The Supreme Court of Ireland is the highest judicial authority in Ireland. It is a court of final appeal and exercises, in conjunction with the Court of Appeal and the High Court, judicial review over Acts of the Oireachtas. The Supreme Court also has appellate jurisdiction to ensure compliance with the Constitution of Ireland by governmental bodies and private citizens. It sits in the Four Courts in Dublin.
Stromberg v. California, 283 U.S. 359 (1931), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court ruling 7–2 that a 1919 California statute banning red flags was unconstitutional because it violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. This decision is considered a landmark in the history of First Amendment constitutional law, as it was one of the first cases where the Court extended the Fourteenth Amendment to include a protection of the substance of the First Amendment, in this case symbolic speech or "expressive conduct", from state infringement.
In the United States, judicial review is the legal power of a court to determine if a statute, treaty or administrative regulation contradicts or violates the provisions of existing law, a State Constitution, or ultimately the United States Constitution. While the U.S. Constitution does not explicitly define the power of judicial review, the authority for judicial review in the United States has been inferred from the structure, provisions, and history of the Constitution.
Crotty v. An Taoiseach was a landmark 1987 decision of the Irish Supreme Court which found that Ireland could not ratify the Single European Act unless the Irish Constitution was first changed to permit its ratification. The case taken by Raymond Crotty directly led to the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland and established that significant changes to European Union treaties required an amendment to the Irish constitution before they could be ratified by Ireland. As a consequence, the Republic of Ireland, uniquely in the EU, requires a plebiscite for every new, or substantive change to a, European Union Treaty.
National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality and Another v Minister of Justice and Others is a decision of the Constitutional Court of South Africa which struck down the laws prohibiting consensual sexual activities between men. Basing its decision on the Bill of Rights in the Constitution – and in particular its explicit prohibition of discrimination based on sexual orientation – the court unanimously ruled that the crime of sodomy, as well as various other related provisions of the criminal law, were unconstitutional and therefore invalid.
Geldenhuys v National Director of Public Prosecutions and Others is a decision of the Constitutional Court of South Africa which struck down as unconstitutional a law which set the age of consent at 19 for homosexual sex but only 16 for heterosexual sex.
The remedies available in a Singapore constitutional claim are the prerogative orders – quashing, prohibiting and mandatory orders, and the order for review of detention – and the declaration. As the Constitution of the Republic of Singapore is the supreme law of Singapore, the High Court can hold any law enacted by Parliament, subsidiary legislation issued by a minister, or rules derived from the common law, as well as acts and decisions of public authorities, that are inconsistent with the Constitution to be void. Mandatory orders have the effect of directing authorities to take certain actions, prohibiting orders forbid them from acting, and quashing orders invalidate their acts or decisions. An order for review of detention is sought to direct a party responsible for detaining a person to produce the detainee before the High Court so that the legality of the detention can be established.
Constitutional litigation in South Africa is an area of the law in South Africa dealing with the rules and principles applicable to cases that involve constitutional matters. It examines the constitutional jurisdiction of the Constitutional Court, the High Court and the Supreme Court of Appeal, and considers the various rules peculiar to these courts that are relevant to constitutional litigation, such as the admission of an amicus curiae, the duty to raise a constitutional matter as early as possible in the proceedings, and the duty to join the relevant organ of state in a case involving a constitutional issue.
Adam v The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform [2001] IESC 38 is a reported decision of the Irish Supreme Court, in which the Court, in affirming High Court orders to strike out two judicial review proceedings as frivolous, held that, to challenge the decision of a public authority, one must attempt to rely on proved individual circumstances.
Callan v Ireland& The Attorney General,[2013] IESC 35; [2013] IR 267; [2013] ILRM 257, was an Irish Supreme Court case which ruled on the decision to commute the sentence of death imposed on Callan to penal servitude for 40 years without allowing for remission. Noel Callan had been sentenced to death in 1985 but had his sentence commuted to 40 years of penal servitude by the President of Ireland, Patrick Hillery. The High Court rejected Callan's appeal that he was eligible for remission. Callan then appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court found that Callan was indeed serving imprisonment and so by law could request remission of his penalty.
