Fine.

Then what? What precisely should he have done about it?

Should he have subcontracted the detention of the men convicted under the 1935 law to the CIA to "render" the child rapists to other jurisdictions less likely to turn themselves in legal knots over the finer points of constitutional law?

Should he have ignored the Court and taken inspiration from 19th century US president Andrew Jackson, who once infamously said, "Well, the Chief Justice has made his ruling;

now let him enforce it"?

The fact that no one seemed to have a notion about what the government should have done differently in the runup to the Supreme Court ruling didn't stop the paroxysm of righteous, if misdirected, rage from shaking the body politic.

For about 24 hours last week after Justice Mary Laffoy ordered the cuffs taken off 'Mr A', it seemed as likely as not that a pitchfork and torchwielding mob . . . headed by opposition politicians, breathless RTE presenters and newspaper columnists . . . might storm McDowell's office at the Department of Justice and lynch him on St Stephen's Green.

Much was made about supposed warning signs, like an October 2005 article in the Law Society Gazette by Edel Kennedy. That Kennedy is a trainee solicitor who just happened to be working with the firm representing a defendant in the key case might have had something to do with why it wasn't received as Holy Writ.

Though Kennedy revealed her direct connection to the case in an interview on Newstalk on Thurs- day morning, that fact hasn't gotten much play. Much better to let the myth grow that a random trainee solicitor had a better read on constitutional law than the Minister for Justice or Attorney General.

But Kennedy's article is indeed instructive. The last paragraph, referring to the July 2005 judgement, reads:

"The protection of young girls less than 15 years of age from sexual activity has always been an important public policy objective, but the question was submitted as to whether this was sufficient justification to exclude the defence of mistake and to deny the requirement of proof as to mens rea [a guilty mind]."

In other words, the Supreme Court was deciding which value was trumps . . . protection of victims or the accused.

One of the underlying assumptions that has driven the public outrage is that the Supreme Court had no choice but to rule as they did two weeks ago. But is that true? Was it the case that the Court had no options?

In its 41-page judgement on 23 May the Court rejected the argument that it was not required to strike down the 1935 law, decided that it would leave it up to the legislature to come up with a statutory rape law that passed constitutional muster and leave it at that.

And, as we know, jurists are not supposed to live in the real world, not supposed to ponder the consequences of its decisions outside the courtroom. This is a fiction, for the most part a useful one, and one we are conditioned not to question.

But there is also an unwritten understanding that behind the rhetoric of lofty whiterthan-white independence, at least some considerations of the public good . . . dismissed with a snort as 'utilitarian' arguments by sharp trainee solicitors . . . might creep into the minds of people sitting on the bench when deciding, in effect, to free rapists. It's not as if such considerations are unheard of.

Was it not a utilitarian reasoning that kept the Supreme Court from ruling in 1976 in the de Burca case, when it struck down the 50 year old jury law that barred women from serving on juries, that all persons convicted by juries empanelled under the old law would have to be freed?

Or that prevented the Massachusetts Supreme Court, when it struck down that state's civil marriage law in 2003 because it excluded same-sex unions, from declaring every existing marriage in the state to have never occurred?

Or, as I revise this late Friday afternoon while . . . farcically . . . a warrant is issued for the rearrest of Mr A, can there be any doubt that the Supreme Court listens to Liveline? And was any of this insanity strictly necessary?