The Finucane case ruling has profound legal, as well as political,implications, writes Donncha O'Connell.
Since the 1995 majority decision of the European Court of Human Rights in the Gibraltar Three case, the jurisprudence of that court on the right to life under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) has developed in a coherent manner.
This is especially evident since the appointment of the new court in 1998 and it is fair to say that the court has been consistent to the point of robustness in its attitude to breaches of the right to life by states party to the ECHR, whether this involves allegations of unlawful killings by state agents or inadequate post-mortem inquiries by state authorities.
The jurisprudence on the positive obligations of states to prevent unnecessary loss of life has been less clear-cut, for obvious reasons, but commendable standards in this regard have been signalled by the court.
Tuesday's finding of a violation of Article 2 in the case taken by Geraldine Finucane (the wife of the Belfast solicitor, Patrick Finucane, murdered in 1989) comes as no surprise and confirms the approach adopted in similar cases by the European Court.
It is doubtful that the decision even caused much surprise to the UK government given the significant points it conceded in the Strasbourg proceedings.
It admitted - on the basis of earlier Northern Ireland cases decided recently by the court - that the RUC investigation into the murder of Patrick Finucane, the inquest into his death and the first two Stevens Inquiries did not satisfy the procedural requirements of Article 2 of the ECHR.
Even in relation to the third Stevens Inquiry (established in 1999, 10 years after the killing), which the government claimed was sufficiently thorough and centrally concerned with the Finucane murder, it was conceded that that inquiry did not satisfy the convention requirements of promptness and reasonable expedition.
The findings of the court were emphatic and unequivocal on most of the issues raised by Ms Finucane in her application originally registered in 1995. It found that the original RUC investigation into the killing lacked independence and raised serious doubts as to the thoroughness or effectiveness with which the issue of collusion was investigated.
The one-day inquest held in 1990 was found not to have addressed serious and legitimate concerns of the Finucane family and of the public and not to have provided an effective investigation into the incident. The court dismissed the first and second Stevens Inquiries as largely irrelevant for the purpose of the requirements of Article 2, whatever about their value as information-gathering exercises.
Although it registers dissatisfaction, the court seems deliberately ambivalent on the compatibility of the third Stevens Inquiry with the procedural requirements of Article 2. This may have as much to do with the concessions made by the UK government in the course of the case as with the general reluctance of the court to deal with a highly charged dimension of current political controversy in relation to the case.
The failure of the DPP for Northern Ireland to give reasons for the decision not to prosecute, coupled with the difficulties in subjecting such decisions to judicial review and the close connection between the office of the DPP and the police, was found to be incompatible with Article 2.
There are also important implications for the Republic.
Ireland has a weaker inquest system than that which operates in Northern Ireland. The office of the Irish DPP enjoys the same close working relationship with the police as that enjoyed by the DPP for Northern Ireland. Decisions by the DPP to institute or not to institute criminal proceedings are no more susceptible to judicial review in this jurisdiction than in the North.
Insofar as all of these matters have given rise to findings of a violation of Article 2 in respect of Northern Ireland, we can probably breathe a sigh of relief that such findings have not yet been made in respect of the South.
The inadequacies of the Irish inquest system have already been publicly criticised by the coroner presiding at the inquest into the deaths of the two victims of the Grangegorman murders. An internal review of this system, which is being conducted by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, has yet to yield concrete results in the form of published reform proposals or draft legislation.
The decision by the Irish DPP not to prosecute any of the gardaí involved in the Abbeylara incident may have been perfectly reasonable on the merits but it was based on an internal inquiry of An Garda Síochána.
Such a decision-making process would almost certainly not satisfy the procedural requirements of Article 2.
It may well be argued that this deficiency has been corrected by the establishment of the Barr Inquiry. But what if that inquiry eventually makes findings that cast a very different light on the Abbeylara incident than those made in the Culligan Report? Will the decision of the DPP be reconsidered and, if not, what remedy (apart from civil remedies) will be open to those who may wish to have that decision reconsidered?
There is no apparent tension between the Irish constitutional protection of the right to life (of the living) and the standard of protection afforded by the ECHR. In fact, read together, both documents provide a sound fundamental law upon which to build statutory protection.
There is a real opportunity to adopt best international practice by recourse, not just to ECHR principles, but also to UN standards which, arguably, are more exacting.
The focus of initial attention has, understandably, fallen on the political implications of the Finucane decision.
That should not distract from the urgent legal imperatives it also raises for this and other States.
Donncha O'Connell is a lecturer in law at NUI Galway and the Irish member of the EU Network of Independent Experts in Fundamental Rights, established by the European Commission in 2002