In the Irish Courts
| Published date | 01 July 1950 |
| Date | 01 July 1950 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/002201835001400307 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
In the Irish Courts
HIGH
COURT
IN
EIRE
POLICE
PROSECUTION
FOR
ASSAULT
The State (Gorman) v. Wicklow Circuit Judge
"
IT
is a general ru1e
that
no Court of limited jurisdiction
can
give itself jurisdiction
by
awrong decision on a
point collateral to
the
merits of
the
case upon which
the
limit to
its
jurisdiction
depends;
and
....
upon
this pre-
liminary question, its decision
must
always be open to
inquiry in
the
superior Court." This proposition of
Coleridge
J.
in Bunbury v. Fuller (9 Ex. n
i,
140) has been
frequently repeated,
but
it
wou1d appear to be open to
criticism on two grounds.
In
the
first place
it
does
not
account for
the
anomaly
that
the
inferior
court
is under a
duty
to make
the
preliminary enquiry
and
is none
the
less
said to be subject to review. And, secondly,
it
is of little
assistance in practice, for
it
does
not
afford
any
guidance
in
determining when a question is a collateral question.
Indeed, asurveyof
the
law made in Vol. 60, p. 250, of
theLaw
Quarterly Review leads to
the
conclusion
that
no principle
can
be enunciated whereby aquestion
may
be pre-
determined to be of a collateral nature. When, therefore,
the
legislature has enacted acondition precedent to a
charge being made before a court of summary jurisdiction,
it
will remain to be determined whether this condition is
precedent to
the
Court's jurisdiction
and
liable to be
determined
by
the
superior Court, or whether
it
is within
the
final competence of
the
inferior Court to determine
the
existence of
its
own jurisdiction insofar as
it
is affected
by
the
legislative condition.
An example of this perennial problem in practice arose
in The State (Gorman) v. Wicklow Circuit Judge (1949,
l.R.
275). Jurisdiction in cases of assau1t is conferred on
the
summary
courts
by
s. 42 of
the
Offences against
the
Person
306
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