Troubling Judgment: The Northern/Irish Feminist Judgments Project

Abstract

This paper introduces the scope and methodology of the Northern/Irish Feminist Judgments Project. This Project inaugurates a fresh dialogue on gender, legal judgment, judicial power and national identity in Ireland and Northern Ireland, by engaging in a collective process of writing ‘missing’ feminist judgments in a series of legal cases that have been significant in shaping Irish and Northern Irish law. Through this process of judicial re-imagining, the project has taken into account peculiarly Northern/Irish concerns in investigating how gender is shaped through judicial practices and how the Northern/Irish judiciaries have contributed to the construction of a gendered national identity across the island since the founding of the two jurisdictions almost a century ago. In considering how themes of gender and national identity have cross-cut women’s experiences and activism in both jurisdictions, our project – following on from feminist judgments projects in other common law jurisdictions such as Canada, England, Australia and most recently, the USA – takes the feminist judging methodology in important and challenging new directions.