Business as Usual? Irish Courts, the Constitution, and COVID-19

Abstract

This article documents the Irish Courts treatment of legal challenges brought against the Irish State’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. I outline how the Courts have continued acting throughout the pandemic as a forum of legal accountability for actions taken by the executive and legislature. In playing this role, I suggest the judiciary have neither displayed notable signs of enhanced deference nor assertive scrutiny. Instead, Irish Courts continued to apply the generic legal tools of procedural and substantive administrative and constitutional law with their typical cautious, but not supine, attitude to reviewing political branch action. For the most part, the broad attitude of the Courts displayed thus far has been that the general rules of Irish public law still apply. Overall, I suggest it is fair to say Irish Courts have been a cautious but important legal check on arbitrary political branch action during the pandemic.