Page:The Irish Constitution Explained.djvu/58

 think the tendency in our country will be to restrict appeals to the Privy Council rather than to increase them." "There is," said Mr. Rowell for the same State, "a growing opinion that our own Courts should be the final authority." "You know what our opinion is in S. Africa," said Mr. Burton. "In our Constitution we have abolished the right of appeal to the Privy Council as a right. There is no such right with us at all, but the Constitution merely says that any right residing in the King in Council to grant special leave to appeal shall not be interfered with."

These utterances, and the entire course of history on this matter, reveal an irritation which has grown with experience. The mechanism is merely a mechanism, and it has not worked well. It has injured harmony, and it manifestly has not brought justice. Even assuming that the Irish courts should agree that the decision in any individual case appealed from should stand, it could equally well argue that that decision could not be held to govern other cases; and the effect of such a decision would be to make the appeal nugatory in law.

Besides all of which, the right to allow such appeals to the Judicial Committee is based, ultimately, on the acknowledgment of the supremacy of British legislation; and the plain intention of our Constitution is that this supremacy is not acknowledged, each party to the Treaty being a co-equal member of a larger Community. Not only, therefore, are the practical reasons against such a right of appeal, but there is. no Substance in the Constitution to make such a right allowable.

There is, indeed, nothing that can be said in favour of such a provision, from the point of view either of justice, of law, of equity or of harmony. If it be destined to remain, it is to be hoped that it will remain a dead letter. Otherwise it will lead to boundless friction and ill-will, internal and external.

Yet there is an excellent principle embedded in this provision. It is very deeply, and perhaps almost inextricably,