The Irish Civil War Law, Execution and Atrocity

During the Irish Civil War, eighty-three prisoners were executed after trial by military court. The Irish Civil War: Law, Execution and Atrocity explores the pressures that drove the provisional government to try prisoners for arms offences by military courts, and how, at a time of great crisis, the rule of law evaporated and the new policy morphed into reprisal executions.

Seán Enright was called to the Bar at Middle Temple in 1982 and at the Four Courts in 1993. He practised at the Bar in London for many years and is now a Circuit Judge. He is the author of The Trial of Civilians by Military Courts: Ireland 1921 (2012), Easter Rising 1916: The Trials (2014), and After the Rising: Soldiers, Lawyers and Trials of the Irish Revolution (2016).

1. Jock McPeake 2. A State in Chaos 3. The Origins of the Execution Policy 4. Military Courts and the First Executions 5. Childers 6. Spooner, Farrelly, Murphy and Mallin 7. The Creation of the Irish Free State and the Mountjoy Executions 8. Trial by Army Committee 9. The Rathbride Prisoners 10. The Leixlip Prisoners 11. Christmas and New Year 12. January 13. The Pause in the Executions: February to 13 March 14. The Kerry Landmine Massacres and the Resumption of Executions 15. April 16. Summer and Autumn of 1923 17. Postscript