Foreword

• Author: Ms. Justice Catherine McGuinness
• Pages: 12-14

Foreword

The publication of this new Volume of the Trinity College Law Review is,

as always in the series, very welcome. The standard of the articles is

impressive and their subject-matter has a wide range. It is clear that the

various authors are in touch with current developments, both legal and

socio-political. In the field of economic life, articles include the examination

of the possibility of decoupling voting rights from economic interest and the

study of European Insolvency Law, a subject area which looms large in

current court work and in widespread reporting in the media.

Over the years it has been traditional for the Law Review to keep in

touch with current case-law. This tradition is well maintained in Volume

XVIII both in the analysis of Ó Maicín v Ireland, and in the Case Comment

on PP v HSE. This is the most recent case to bring the terms of the Eighth

Amendment of the Constitution into question due to the sad death of a

pregnant woman while the foetal heartbeat of her unborn child still

continued. The writer of this Case Comment draws attention to the

difficulties inherent in the stipulation introduced into the Constitution by

Article 30.3.3 that the right to life of a mother and her unborn child are

equal, and to the caselaw which has attempted to balance these rights since

1983. Her view is that the 2013 Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act

“has not appeared to be effective in adequately balancing the competing

rights of the mother and the unborn.” She rightly shows in her analysis of

the High Court’s judgment in PP that in that case the Court was able to

avoid deciding on this balance of rights, since all the medical evidence

showed that the unborn child would not survive to birth. However, the Court

introduced the concept that the “best interests” of the unborn were to be

included in an assessment of Article 30.3.3. The author concludes that this

concept may have been given excessive significance, leading to a position

where the rights of a mother would be regarded with insufficient concern.

In the early part of the article the author points out that since the enactment

of the 1983 Amendment “the recognition of the right to life of the unborn

has proved to be contentious.” One has only to look at the Oireachtas

debates on a recent Private Member’s Bill to acknowledge the continuing

truth of this statement.

I have to admit a particular interest in a number of the articles included

in this Review due to their relevance to current interests of my own. The

article on “The Role of Dignity in Human Rights Theory,” which argues

that human dignity operates as an organising principle in human rights