Mairead Enright, Official Legal Histories and Where to Find Them: The Report of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Inquiry

Specially written histories have become an important tool in Irish state responses to ‘historical’ injustice, particularly those affecting women, their sexual, reproductive and family lives. Whatever form an inquiry takes, a ‘definitive’ history will be at its centre. Sometimes it will be authored by academic historians, though generally in collaboration with state-appointed legal advisors. Usually, it will be informed by the findings of some wider investigation, which purports to hear survivor evidence. The MBHCI Report contains the latest such history. It adapts and extends tactics also visible in predecessor reports, which dealt with abuses in industrial schools and Magdalene laundries, and obstetric violence in maternity hospitals.

This paper addresses how legal histories appear in these state responses to abuse, and especially in the M ...