There was some chatter online yesterday about the fact that the UK Supreme Court sat for the first time with a 3-2 female-male majority. The Supreme Court of New Zealand had done so last year. Despite the complement of female justices over the last 20 years, the Supreme Court of Canada doesn’t seem to have had a female majority panel yet. And there haven’t been sufficient female justices on the High Court of Australia for it to have happened there. [For both of these Courts, see now the updates below]. Against that backdrop, I thought I’d find out if and when the Irish Supreme Court had first sat with female majority panels, and this is what I found.

The first majority female panel in the Irish Supreme Court happened more than EIGHTEEN years ago. Denham J was the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court, in 1992; McGuinness J was the second, in January 2000; and a female 2-1 majority on a 3-judge panel of the Supreme Court happened almost immediately after that appointment, in February 2000. In Dalton v Governor of the Training Unit [2000] IESC 49 (29 February 2000) Denham and McGuinness JJ sat with Hardiman J (the image, above left, is of McGuinness J (left) and Denham J (right); for more portraits of these judges, and other Irish legal women trailblazers, see here).…

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I have an OpEd in today’s Irish Times about the decision just before Christmas of the Supreme Court in Collins v Minister for Finance [2016] IESC 73 (16 December 2016). In holding against the challenge by Joan Collins TD to the constitutionality of the 2008 legislation under which the Minister for Finance issued more than €30 billion worth of promissory notes to the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation and the Educational Business Society (EBS), the Supreme Court provided the Government with what was, no doubt, a very welcome Christmas present.

In the OpEd, I make two points about the decision. First, the Court described the separate roles of the Government and the Oireachtas relating to approving the expenditure of public finances as locks, and held that, if the Oireachtas cannot or will not turn its key in its lock, the government cannot ignore or avoid the Oireachtas, or seek to pick the latter’s lock. Second, on the facts, the Court held that the Government, in enacting and implementing the Credit Institutions (Financial Support) Act 2008 (also here), did not pick any lock on public expenditure for which the Oireachtas had the key. However, this emphasis on the Oireachtas’s lock has the capacity to constrain Government in the future, and the Christmas present in the Collins judgment would not then be quite so welcome to Government after all.…

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