Search

Under the Irish Constitution abortion is allowed only where the life of the pregnant woman is at risk. The provision in question, Article 40.3.3 (or the 8th Amendment) has long been criticised for failing to respect women's autonomy, and in Mellet v Ireland, the UN Human Rights Committee found that Amanda Jane Mellet, who travelled to Liverpool to access abortion following a finding that her foetus suffered a fatal abnormality, had suffered a violation of her rights under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). In this commentary I demonstrate the value of Mellet when compared to the possible legal findings in such circumstances under both the Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights, and argue that the findings are not restricted to cases of fatal foetal abnormality. Rather, the Committee's decision illustrates the suffering that all women in Ireland who travel to access abortion experience, arguably constituting a violation of their right to be free from cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. On that reading, Mellet signifies the need to implement a comprehensive rethink of Irish abortion law including, but going beyond, access to abortion in cases of fatal foetal abnormality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Republic of Ireland the vast majority of primary schools are owned and run by the Catholic and Protestant Churches. There is no parallel state system of education. Religious education in schools is doctrinal in nature and is permitted to permeate throughout the school curriculum. In addition, legislative provisions permit schools to discriminate in favour of co-religionists in admissions and employment policies. In the absence of the provision of non-religious schools, such a system of education violates the international right to freedom of religion or belief of minority-belief and non-belief pupils, parents and teachers. The aim of the paper is to examine the effectiveness of using international human rights law in working to bring about change in the place of religion in Irish schools. It traces attempts to bring the situation in Ireland to the attention of international human rights supervisory bodies and evaluates subsequent measures taken by the Irish authorities in response to international criticisms. It situates this analysis within a broader theoretical debate around the relationship between law and social change, and the way law may work to produce change and the factors that may limit that change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Claims concerning the death of the nation-state are often accompanied by postnationalist arguments that emphasize the potential of human rights to contest nation-bounded conceptualizations of membership. Conversely, arguments focusing on the continuing importance of state-bounded social citizenship rights undermine such postnationalist claims. To assess these claims, this article turns to the Irish state and its prohibition of abortion except in cases where the life of the pregnant woman is in danger. The authors focus their analysis on four legal cases that unfolded between 1992 and 2010. These cases reflect how specific women’s social location within interconnected power hierarchies of nationality, gender, class, race/ethnicity positioned them differently vis-a-vis the Irish state, international (European Court of Human Rights) and supranational (EU) bodies. Furthermore, the transnational, in the form of immigration, non-governmental organizations and the Catholic Church, plays an important role in structuring the context within which these cases unfold. Rather than showing that the international, supranational and transnational are conduits for the declining power of the nation-state, this article finds that in the increasingly dense legal-political field there is room for all of these forces. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]