A seminal case involving a woman named Mary McGee was decided by the Irish Supreme Court in the 1970s: Legal Methods Essay, TCD, Ireland

A seminal case involving a woman named Mary McGee was decided by the Irish Supreme Court in the 1970s. Mr. Justice Brian Walsh’s celebrated opinion stated that the facts of the case were not in dispute. Decades later, the High Court considered the same issue – a woman’s right to privacy – but in a very different context.

More recently, Mr. Justice Donal O’Donnell delivered an
address on the development of Irish constitutional law in which the McGee precedent featured extensively. Specifically, he noted that Mr. Justice Walsh’s judgment relied heavily on Article 41. At any rate, when Mrs. McGee took her challenge, she scarcely could have imagined the long-term impact it would have, especially given the somewhat cold and unforgiving climate that prevailed in Ireland at that time and is evident in the closing stanza of the then Chief Justice’s dissenting opinion: her plight was one of the “natural hazards which must be faced by married couples with such fortitude as they can summon to their assistance.”