Family Reunification and Marital Status under the Refugee Act 1996: The Supreme Court Decides
by Michelle Flynn
Question(s) at stake
Whether the High Court Judge had erred in his interpretation of s 18(3)(b) of the Refugee Act 1996 concerning the recognition of foreign marriages for the purposes of family reunification.
Outcome of the ruling
The Supreme Court upheld the decision of the High Court and, in dismissing the appeal, confirmed that the conclusion that the marriage was by proxy was not a valid ground for refusing recognition of the marriage, and that an incorrect test had been applied for the recognition of a subsisting marital relationship between the refugee and the spouse for the purpose of s 18(3)(a) of the Refugee Act 1996.
Country:
Official citation
Hamza and Elkhalifa v Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform [2013] IESC 9
Topic(s)
Keywords:
Conditions of validity Country of origin information Family Reunification Marriage and partnership Proxy marriage
Tag(s):
Recognition of foreign marriages Sharia Sudan Lex loci celebrationis
Bibliographic information
Access case report
View case report in the CUREDI databaseAbout the authors
Michelle Flynn (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Department Law and Anthropology, Germany)
Michelle Flynn is a Research Fellow in the Department of Law and Anthropology. Prior to joining the Max Planck Institute in 2018, she gained over twelve years of experience working within domestic and international courts. Flynn has held judicial support roles at national and supranational levels with members of the judiciary of Ireland, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Court of Justice of the European Union. She also has significant practical experience as a barrister and as a Consultant Legal Advisor with Irish Rule of Law International, working on judicial capacity building projects in developing countries. She is also a former academic staff member at the Faculty of Law in KU Leuven, Belgium.
Flynn holds a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Legal Science from the National University of Ireland, Galway; a Barrister-at-Law Degree from the Honorable Society of King’s Inns, Dublin, Ireland; and an LL.M. in International and European Public Law from KU Leuven, Belgium.
Her current research examines the jurisprudence of the superior courts in Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States concerning religious prescriptions and religious personal laws. Since January 2019, she has been a Visiting Researcher at Yale Law School, where she is carrying out research concerning the relationship between law and religion in the US.