A Brehon whose decision was reversed upon appeal was liable to damages, loss of position and of free lands, if any, disgrace, and a consequent loss of his profession.
Ginnell's Brehon Laws (1894) may also be consulted.
What remains of it occupies the first, second, and a portion of the third of the volumes produced by the Brehon Law Commission, which was appointed in 1852.
No Brehon had any fixed territorial jurisdiction.
For the peculiar social conditions with which the Christian missionary would be confronted in Ireland see Brehon Laws and Ireland: Early History.
It appears, without being expressly stated, that the facts of a case were investigated and ascertained by laymen, probably by the Aireachtas - a local assembly or jury - before submission to a Brehon for legal decision.
In the Brehon Laws the land belongs in theory to the tribe, but this did not by any means correspond to the state of affairs.
So important a place did bee-culture hold in the rural economy of the ancient Irish that a lengthy section is devoted to the subject in the Brehon Laws.
But though Loigaire refused to desert the faith of his ancestors we are told that a number of his nearest kinsmen accepted Christianity; and if there be any truth in the story of the codification of the Brehon Laws we gather that he realized that the future belonged to the new religion.
The course of study for Brehon and 011amh, advocate and law-agent respectively, is carefully laid down in the law itself.