Court of King's Bench (Ireland)


The Court of King's Bench was one of the senior courts of common law in Ireland. It was a mirror of the Court of King's Bench in England.
The King's Bench was one of the "Four Courts" which sat in the building in Dublin still known as "The Four Courts".

Origins

According to Elrington Ball, the Courollalled the King's Bench can be identified as early as 1290. It was fully operational by 1324, headed by the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, who was assisted by at least one associate justice, although for brief periods he was forced to sit alone due to the lack of a suitably qualified colleague.

Role

The King's Bench was the principal court of criminal jurisdiction and civil jurisdiction, and its Chief Justice was the most senior judge in Ireland after the Lord Chancellor of Ireland. Its workload was more onerous than that of the Court of Exchequer and the Court of Common Pleas, and there was a tradition that its judges must be of higher calibre than those of the other common law courts. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Crown expressed a strong preference for appointing English-born judges, especially to the office of Chief Justice. From the beginning of the eighteenth century however no objection was made to the appointment of Irish-born judges.

Abolition

The Court of Queen's Bench was abolished in 1878 by the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1877. The Court's jurisdiction passed to a new High Court of Justice. The High Court was itself abolished by Section 40 of the Government of Ireland Act 1920. That section created a High Court in Northern Ireland, which still contains a Queen's Bench Division, with similar jurisdiction to its counterpart in England and Wales. In the Republic of Ireland the jurisdiction passed to the new High Court of Ireland.

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