Court of Appeal in Ireland

The Lord Chancellor of Ireland was President of the Court of Appeal. As in England, the full-time judges had the title Lord Justice of Appeal. Other senior judges such as the Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer, sat as additional judges of appeal when required.

The following judges held the title of Lord Justice of the Court of Appeal in Ireland from the court's creation in 1878 to the abolition of the pre-independence courts in 1924.^[1]

The partition of Ireland by the Government of Ireland Act 1920 created separate jurisdictions of Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland; the Supreme Court of Judicature of Ireland was abolished and replaced by parallel Supreme Courts of Northern and Southern Ireland, each comprising a High Court and Court of Appeal.^[4] A new High Court of Appeal for Ireland was created to hear appeals from both the Court of Appeal in Southern Ireland and the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland. Further appeal lay from the new court to the Law Lords in Westminster.^[5] The four judges (other than the Lord Chancellor) of the abolished Court of Appeal chose to join the new Southern court rather than the Northern one.

The Lord Chancellor of Ireland (John Ross), Lord Chief Justice of Southern Ireland (Thomas Molony), and Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland (Denis Henry) were ex officio members of the new High Court of Appeal. By default, an appeal was heard by the Lord Chancellor and one judge from each jurisdiction; in the absence of the Lord Chancellor, it could be heard by two judges from each jurisdiction; for important cases, the Lord Chancellor could mandate a five-judge court, himself and two from each jurisdiction. Each Lord Chief Justice could nominate one member of his Supreme Court to hear an appeal instead of or in addition to himself.^[6]

The High Court of Appeal was constituted on 1 October 1921^[7] and abolished on 6 December 1922 by the Irish Free State (Consequential Provisions) Act 1922, passed in consequence of the replacement of Southern Ireland by the Irish Free State. Among the judges who sat in the court were James Andrews from Northern Ireland and Stephen Ronan from Southern Ireland. In its brief lifespan at least ten of its judgments were reported.^[8] The most significant, Leyburn v. Armagh Co. Co., was that, since it was a new court with wider powers than the 1877 Court of Appeal, the 1921 High Court of Appeal was not bound by the former's precedents (stare decisis).^[9] Three of the High Court of Appeal's judgments, relating to cases from Southern Ireland, were appealed to the House of Lords and overturned there.^[10][11] Two of the Lords' rulings were after the creation of the Irish Free State.^[11]

During the first three decades of its existence, the reputation of the Court of Appeal was very high, probably higher than that of any other tribunal in Irish legal history. Maurice Healy, writing in 1939, thought that the Court as it was constituted in the early 1900s "could compare with any college of justice in history".^[19] V.T.H. Delaney, writing in 1960, believed that all Irish barristers would choose the old Court of Appeal as representing the Irish judiciary at their best.^[20] This reputation depended largely on the quality of the individual judges; Christopher Palles is still often called "the greatest of Irish judges", and Gerald FitzGibbon, Hugh Holmes and Lord Ashbourne were his intellectual equals.^[21] Unfortunately, when these men were gone, there was a problem in finding replacements of equal calibre, and from about 1916, after the death of Fitzgibbon (in 1909), and the retirement of Holmes (in 1913) and Palles (in 1916), the reputation of the Court declined. In its last years, according to Healy, the judges were notable only for their constant quarrelling among themselves.^[22]