f this honest chance before
a powerful Government unless these protections, these rights of a
sovereign people, were placed in the care of the third institution of the
Constitution, the institution entrusted with the interpretation and
enforcement of laws?

It is true that the Judiciary may abuse its power (since power is nearly
always abused) by interpreting social reform, let us say, to be "opposed
to public morality." But in this connection, it is right to remember,
first, that judgment is not reserved only to one Court, but to two
Courts--to the High Court, with appeal to the Supreme Court. And it is
right to remember, next, that the people have always in their possession
the instruments of the Initiative and the Referendum, by which they may
require either the Fundamental Law or later laws to be amended to meet
their need. There are, therefore, considerable safeguards in the
Constitution against abuse. Yet, even so, because one-fourth of a
fundamental right may be jeopardised by an abuse of the Judicial Power,
that is no reason why four-fourths should be surrendered to the abuse of
the Executive Power.

Therefore the Judiciary is placed in care of the provisions of the
Constitution, not to imperil but to protect them. The rights conferred in
the Constitution are the People's rights. The Constitution is the People's
Constitution. The Judiciary is the People's Judiciary. It is for the
people, by alert and active citizenship, to make them so in every real
sense.

VII.

THE QUESTION OF APPEALS.

In the section dealing with the Judiciary one provision lends itself at
once to criticism. It is hostile, on the face of it, to the entire spirit
of the Constitution. It has everywhere created bitterness and irritation
among the other co-equal members of the Commonwealth of Nations, which
Ireland has now joined. If the purpose of life, therefore, is to learn
from experience as one may reasonably believe, in spite of an apparently
united conviction to the contrary, a new State at the outset of its career
would be well advised not to create trouble for the future, and others
would be well advised to honour that quite reasonable wish. And yet in
this provision there lies hid a principle of very great meaning, if it
could be extracted, separated from its feudal lumber, and wrought upon
creatively.

I refer to the provision at the end of Article 65. The article itself
reads:

"The Supreme Court of the Irish Free Sta