The Lord Judge Memorial Lecture in Legal History [ONLINE]

For the third Lord Judge Memorial Lecture in Legal History, the Middle Temple Historical Society is delighted to host Mr. Justice Donal O’Donnell, Chief Justice of the Republic of Ireland, who will deliver a lecture on the enduring significance of the appeal in 1916 of Sir Roger Casement.

Chief Justice O’Donnell will interrogate how Casement’s appeal sits at a fascinating crossroads of law, politics, and identity. After being convicted of treason for seeking German support for the Irish independence movement during the First World War, Casement’s legal team mounted an appeal that turned on a surprisingly technical issue: whether the medieval statute under which he was charged the Treason Act 1351 applied to acts committed outside the realm. The prosecution argued that treason followed the subject wherever he went; the defence countered that the statute’s language did not extend beyond England’s borders.

The appeal ultimately failed, but the case became a touchstone for debates about statutory interpretation, the reach of sovereign power, and the uneasy fusion of law and imperial politics. It also gained notoriety because of the British government’s use of Casement’s private diaries, the so-called “Black Diaries” to undermine public sympathy, raising enduring questions about evidence, authenticity, and political influence on judicial processes.

For legal practitioners today, Casements appeal remains relevant because it encapsulates issues that still animate modern jurisprudence: how far a state’s criminal law can extend extraterritorially, how courts should interpret centuries‑old statutes in contemporary contexts, and how political pressures can shape the administration of justice. The case is a reminder that legal texts do not exist in a vacuum; they operate within social, moral, and geopolitical currents that can bend their meaning. For lawyers navigating questions of international jurisdiction, human rights, or the use of sensitive personal material in litigation, Casement’s story offers a vivid historical example of how legal reasoning, state power, and public perception can collide, which have not diminished with the passing of time.