9 - Learning from Progressive Property in Action

Summary

This chapter synthesises the broad picture that emerges from Irish constitutional proeprty law about the mediation of property rights and social justice, and about the impact of progressively framed constitutional property guarantees on that mediation. It highlights the rewards for progressive property theory of doctrinal analysis and a wider comparative lens. Most fundamentally, it emphasises the political nature of constitutional property law in two ways. FIrst, judges gravitate away from innovative interpretation and application of ideas like social justice towards deference to the determinations of the elected branches of government. Second, constitutional property law can have political, and wider cultural effects, that do not reflect the strict legal effect of constitutional property rights as reflected in doctrine. It concludes that Irish constitutional property law demonstrates the challenges of implementing progressive property ideas in legal doctrine, but at the same time provides an illuminating example of a broadly coherent and effective attempt to implement a progressive constitutional structure for achieving partial resolutions of the tension betwene property rights and social justice.