Norris v. Attorney General

Norris v. Attorney General
Court	Supreme Court of Ireland
Decided	22 March 1983
Citation(s)	[1983] IESC 3

David Norris v. The Attorney General is a 1983 judgement from the Supreme Court of Ireland that the existing Irish law which criminalised homosexuality was not against the Constitution of Ireland. David Norris appealed this judgement to the European Court of Human Rights who overturned it in 1988 (Norris v. Ireland).

The Offences against the Person Act 1861 banned "buggery", which made sexual activity between 2 men illegal. The law remained on the books when Ireland achieved independence from the UK. The law was repealed, and homosexual acts decriminalised, in 1967 in England and Wales with the Sexual Offences Act 1967, in Scotland by the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1980 and in Northern Ireland by the Homosexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 1982.

The Constitution of Ireland came into force in 1937, and all laws that on the books before then were carried over, unless they were "repugnant to the constitution".

Norris took, and lost, a case to the Irish High Court in 1977 seeking a declaration that the laws of 1861 and 1885 which criminalised homosexual conduct were not in force since the enactment of the Constitution of Ireland. Article 50 of the Constitution provides that laws enacted before the Constitution that are inconsistent with it would no longer be in force.

Norris's Senior Counsel was fellow member of the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform, Mary Robinson, who in 1990 would become the first female President of Ireland.

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