Gerald Fitzgibbon

Gerald Fitzgibbon (8 October 1866 – 6 December 1942)^[1] was an Irish barrister, independent Teachta Dála (TD) and one of the original judges of the Supreme Court of Ireland.

Family

He came from a noted legal family: his grandfather, Gerald Fitzgibbon was a Queen's Counsel and Master in Chancery and his father, also Gerald Fitzgibbon, was a Lord Justice of the pre-independence Irish Court of Appeal: along with Christopher Palles and Hugh Holmes, the elder Fitzgibbon was credited with making the Court of Appeal a tribunal whose judgements are still quoted with respect today. Mr. Justice Fitzgibbon through his mother was grandson of John FitzGerald, Baron FitzGerald, the first Irish judge to be made a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary.

Early career

He was born in Dublin, eldest son of Gerald Fitzgibbon and Margaret Anne Fitzgerald. He was educated at the University of Dublin, where he took his degree of Bachelor of Arts. He was called to the Irish Bar in 1887, practised on the Munster Circuit, became Queen's Counsel in 1908, and a Bencher of the King's Inns in 1912.^[2]

Political career

He was elected unopposed to the House of Commons of Southern Ireland at the 1921 elections, representing the University of Dublin constituency as an independent Unionist, and acted as Speaker at its single session. He did not participate in the Second Dáil.^[3] He was re-elected for the same constituency at the 1922 general election and became a member of the Third Dáil. He did not contest the 1923 general election.^[4]

Supreme Court

In 1924, the forced retirement of almost all the senior judges of the former regime made the finding of suitable replacements a serious problem. Hugh Kennedy, the new Chief Justice of Ireland recommended Fitzgibbon as a judge of the Supreme Court simply on account of his legal ability,^[5] despite their serious differences on political issues, which Hogan refers to as a clash between Kennedy's "enthusiastic nationalism" and Fitzgibbon's "pessimistic scepticism".^[6]

Conflict with Hugh Kennedy

Kennedy soon came to regret his decision: his diary records the increasing tension between the two men. Although Fitzgibbon was a Protestant Unionist, friends later recalled that he was by no means hostile, at first, to the new regime^[7]- indeed if he had been he would hardly have accepted high office in it- but he became deeply disillusioned with the increasingly Roman Catholic Irish Free State, and by 1929 he and Kennedy are said to have regarded each other with deep suspicion.^[7]

The tension came to a head in 1935 when Fitzgibbon was in the majority in State (Ryan) v Lennon; concluding his judgment in an extraordinarily bitter, mocking style, he found that the Constitution of the Irish Free State contained provisions for its own amendment which allowed suspension of the most basic human rights.^[8]

Even in apparently non-contentious cases Fitzgibbon became liable to sudden outbursts, as in Re Westby^[9]', on the relatively unimportant question of whether a Protestant ward of court should or should not be educated at an English public school. Kennedy's decision that the boy should be educated in Ireland was overruled by the Supreme Court, presided over by Fitzgibbon, who attacked both Kennedy, and the Free State, in the same bitter tone he used in Ryan v Lennon.

Later years

He took some interest in the enactment of the 1937 Constitution of Ireland and made some suggestions on the procedure for referring a Bill to the Supreme Court.

Despite his obvious unhappiness he remained on the Court until he reached retirement age in 1938; Kennedy believed that the somewhat unsatisfactory pension arrangements made Fitzgibbon cling to an office he had come to despise. Hogan points out that in this at least Fitzgibbon had reason to be bitter: because he was required on age grounds to retire 9 months before he qualified for the full pension, he seems to have received a pension equivalent to only 42% of his salary.^[10]

References