From the Irish Times:
Unlike its counterparts in the common law world, Ireland does not have an intermediate appeal court, leading to a situation where the Supreme Court was overwhelmed by the volume coming from the High Court. The creation of a court of appeal was promised in the programme for government, she said.
I’ve written about this report twice already. The first occasion was when a committee chaired by Ms Justice Susan Denham of the Supreme Court was established to consider the necessity for a new Irish Court of Appeal (this was in part a response to an article on the point which Judge Denham had written the previous year in the [2006] 1 Judicial Institute Studies Journal 1 (pdf)). The second occasion when the Government received the committee’s report. In the most recent installment of this slow-moving story, the report was published last week – only three months after it was submitted to government – and to generally favourable reviews in the media (see Belfast Telegraph | Irish Independent here and here | Irish Times | RTÉ). …
Some time ago, in a similarly titled post, I discussed the establishment of a committee chaired by Ms Justice Susan Denham of the Supreme Court which was to consider the necessity for a possible new Court of Appeal. I thought it a good idea then, and still do now. According to Carol Coulter in today’s Irish Times, the Government has just received the committee’s report:
…Logjam in Supreme Court appeals not serving justice
ANALYSIS: Too few judges hearing appeals and a recent proliferation of lay litigants means judgment delays of years, writes Carol Coulter
… the need for a Court of Civil Appeal to hear most appeals from the High Court, leaving the Supreme Court to deal with constitutional cases and those involving fundamental points of law, … arises from the increasing volume of cases going to the Supreme Court, resulting in lengthy delays. There can be up to three years’ delay in a case appealed from the High Court getting a hearing in the Supreme Court.
According to an article by Paul Cullen on the front page of today’s Irish Times, there are moves under way to create a new Court of Appeal for Ireland. This can only be welcome news, both for litigants and for judges.
Even though the nine judges of the Supreme Court can sit now in divisions of three, it can still take up to two years or more for an appeal to be heard; and a Court of Appeal that relieved that backlog of cases and allowed litigants’ appeals to be heard and decided more quickly would undoubtedly be good news for litigants. Moreover, too many cases come to the Court to allow it to do its work as a Supreme Court: at present, it hears more than 300 cases a year, compared with no more than 100 in the US Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of Canada, the High Court of Australia, and the House of Lords (which, in its judicial capacity, is the UK’s highest court). In those jurisdictions, there is an automatic right to appeal to Court of Appeal level from cases at High Court level, so litigants always get the option of an appeal; but there is an appeal from Court of Appeal level to the court of final appeal only in cases where that latter court is persuaded that there are special or exceptional reasons for the appeal to be heard.…
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