ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Dermot F. Gleeson’s heteroglossic perceptions of local life in County Clare as a person whose situated understandings of equality and law had consequences for many others. It focuses on Gleeson’s situated and powerful perspective as an inaugural judge of the new Irish Free State about the major transformations in the legal system from the colonial and anti-Catholic one to the post-colonial, democratic one that he was dedicated to delivering. Gleeson understood the colonial system to be one with endemic corruption among the judiciary that was systematically overturned by an independent, fair, and impartial democratic one in the Irish Free State. As an inaugural and seasoned judge of the Irish Free State, Gleeson was professionally invested in and politically committed to the impartiality of the judiciary upon which the new democratic system was built. Gleeson’s ruling was challenged by the city of Limerick and upheld “in a case stated before the High Court” in Dublin.
