Austin Stack instructed local Sinn Fein and IRA leaders to set up and administer Courts in all localities and republican judges such as Diarmuid Crowley, who had been arrested in 1920 were released and were able to resume their work. It was during the Truce period that the republican courts took on much of the burden of administering justice throughout Ireland. However difficulties also crept into the Dáil Court system. Abuses crept in, and in many instances litigants who anticipated an adverse decision in the British Courts resorted to the Dáil Courts to restrain their opponents from the continuance of the proceedings in the other Court. There were traces that the Dáil Courts were used as channels of corruption, and by persons not in search of justice but anxious for the obstruction of justice. Soon after the outbreak of the Civil War, the Provisional Government suspended the Dail Courts. Then, on July 26, 1922, after they refused to observe an order for habeas corpus that was granted by Judge Diarmuid Crowley in July 1922 in favour of a son of George Plunkett, they abolished the Dail Courts by decree. Crowley, who had been appointed a judge of the republican courts in 1920, and imprisoned by the British was also imprisoned by the Provisional Government for issuing an arrest order for Free State Minister for Defence Richard Mulcahy. During the Civil War itself, most of the country was effectively under martial law and suspects could be detained without trial by the military. Thereafter the Provisional Government resurrected the legal system largely as it had existed prior to 1919 in criminal and security cases. Judges included both those formerly appointed under the former British administration, and veterans of the Dail Courts such as Cahir Davitt and James Creed Meredith. Winding up To deal with the anomalous state of affairs arising from there being two rival systems of Courts, within months of its establishment the Executive Council of the Irish Free State appointed a Judicial Committee chaired by Lord Glenavy to decide upon the best system for the new state. The Executive Council then tabled and the Dáil passed the Dáil Éireann Courts (Winding Up) Act 1923. The full title of the Act summarises how the Dáil Courts were wound up: The expression "Dáil Court" was defined under the Act as meaning: The winding-up of the Dáil Courts was undertaken by Judicial Commissioners