Sivsivadze v Minister for Justice[2015] IESC 53; [2015] 2 ILRM 73; [2016] 2 IR 403 was an Irish Supreme Court case in which the Supreme Court dismissed a challenge to the constitutionality of section 3(1) of the Immigration Act 1999, under which the Minister for Justice order the deportation of a non-national for an indefinite period.
The Health (amendment) Bill 2004,[2005] IESC 7 was an Irish Supreme Court case where a bill containing amendments to The Health Act of 1970 was brought before the supreme court after issues arose as to whether the provisions of the Bill were constitutional. The Court found that the bill was unconstitutional. The court ruled that patients were entitled to recover unlawful charges that they had paid because a person's rights to recover property are protected by the constitution
Dekra Eireann Teo v Minister of Environment, [2003] 2 IR 270; [2003] 2 ILRM 210; [2003] IESC 25 is an Irish Supreme Court case in which it was decided that the earliest opportunity to apply for a review of a decision made by the court arises within the three-month period after the decision is made, and that courts have no power to extend that time. The Court held that a key feature of both European law and court rules is the policy of urgency.
De Roiste v Minister for Defence, [2001] 1 IR190, [2001] IESC 4; [2001] 2 ILRM 241, was an Irish Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the extended delay in bringing forward an action was grounds for dismissal of charges.
Benedict McGowan and Others v Labour Court and Others [2013] 2 ILRM 276; [2013] IESC 21; [2013] 3 IR 718 is an Irish Supreme Court case, where an appeal was granted and the court made a declaration that the provisions of Part III of the Industrial Relations Act are invalid considering the provisions of Article 15.2.1 of the Constitution of Ireland. This court questioned the method by which wages and other benefits were set on a collective basis across numerous sectors.
N.V.H. v Minister for Justice & Equality [2017] IESC 35 was an Irish Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld a challenge to the absolute prohibition on employment of asylum seekers contained in Section 9(4) of the Refugee Act 1996 and held it to be contrary to the constitutional right to seek employment.
Collins v Minister for Finance[2016] IESC 73; [2017] 1 ILRM 65; [2017] 3 IR 99, is a reported Irish Supreme Court case in which it was held that the Minister for Finance did not breach his power in issuing promissory notes under the Credit Institutions Act 2008, which was found to be constitutional. Collins' appeal was dismissed by the Supreme Court, which concluded that, “a Minister for Finance can spend any amount of money they deem necessary in an emergency without going back to the Dáil and we will be challenging that in the Dáil itself.” The case thus legalised emergency measure to deal with Ireland's financial crisis. This was a case in which "the matters described" were of "national importance."
Wansboro v. DPP and anor, [2017] IESCDET 115 is an Irish Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that granting 'leapfrog' leave to appeal directly to the Supreme Court from the High Court under Art. 34.5.4 of the Constitution of Ireland may be appropriate where the (intermediate) Court of Appeal has already clearly taken a view on the issues raised by the applicant.
Ryan v Governor of Midlands Prison [2014] IESC 54 was a case in which the Irish supreme court ruled that, ordinarily, a Court order detaining a convicted individual that is not prima facie invalid should only be challenged through an appeal of the conviction or an application for judicial review rather than through an application for release under the constitutional principle of habeas corpus.
Bederev v Ireland, [2016] IESC 34; [2016] 3 IR 1, [2016] 2 ILRM 340 is an Irish Supreme Court case which overturned the Court of Appeal's decision that declared s 2 (2) of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977 unconstitutional on the grounds that it infringed on the exclusive authority of the Oireachtas to make legislation. The Court held that s 2(2) of the 1977 Act contains sufficient principles to allow the government to expand the list of controlled drugs, and is "not an abrogation of the democratic responsibility of the Oireachtas." This case is significant as it resolved the issues arising from the earlier decision of the Court of Appeal which had attracted international media attention by decriminalising certain Class A drugs, ecstasy for example, for a period of 24 hours until the Oireachtas pushed through emergency legislation.
