The Irish Constitution: A Discussion of its Theoretical Aspects

Abstract

WHEN a new constitution was promised to the Irish people a few years ago, Eamon de Valera, then President of Saorstat Eireann and now Prime Minister of Eire, told his people that it would be written as if England were a million miles away. Apart from the passing phases of Anglo-Irish relations, he wished to remove his constitutional plans from the limitations of contemporary events, to unshackle his mind from the here and the now. How far he succeeded in this effort will be known only in the twenty-first century or the twenty-second. Then, if the new Bunreacht na hEireann has withstood the slings and arrows of Irish fortunes, de Valera and his advisers will be found to have written not only for their own time but for times to come as they intended.