Courts of Justice Act 1924
Oireachtas
Long title AN ACT FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF COURTS OF JUSTICE PURSUANT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF SAORSTAT EIREANN AND FOR PURPOSES RELATING TO THE BETTER ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE.
Citation	No. 10 of 1924
Territorial extent	Ireland
Enacted by	Dáil Éireann
Enacted by	Seanad Éireann
Commenced	24 June 1924
Status: Current legislation

TheCourts of Justice Act 1924 (Irish:Acht Cúirteanna Breithiúnais, 1924) was anAct of the Oireachtas (No. 10 of 1924) that established a new system of courts for theIrish Free State (now the 26 county onlyRepublic of Ireland). Among the new courts was theSupreme Court of the Irish Free State, and the firstChief Justice of the Irish Free State was also appointed under the Act.

Once the Act came into operation, the courts previously established by theParliament of the United Kingdom (when Ireland was still part of theUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland) ceased to exist. In parallel with this process, the revolutionaryDáil Courts system created in 1919 during theWar of Independence was also wound up, by Acts passed in 1923 and 1925.

Thelong title of the Act was:

An Act for the establishment of courts of justice pursuant to the Constitution of Saorstát Éireann and for purposes relating to the better administration of justice. [12th April, 1924.]

The jurisdiction of all of the courts then sitting in the Irish Free State was transferred to the new courts created by the Act:

• The Court of Appeal was replaced by theSupreme Court of Justice and aCourt of Criminal Appeal.
• TheHigh Court of Justice was replaced by a new court with the same name and similar jurisdiction. However, the new court was no longer divided into separate divisions (i.e. the King's Bench and Chancery divisions). The President of the High Court replaced theLord Chief Justice of Ireland as chief judge of this court.
• Theassizes were replaced, in Dublin, by the Central Criminal Court. Outside Dublin they were intended to be replaced by courts of the High Court Circuit, but this was never constituted.
• The jurisdiction of theQuarter Sessions and thecounty courts was merged into a singleCircuit Court of Justice.
• The jurisdiction of the temporary district justices and the divisional magistrates of theDublin Metropolitan Police Court was merged into a singleDistrict Court of Justice, which could also try minor civil matters. The temporary district justices had been introduced in 1923 to replacepetty sessions, which had not been held for some years in much of Ireland due to the War of Independence.

The offices ofjustice of the peace andresident magistrate were permanently abolished. As a result there would in principle no longer be any lay magistrates in the Irish Free State: all judges would be legally qualified and would work full-time. However, the lay office ofpeace commissioner was created to exercise some of the functions of magistrates. Section 88(2) of the Act also required that a Peace Commission for a county in theGaeltacht should "have a knowledge of the Irish language adequate for the transaction of the business of his office in that language".

All criminal prosecutions would now take place in the name of the People at the suit of theAttorney General, rather thanThe King as had previously been the case.^{[citation needed]}

The Act did not affect the right of appeal from the Free State to theJudicial Committee of the Privy Council inLondon.

Only two judges who held positions under the old court system were appointed to the courts established under this Act:Charles O'Connor, who had beenMaster of the Rolls in Ireland from 1912, was appointed to the Supreme Court, andWilliam Wylie was appointed to the High Court.^{[citation needed]}

The Act established a Central Criminal Court to hear serious criminal cases in Dublin and the neighbouring counties, and made provision for Courts of the High Court Circuit (essentially, the Assizes in renamed form) to do the same outside Dublin. However the commissions for these courts were never sent out, leading to a backlog of defendants committed to trial before the courts but not being tried.^[1] Amending legislation (the Courts of Justice Act 1926) abolished the Courts of the High Court Circuit and transferred their jurisdiction to the Central Criminal Court.^[2] A serious criminal trial was not again held outside Dublin until the Central Criminal Court sat inLimerick in 2003.^[3]

TheConstitution (Amendment No. 22) Act 1933 abolished the right of appeal from the Supreme Court of the Irish Free State to theJudicial Committee of the Privy Council. The Judicial Committee recognised inMoore vs Attorney General that theStatute of Westminster 1931 had allowed the Irish Free State to do this unilaterally despite abrogating theAnglo-Irish Treaty.^[4]

The courts structure established by the 1924 Act remained largely unchanged in the decades after. When theCourts (Establishment and Constitution) Act 1961 established the new courts envisaged by the1937 constitution, it merely re-established all the existing courts (removing the "of Justice" from their names to disambiguate) with the same jurisdictions as before. ASpecial Criminal Court was established in 1972 for the trial of certain offences by a three-judge panel rather than by jury. In 2014, a newCourt of Appeal was created with appellate jurisdiction from the High Court, after anamendment to the Constitution the previous year.^{[citation needed]}

• Courts of the Republic of Ireland
• Dáil Courts#Winding up

• The Courts of Justice Act 1924

• 1924 in Irish law
• Acts of the Oireachtas of the 1920s
• Ireland and the Commonwealth of Nations
• Irish Free State

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