The History of Irish Constitutions

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The Irish State (or to use its official name ‘Ireland’) currently has Europe’s oldest republican constitution continuously in operation. This speaks more to Modern Europe’s history of flux than Ireland’s stability, because Ireland has had a remarkable history of changing and evolving constitutional understandings; changes that have defined both its place in the world and the terms upon which Irish people have related to each other. This course, while culminating in an historical analysis of aspects of the current Irish constitution, will provide a survey of the history of previous constitutions and constitutional understandings under which Ireland and Irish politics have operated dating back to the seventh century AD, taking in the terms under which Ireland was conquered by the king of England, followed by constitutional attempts to define the limits of English sovereignty throughout the medieval and early-modern period through to the creation of Acts of Union between Great Britain and Ireland in the early nineteenth century. Finally, the course will examine the terms upon which the majority of the country achieved independence and analyse what Ireland did subsequently with that independence through the twentieth century up to (almost) the present day. This will be a course that requires the close reading of texts, but the approach taken will be primarily historical, concerned with the evaluation of texts in context, rather than a narrowly legal methodology. If you want an insight into Ireland’s changing history over time, this is the course to take.