Practice and Procedure in the Superior Courts

• Date: 01 January 2023

Practice and Procedure in the Superior Courts

FIONNÁN LONG*

Practice and Procedure in the Superior Courts by Benedict Ó Floinn (3rd edn,

Bloomsbury Professional 2022)

It’s the little things that trip you up. So said Albert Reynolds, describing the

collapse of the Fianna Fáil and Labour coalition in 1994. Evidently, Fianna Fáil and

litigation have at least few things in common; the former Taoiseach could just as

easily have been referring to the perils of court procedure.

Fortunately, Benedict Ó Floinn’s latest edition of Practice and Procedure in the

Superior Courts is to hand. Spanning over 2,500 pages, Ó Floinn’s annotation and

consolidation of the Rules of the Superior Courts is an eminently helpful reference

for practitioners. It deserves a place on every procedural law bookshelf.

We can tend to associate procedural law with some of the beigier, less exciting hues

on the lawyer’s palette: necessary yet distinctly unexciting. But Ó Floinn injects

an arresting vibrancy. His introduction delivers an important reminder of the

diculties in identifying legal certainty in court procedure. He observes that while

the natural law has long been ousted from the judicial toolkit, a kind of naturalism

still survives in court procedure.

Readers may recall that natural law is a legal theory which, put broadly, posits that

there is a body of law that exists independently of and superior to the written law.

e contents of the natural law have variously been said to be ascertainable from a

number of sources: for example, human behaviour, religion or a priori philosophical

reasoning.

Historically, the natural law has not entirely been without pedigree, at least in

constitutional litigation.1 In State (Ryan) v Lennon,2 Kennedy CJ – an architect

of the Free State Constitution – stated that legislation and even a provision of the

Constitution would be invalid if it was contrary to natural law. When the tenacious

(perhaps truculent) Gladys Ryan challenged the uoridation of public water in

Ryan v Attorney General,3 Kenny J, the judge at rst instance, deployed natural law

* BCL (UCD), Barrister-at-Law (Kings Inns); Practicing Barrister with particular interests in

Commercial, Employment, Probate and Public Law; associate lecturer in EU Law in the Institute

of Public Adminstration; member of the Editorial Board for Volume 10 of the King’s Inns Law

Review; formerly judicial assistant to the Hon. Mr Justice Maurice Collins.

1 For a comprehensive and enlightening survey see Aileen Kavanagh, ‘e Irish Constitution at 75

Years: Natural Law, Christian Values and the Ideal of Justice’ (2012) 48(2) Irish Jurist 71.

2 [1935] IR 284.

3 [1965] IR 294 (Ryan ).

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