Living within the Margins: The Constitutional Culture of Irish Life, Law, and Literature

A stepping stone to asserting independence from British authority and oppression, the Bunreact Na hÉireann (1937), Ireland’s modern constitution, allowed the nation and its people finally to shape themselves by their own legal standards, customs, and norms.  Explicitly and tacitly the Bunreact Na hÉireann, through its interpretations by the Irish government, courts, and modern society, promotes a dated sense of “Irishness,” one dominated by values of the early 1900s and based largely on white, Irish-born, Catholic males and traditional families.  This constitution consequentially isolates people of heterogeneous cultures and backgrounds regardless of whether they are citizens or foreigners.  Thus, the Irish Constitution shapes a homogeneous society that promotes damaging, normative views and behaviors that marginalize minority groups such as Irish Travelers, women, immigrants, emigrants, and those with disabilities.  By examining the specific language, diction, order, and structure of the Irish Constitution, this project conducts a comparative study of law and literature and illustrates the power of words in shaping Irish society in terms of education, religion, and citizenship.  I undertake a constitutional analysis that is set in dialogue with the anthropological and sociological themes explored in Irish writer Donal Ryan’s imaginative literature and in addition I explore in this project legal theories, Irish case laws, and the country’s current journalism.  This thesis not only acknowledges Ireland’s marginalized populations but also creates a better understanding of the residual effects of colonization that the Bunreact Na hÉireann aims to eschew but, paradoxically, promotes in the present because of its current linguistic construction.