Bill Tormey · @billtormey
11th May 2015 from TwitLonger
Murray Case blows a huge hole in simplicity of Yes case
Facts
The plaintiffs who are husband and wife, were found guilty of murder and sentenced to penal servitude for life. Apart from a brief period of release on parole at Christmas 1990, they had been in custody since October 1975. The plaintiffs commenced proceedings seeking declarations of their entitlement, whilst serving their sentences, to have the opportunity to exercise conjugal rights in order to beget children, either by means of a direction by the court to the executive to grant them temporary release for this purpose or to regulate their *466 conditions of imprisonment to secure the exercise of such rights.
Supreme Court
...The fact that the Constitution so clearly protects the institution of marriage necessarily involves protection of certain marital rights, which include the right to beget children. However, as an inevitable practical and legal consequence of the imprisonment of a convicted person a great many of the constitutional rights arising from the married state are for such period of imprisonment suspended or placed in abeyance....
Judge McCarthy
The right to procreate children within marriage is not expressly stated in the Constitution; it is one of the unenumerated rights guaranteed by Article 40 as being essential to the human condition and personal dignity. It is independent of and antecedent to all positive law; it is of the essence of humanity.
#MarRef