Bunreacht Aloud now available at the Digital Repository of Ireland

Have you ever wanted to listen to the whole 1937 Irish Constitution read aloud? Well, now you can! Just access here and while there you can check out other excellent feminist archives including:

In Her Shoes: Stories of the Eighth Amendment
Alliance for Choice Derry
The Pro-Choice Movement in Ireland from 1983-2010
Voices of the Irish Women’s Movement: Second wave feminism in Ireland

Bunreacht Aloud is a durational collective reading of the 1937 Irish Constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann, designed and led by poet Dr Julie Morrissy and family law academic Prof Maebh Harding. Bunreacht Aloud brings together poetry, art, law and different communities to reflect on our constitution, aiming to make the language of the Bunreacht more accessible and spark conversation about the meaning of constitutional values in modern Ireland. While projects such as the Feminist Constitutional Futures Project explore new ways of creating an all-Ireland constitution, we also need to reflect on the legal and social meanings we, as a nation, have attached to the Bunreacht as our constitutional document. There is significant power in collective reading to reveal our sense of ownership over the Bunreacht and Bunreacht’s ownership over us. The newly deposited DRI collection includes recordings from the first performance in UCD, images and reading instructions.

To our knowledge, the women-led performance of Bunreacht Aloud, which took place in the atrium of the UCD Sutherland School of Law on 21st February 2024 was the first time the Bunreacht was read aloud in its entirety in one sitting. The performance was part of the UCD College of Social Sciences & Law Cultural Event series: an initiative to bring together staff and students and celebrate inclusiveness. Reading the Bunreacht together makes space to consider how the founding values of our Constitution have responded to the challenges faced by the world and modern Ireland, and exposes some issues that the Bunreacht neglects, such as protection of our natural environment.

The UCD event took place in the lead up to the Care and Family referendums and responded to widespread obsessions with the minutiae of the wording of Articles 41 and the proposed Article 42B. Throughout the referendum campaigns myths and false narratives about the power of the Bunreacht abounded. The durational reading allowed all articles of the Bunreacht to be heard in context, so that those who witnessed, engaged and joined in could consider the value of the Bunreacht as a whole, in expressing the fundamental values of our nation and guiding the legislative choices that directly affect our daily lives. An in-depth reflection on this performance is available on open access through Feminist Legal Studies ( Harding, M., Morrissy, J. Reflecting on #Bunreacht Aloud. Fem Leg Stud 33, 105–116 (2025).

Collective and collaborative reading is an embodied way of experiencing the Bunreacht and helps to process the meaning and significance of the text. These practices bolster community and engage what Julie Stone Peters refers to as ‘law’s conjoint performativity and theatricality’. The use of robes, bells, solemnity and the sounds of obscure words evokes a sense of ritual and performativity. The reading summoned the oral traditions of Ancient Irish Brehon Law, a time when lawyers trained as poets, and also the significant solemnity of Pádraig Pearse’s reading of the 1916 Proclamation.

Bunreacht Aloud builds on and is inspired by other feminist reading aloud projects. The US constitution is read aloud annually at the University of Washington as public legal education. Durational reading has also been used by feminists at Goldsmiths to draw attention to underrepresented texts, and at the Beinecke Library at Yale University to reflect on the Declaration of Independence. In recent years, reading parts of the constitution aloud has been an important act of protest against the decline of the rule of law in countries such as Poland, India and South America. In Canada, reading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report aloud has helped communities make sense of traumatic social events.

The reading lasted just over 2hr and 30 mins and featured two interludes. The first by Prof Maebh Harding and Dr Julie Morrissy reflected on the place of women in the constitution and the importance of durational reading as a tool of feminist reflection. In the second interlude, Dr Amy Strecker and Dr Sinéad Mercier discussed how the Bunreacht frames Ireland’s cultural heritage, environment, landscape, and the Irish language.

The physical context of the UCD Law School was important to our site-specific performance. As people walked in and out of the Gardiner Atrium in the UCD Sutherland School of Law, they encountered both the language of the Bunreacht as it was read aloud and the physical presence of the iconic blue copies used by the readers and handed out to participants and witnesses. By entering the space, passersby were confronted with the Bunreacht in the same way that the legal text surrounds us all in our daily lives on this island.

Dr Julie Morrissy wore the Feminist Constitutional Futures Cloak, an artwork designed and embroidered for the Northern/Ireland Feminist Constitutional Futures Project by Emma Campbell and Grace McMurray (Array Collective) in 2023. The cloak connects women across generations throughout the island and also draws on Bolivian feminism during a period of constitutional change.

Future performances of Bunreacht Aloud outside the Law School with a variety of communities are planned. The next performance will take place the next will take place in November 2025 as part of the Ballymun Community Law Festival, run by the Ballymun Community Law Centre, and details will be on bclc.ie as they are confirmed.

If you, or your community would like to host a Bunreacht Aloud reading, please contact Maebh Harding at maebh.harding@ucd.ie.

Professor Maebh Harding is professor of Family Law at UCD Sutherland School of Law. Her work explores and challenges legal regulation of family life.

Dr Julie Morrissy was the first UCD Sutherland Law and Poetry Fellow (2024), and the first Poet-in-Residence at the National Library of Ireland (2021-22). She is a graduate of UCD Law, and holds a PhD in Creative Writing.