A leading Supreme Court Judge has defended the Constitution from critics who have claimed it is too old and too complicated.

Mr Justice Adrian Hardiman (pictured), speaking yesterday at the McGill Summer School, said that the fact that the Constitution was 73 years old and of a certain length should not be drawbacks.

He said, like antiques, the authority of a constitution tended to increase over time.

Mr Hardiman said that the separation of powers had to be maintained by the preservation of a “sedulous respect” on the part of the government and the judiciary for one another.

Criticising recent RTÉ programme Aftershock, Mr Justice Hardiman said the demand for simplicity expressed there could result in the loss of basic constitutional rights.

Referring to suggestions that the Constitution be scrapped and replaced it with a document similar to the 1916 Proclamation said: “A constitution is not a pronunciamento.”

A pronunciamiento is a form of military rebellion or coup d’état peculiar to Latin American countries in which a group of military officers publicly declare their opposition to the current government.

Certain people, he suggested, looked fondly to the days when Soviet judges regarded their jobs as the application of the law as a political expression of the ruling party and government.

He said he had learned from the words of Marge Simpson in the television cartoon series who said: “You can’t use the law to nag.” There were those who thought the law could be used, not just to nag, “but to batter into submission”.

Previously, Justice Hardiman has defended the Constitution from the charge that it is pro-family without being pro-child.

In the Baby Ann case, he rejected the idea that the Constitution preferred parents to children. The Constitution, preferred parents to third parties, such as the State or the Church or social workers, when it came to vindicating the rights of children, since children were not in a position to vindicate their own rights.

It was, he said, “quite untrue to say that the Constitution puts the rights of parents first and those of children second.”

Justice Hardiman added: “The Constitution does not prefer parents to children. The preference the Constitution gives is this: it prefers parents to third parties, official or private, priest or social worker, as the enablers and guardians of the child’s rights.”