The (not-so-surprising) non-partisanship of the Irish Supreme Court

Abstract

ABSTRACTThere is a growing literature which argues that courts are effectively legislators. As a result, political leaders have an incentive to control judicial decisions by appointing justices whose policy preferences are as close to their own as possible. For this reason, in many countries judicial appointments to the highest courts have become highly politicised. This can be for a number of reasons. One is the ideology of the Justices, the other is their strategic incentives. Irish parties display small ideological differences, but deep partisan ones. We could expect partisan heritage to have an impact on judicial decisions. We test this expectation on Ireland, a common-law country with, it has been argued, one of the most activist judiciaries in the world, and a highly politicised and partisan appointments’ process. Ireland is therefore a country in which we would expect partisan heritage to be reflected in judicial decisions. We analyse over 5,000 decisions of the Irish Supreme Court and despite rigorous testing we find no evidence of partisanship in decision-making.