X was a 14-year-old girl who became pregnant and suicidal after being raped. Her parents tried to take her to England in order to obtain a first-trimester abortion that was illegal in Ireland, but the Attorney General obtained an interim injunction from the High Court restraining the girl and her parents from leaving the country for a period of nine months or from arranging an abortion for her.
The plaintiffs were two female criminal defendants who chose to be tried by a jury and objected to the Juries Act of 1927, which excluded all women from jury pools except those who opted to be part of the potential jurors list. The Supreme Court ruled the Juries Act unconstitutional because it constituted invidious discrimination on the basis of sex.
The applicant was given refugee status and had successfully applied for permission for his second wife to join him in Ireland. The present case arose when he sought to have his first wife join him. In considering the legal consequences of a polygamous marriage entered into in another country, the Supreme Court ruled that, where a man had married two wives under the laws of Lebanon, the first marriage is valid under Irish law but the second is not. The appellant (husband) had married two women in a manner permissible under the laws of Lebanon (their previous state of domicile).
The appellant, a gay man, entered into an agreement with the respondents, a lesbian couple in a civil partnership, to donate sperm to the respondents so they could have a baby. It was agreed that the respondents would have full care and custody of the child, effectively as parents. They were to be fully responsible for the child’s upbringing, and the appellant, the sperm donor, would be, at most, considered a “favourite uncle.” It was explicitly agreed that the appellant would not have any responsibility for the child’s upbringing and would not seek to influence it.
The plaintiff was a mother whose second and third pregnancies were complicated by medical issues and resulted in her suffering from a stroke and temporary paralysis. She was advised that her life would be endangered if she became pregnant again. As such, she sought to obtain contraceptives, but their sale and importation was prohibited by Irish law.
The plaintiff’s husband suffered serious injuries in an explosion, one of which impaired his ability to have sex. In the plaintiff’s claim against her husband’s employer, the Minister for Defence, she claimed compensation for loss of consortium at common law. In the past, this action was available only to a husband. The question asked by the plaintiff was whether this was inconsistent with the Constitution, and in particular its guarantee of equality and implied guarantee of spousal equality.
Section 17(4B) of the Electoral Act 1997 introduced a provision aimed at addressing a significant disparity in the sex of members of parliament in Ireland (“TDs”). Only 15.1% of TDs elected in 2011 were women. The figure has never exceeded 20%. The 2012 Act tried to solve this problem via candidate selection; it tied the level of political funding allocated to a political party to the gender balance of its candidates.
The issue in this case was whether embryos, having been frozen and stored in a clinic, are “unborn” and thus protected by the right to life under Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution of Ireland. The applicant-wife brought this suit against her husband, the respondent. The applicant had in vitro fertilization treatment ("IVF") and six embryos resulted. Three of the embryos were implanted successfully in the applicant’s uterus and she became pregnant.
