The constitution of Ireland (Bunreacht na hÉireann) was adopted in 1937. However, in the words of J. M. Kelly, author of one of the most important studies on the Irish constitution, “while all branches of our law depend for their formal validity on the 1937 Constitution, this enactment was very largely a re-bottling of wine most of which was by then quite old and of familiar vintages.” The old wine that Kelly is referring to is the constitution of the Irish Free State (Saorstát Éireann), which was adopted in 1922.

Just as in the Israeli and Indian cases, the 1922 Irish constitution was drafted under conditions of a deep ideological rift over the fundamental norms and ultimate goals of the state. The polarization over the definition of Irish nationalism and Irish sovereignty was so intense that it split the Irish nationalist movement, Sinn Féin, and caused a nearly year-long civil war which claimed more lives than the two-and-a-half years of war against the British. It was in the midst of that war, between the proponents of two competing visions of independent Ireland, that the Irish Free State constitution was drafted.

The constitutional debates on the 1922 constitution were interlinked with the debates on the Anglo-Irish Treaty (henceforth “the Treaty”), which defined the relationship between Ireland and the British Commonwealth.