Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
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This chapter examines how the UK Supreme Court and its predecessor (the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords) have responded to appeals from the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland. It incorporates analyses of ‘leave/permission to appeal’ decisions and of substantive judgments in cases for which leave/permission was granted either by the Court of Appeal itself (a rare occurrence) or by a three-person panel of the Lords or the Supreme Court (which is the norm). The authors comment on the success rate of these appeals and on their subject matter.
This chapter furnishes a detailed evaluation of the Court’s civil business. It opens with a statistical overview of civil appeal types in Northern Ireland before proffering a qualitative analysis of key cases which are discussed in line with the different sources of civil appeals, beginning with appeals from the High Court (including a separate section on appeals in judicial review cases) and ending with appeals by way of case stated or on a point of law.
This chapter summarises the findings revealed in preceding chapters. In addition, it underscores how the research for this book substantiates the authors’ view that the Court of Appeal plays a pivotal role in the Northern Ireland legal system which to date has been somewhat overlooked by legal scholars.
This chapter unveils various findings from interviews with current and retired judges who have sat on the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland. The authors examine the judges’ views on three groups of issues in turn, highlighting policy areas where there seems to be a consensus in favour of either conservation or reform, in addition to areas where the judges’ views vary. The three issues explored are the legislative framework within which the Court of Appeal operates, the Court’s practices and procedures, and the role of the Court’s President (the Chief Justice).
This chapter explores the most conspicuous cases that have been heard by the Court of Appeal over the past quarter of a century. It highlights various decisions that have formed part of the legal Zeitgeist in Northern Ireland because of their precedential influence together with other decisions which have attracted a significant degree of attention from the wider public. The chapter covers politically sensitive cases that have arisen in respect of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement of 1998 and its legislative offspring, as well as equally sensitive cases that have come about as a consequence of Brexit. It further examines the most notable human rights law cases that have been decided by the Court in the context of litigation arising out of Northern Ireland’s ‘troubles’, alongside other human rights law cases that have attracted societal interest.
Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
The Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland has functioned without interruption for over a century, yet its intermediate position can obscure the importance of its judgments.
This book demonstrates the Court of Appeal’s pivotal role in securing justice, both by correcting lower court decisions and by developing the common law. It examines, in particular, how the Court has applied and developed the rule of law in a post-conflict society.
Authored by experts in the law of Northern Ireland, this compelling text is based on archival research, statistical and qualitative case analyses, court observations, and exclusive interviews with senior judges.
This chapter focuses on the criminal business of the Court. It presents an analysis of key cases in categories reflecting the various sources of appeals, encompassing appeals against conviction and/or sentence from the Crown Court, appeals by way of case stated from an inferior court (that is, a magistrates’ court or a county court), references by the Director of Public Prosecutions claiming that a sentence imposed by a lower court was unduly lenient, and references by the Criminal Cases Review Commission in cases where there has possibly been a miscarriage of justice.
This introductory chapter summarises the overarching aims of this study on the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland. It then explains the combination of research methods employed to carry out the research underpinning the book. Finally, it provides clear signposting as regards the contents of each subsequent chapter in the book.
This chapter provides an outline of how the Court of Appeal was first established and charts several significant turning points in its subsequent development. Those turning points include the creation and subsequent abolition of a separate Court of Criminal Appeal in 1930 and 1978, a fundamental restructuring of the Court’s governing framework in 1978, and a suite of gradual modifications to the process for appointing Court of Appeal judges.
This chapter offers a bird’s-eye view of the business that has been conducted by the Court of Appeal over the past 25 years – since the signing of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement in 1998 – as a precursor to the qualitative analysis of that business in subsequent chapters. The chapter begins by providing a statistical breakdown of the cases which have been ‘disposed of’ between 1999 and 2023 and the rather smaller number of cases which have been ‘reported’ in some way. It then examines the contributions of individual judges to the Court of Appeal on a statistical basis and sets out some interesting trends such as the increasing frequency with which retired and puisne judges have been sitting, and the increasing use of two-person appeal panels.