It is always to be remembered that the scheme of Home Rule or Devolution which is advocated in this paper, does not contemplate the creation of a body of law for Ireland, different from that prevailing in Great Britain. In all matters of _status_, property and personal rights, the laws of the two countries will, I presume, remain identical; and no legislation of a restrictive, sectional, or sectarian character will be permissible in the one country, which is not permitted in the other. It is also to be presumed that the decrees of English Courts will be as enforceable by Irish Courts and Authorities as they are now, and _vice versa_; and that, in fact, the Judicial and Executive Organisations will be as available, under the new order of things, for carrying on His Majesty’s Government in both countries, as they are now.
If this be understood, most of the doubts and fears, and forebodings of evil to come from this extension of Irish Local Government, will, I predict, be soon dissipated.
III.—The Judicial Committee And The Interpretation Of The New Constitution. BY SIR FREDERICK POLLOCK
“In this [the United States] and all other countries where there is a written constitution designating the powers and duties of the legislative, as well as of the other departments of the government, an act of the legislature may be void as being against the constitution.” So James Kent wrote in his Commentaries when the foundation of American independence was still within living memory, and an observer in search of constitutional autonomy under the British flag beyond the British Islands would have been driven to find his best example in Barbados. Kent continues: “The judicial department is the proper power in the government to determine whether a statute be or be not constitutional”; for the interpretation of the constitution which is the supreme law of the land is as much a judicial act as the interpretation of an ordinary written law. This is the view most natural to minds trained in English legal and political tradition. It was established in the United States by a decision of the Supreme Court at Washington early in the nineteenth century, and, though not previously free from controversy, has been received ever since; and it has been accepted by British publicists and lawyers as applicable to the decision of causes involving constitutional questions throughout the British Empire. As Chief Justice Marshall said: