Ivana Bacik

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Ivana Bacik has been Reid Professor of Criminal Law, Criminology and Penology at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) Law School since 1996, and was a made a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin in 2005. She has an LL.B. from TCD and an LL.M. from the London School of Economics. She practises as a barrister, and teaches courses in Criminal law; Criminology and Penology; and Feminist Theory and Law at Trinity. Her research interests include criminal law and criminology, constitutional law, feminist theories and law, human rights and equality issues in law.

Bacik regularly appears in the Irish media, on RTE television and radio current affairs programmes, and in newspapers such as the Irish Times and Irish Independent when social, family, reproductive rights, or criminal law issues are discussed. She also appears on public demonstrations and protests^[1], which is an odds with her position as a barrister.

Her family name is of Czech origin. Her grandfather, Karel Bacik, was in the Czech resistance and was imprisoned by the Nazis. After the war, he moved to Ireland with his young family, where they lived in Waterford. He was involved in the setting up of Waterford Crystal in 1947.

As President of TCD Students' Union (TCDSU)(1989-90), she was taken to court by the anti-abortion pressure group, The Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC), for providing information on abortion. SPUC were successful in the court case.

Her term as President ended prematurely when she resigned in 1990 after it was discovered that she had broken a mandate received from the Union membership. Bacik secretly broke the mandate given to her to voting for candidates at a Union of Students in Ireland conference. Despite 13 TCD representatives being mandated to vote for one candidate, Mr Martin Whelan, a former TCDSU present, it transpired that candidate received only 12 votes, Bacik's vote instead being given to the feminist former UCD SU officer, Karen Quinlivan. A major controversy erupted in the Students' Union and an investigation started leading to Bacik's resignation.

She stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Labour Party for the hotly contested election to the European Parliament in the Dublin area in 2004 where she posed a somewhat unsuspected threat to Labour's sitting candidate Proinsias De Rossa, proving especially popular among younger voters. She was narrowly beaten for the fourth Dublin seat by the Sinn Féin candidate Mary Lou McDonald.

Despite this, Bacik remains a prominent member of the Irish Labour Party and activist for the legalisation of abortion in Ireland. On February 18th 2007, the Irish Daily Mail reported that Bacik was chairperson of a Labour Youth meeting in Dublin which planned to spark an Irish consitutional crisis involving a pregnant asylum seeker who wished to terminate a pregnancy but by law would not be allowed to travel outside the State^[2].

In September 2006, Bacik was one of the 61 Irish academic signatories of a letter published in the Irish Times calling for an academic boycott of the state of Israel^[3].

In 2006, Bacik acted as Junior Counsel in the unsuccessful Irish High Court case brought by Katherine Zappone and Ann Louise Gilligan over non-recognition of their Same Sex Marriage by the Irish Revenue Commissioners^[4].

In 2007, Bacik will contest the Seanad Éireann elections for the third time in the Dublin University, as independent candidate. She previously contested that same election and constituency in 1997 and 2002.