venerable Queen’s Counsel, brought up in the old technique of procedure, who, in the year 1880 or thereabouts, raised before the then Master of the Rolls an objection founded on the former detachment of Law and Equity. “But” said the Master of the Rolls, “you are ignoring the merger of law and equity under the Judicature Act.” “Your Honour”, the reverend Die-hard replied, “I have never read that abominable Act and I never will read it.” Fidelity, however, to the maxim Nolumus mutari has practical limits, not very apparent during the half-century since the passing of the Judicature Act, until to-day when far-reaching changes on all sides deride our heraldic legend. If the ancient lawyer of the story had lived to these days and could be persuaded to open those obstinately closed eyes of his upon the scene, what a shattering of landmarks would be discovered to him! The work to which these sentences are prefixed is a compass whereby such a one may find his bearings in the altered landscape.

The great industry of M. Justice Hanna, his skill in legal analysis, and his practical knowledge of professional requirements, have been applied in a very useful purpose in the production of this book, which will lay many under a great obligation to him. In an old established state in undisturbed times of settled and humdrum conditions, the practising lawyer finds it no easy thing to keep his knowledge abreast of ordinary current legislation, but in the epochal seven years through which we have just passed in the Saorstát, there has been enacted and put upon the virgin pages of the new statute book a body of legislation, very large in volume, and quite outside the current of experience of even the most experienced amongst us, the experience of a stream of ordinary legislation flowing along familiar channels of precedent and principle, with here a deviation generally long anticipated, there a cutting off or an accretion seldom unforeseen. With the abruptness of revolution the stream began to flow welling out from the new spring, making new channels and courses as it flowed.

The legislation of the seven years contains more or less complete mechanism of the new State, a new mechanism of local government and poor law administration, the frame of a new judicial system, the structure of a civil service, an army and police force, the legislative foundations for agricultural and other industries, new machinery of land purchase, reforms in the administration of criminal law, and much else besides, going to the foundations legal and constitutional of the daily lives of our citizens and therefore of the daily business of our lawyers.

It is not alone the selfish interest of business men which will compel the members of the legal profession to devour and digest t this mass of legislation. It is a solemn duty resting upon them by reason of the privilege they enjoy from the State. Lawyers who have not a full knowledge of the national constitution and a real understanding of the liberties it secures as well as of its courts and other organisations, and the constitutional principles upon which they are based, endanger those liberties and are a menace to the State and its citizens.

The professional worker anxious to face this onerous responsibility, has up to the present found himself in great difficulty because he had nothing but the statutes themselves of which seven volumes have been published and an eighth is due for publication. Now, however, he is offered in this useful volume a key to the whole body of laws which have been enacted by the Oireachtas up to the present time. Mr. Justice Hanna has laboriously collected the statutes on each subject-matter which has engaged the Oireachtas and made a synopsis of the legislation on the subject, which gives to the enquirer, with the smallest possible expenditure of time by him, a clew by which he may readily find his way through particular Act or Acts. We can all heartily thank the Judge for this personal service, This book holds the field to itself. There is nothing else of the kind to be obtained and, so far as one can judge, it will be for some time to come an indispensable companion to practitioner and law students alike.

But the work has a real living value to others than members of the legal profession. Historians and students of politics and economics will find here a mirror of the period, for the life of a people is reflected in its laws. In this conspectus may be viewed the State taking form in a constitution with its great member, legislative, judicial, more or less in embryo, developing into full growth and vitality by implementing statutes, the Legislative by Electoral Acts, the Executive by the Ministers and Secretaries Acts, Civil Services Acts, Army and Police Acts, the Judicial by Courts of Justice Acts and Court Officers Acts. The close of an historic struggle is written in Pensions Acts and Indemnity Acts. The picture of the young State fighting for its life against attack, at the first continuous, latter intermittent, is revealed in the emergency and public safety acts. Peace and order appear to triumph in the growing volume of legislation showing economic life emerging, and the character of that economic life is manifested in a picture of much detail in Legislation concerning lands and agriculture, cattle, butter, eggs and beet sugar, drainage and forestry, currency and credit, and the production of power without coal, and in many features of the Finance Acts, and in provisions as to education.

There is another class to whom I would like to introduce this book, the class of classes, the ordinary citizen. It is a curious thing, but a fact, that a man who will expend his intellectual powers on, say the problem of a game of cards governed by an elaborate code of rules, will balance, tremble and become semi-conscious, if confronted with the most ordinary act of parliament. This is no doubt an inherited trait from the days when the laws were veiled from the multitude by obscurity of language and form. In our time of universal suffrage an Act should be deemed politically bad which cannot be read intelligently by the citizen who is the source of its authority, and I think that the Acts of the Oireachtas have been, for the most part, marked by a high degree of lucidity and a freedom from that jargon which is obscure save to the specialist. The citizen should be urged to read them, but he may need to be encouraged, and his way can be made easy by putting this volume in his hand as an introduction.

Aodh Ua Cinnéidigh.

This work is in the public domain in countries where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or less.