Narrators of Fables or Framers of the Constitution? The Acallam na Senórach Beyond Time, Place, and Law

The essay addresses how constitution-makers resort to fables and literary texts in order to manufacture constitutional identities. Indeed, constitution-makers may be considered narrators of fables: they use legal, literary, and traditional materials with the intent of creating a thick constitutional identity – the more the materials go beyond time and law, the thicker the new constitutional identity will be. The essay then examines how Irish constitution-makers rearranged Irish literary tradition and mythical past in order to frame the 1937 Ireland’s constitutional identity. In particular, it considers the Acallam na Senórach, i.e. Middle Irish prose tales describing Ireland’s fabulous past. It upholds that the resort to fables was a postcolonial response to the British rule, which ended when Ireland gained its independence in 1921. Moreover, the essay attempts to draw a parallel between narrations enshrined in national constitutions and the EU integration process. Whereas national constitution-making process ensures the creation of a thick constitutional identity, the EU is still a sum of “national narratives”.