English - Books

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Subversive law in Ireland, 1879-1920: From 'unwritten law' to the Dáil courts
(Four Courts Press, 2005) Laird, Heather; National University of Ireland
Subversive Law in Ireland, 1879-1920 is an important contribution to a neglected topic in Irish literary and cultural history – the modes of protest and cultural forms available to the subaltern classes under landlordism. In this publication, Heather Laird demonstrates that the so-called unwritten 'agrarian code' of popular justice, though often depicted in political and fictional writings as anarchic and pathological, was pro-social as opposed to anti-social, emanating from an alternative moral code whose very existence undermined the legitimacy of the colonial civil law. The book explores this clash in legal systems and the resulting crisis in law administration.