The Afterlife of the Constitution of the Irish Free State: Constitutional Echoes in South Asia

This chapter looks at the influence of the Irish Free State Constitution outside the borders of the State. It examines the way in which constitutional theorists outside Ireland adapted and adopted the provisions of the Constitution for their own constitutional experiments. This can be most clearly seen in South Asia, and the chapter looks at the particular influence of the 1922 Constitution in India and Ceylon/Sri Lanka. The chapter also considers a particularly critical view of the Irish Free State Constitution that can be found in the Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly and analyses if the criticism was warranted. It concludes by looking at the influence of South Asian constitutional theory on a recent development in Irish constitutional jurisprudence.