Monday 14th March, 2016

5.45pm – 7.30pm



Venue: Boole 2

“In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.”

Paradoxically, the 1916 Proclamation both asserts and is premised on the sovereignty of the Irish people. As a unilateral declaration of independence, it makes the break-through assertion of sovereignty. At the same time, it assumes that the Irish people have always held this right of self-determination, and that several hundred years of usurpation of that right by a ‘foreign’ government has not extinguished it. How has sovereignty fared, though, in the hundred years since the Proclamation? Has the law remained faithful to the vision of self-determination espoused by the signatories of the Proclamation?

This event will explore the concrete understanding of sovereignty expressed in the Proclamation as well as the conceptual understandings of this much-misunderstood concept, before examining how the courts have interpreted sovereignty since Ireland became independent.

Continuing Professional Development: 1.5 hours Group Study (General)

This event is hosted by the Constitution Project @ UCC

Speakers and papers:-

Professor Nick Barber, Trinity College, University of Oxford – The Moral Value of State Sovereignty

Dr. T. Ryle Dwyer, Historian, Journalist – Contrasting Visions of Sovereignty: From the Proclamation to the Civil War

Dr. Maria Cahill, School of Law, University College Cork – Sovereign and Indefeasible? Reflections on participation in the EU

Dr. Seán Ó Conaill , School of Law, University College Cork – A Sovereignty that can never be extinguished? The People and the Referendum

Chair: Dr. Andrew McCarthy, School of History, University College Cork

Enquiries: Noreen Delea, School of Law, UCC

Email: n.delea@ucc.ie Phone: 021 490 3220

Registration: http://www.uccconferencing.ie/product/sovereignty-since-1916/