Living and Working in Ireland unenumerated constitutional rights.46 With matrimonial law never straying far from wider legal consensus, it is worthwhile to consider if similar mechanisms might be utilised in other areas of Irish law. This is particularly true regarding vaccine passports and other pandemic-related issues which induce a perpetual balancing act between personal rights of the individual and interpersonal rights of the community. From the liberalisation of judicial attitudes towards sexuality to growing support for subjectivity in the modern law and from developments in the area of mental illness to questions of constitutional conflict in privacy issues, the overarching influence of matrimonial law has impacted far more legal and social issues than it is often-accredited. With public opinion largely echoing the changing attitudes of the courts in these areas, it may be possible to trace the social development of Ireland through the decades by dissecting these judgments, particularly in light of insufficient case law on some more controversial issues. Conclusively, though the development of annulment has slowed in recent years, matrimonial law undisputedly permits judicial remuneration on issues far exceeding the gamut of any individual case. Indeed, one cannot help but recall Shatter’s regarding ‘[n]ullity law…[as] a juridical monument to the powerful impact of a dynamic judicial creativity’47 over the past 100 years.
46
Ryan v Attorney General [1965] IR 294 (right to bodily integrity); McGee v Attorney General [1974] IR 284 (right to marital privacy); Norris v Attorney General [1984] IR 36 (right to individual privacy). 47 Alan Shatter, Family Law (4 edn, Butterworths 1997) [181].
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