Ignatius O'Brien (1857-1930) was twice dismissed from positions that he held, once by The Irish Times in 1882 and once by Lloyd George, the prime minister, a hundred years ago.
When The Irish Times dispensed with his services as a court reporter, summarising decisions of the court of appeal, it was paying him £20 a year.
When Lloyd George removed him from office as Lord Chancellor, the most senior judge in Ireland, he enjoyed a salary of £6,000 a year. He had risen in the world.
O’Brien was not the first, and will not be the last, person to combine a career at the Bar with some journalism. The editor dismissed him because he was literally unable to provide a succinct summary of the outcome of an extraordinarily complicated case under the new Land Act of 1881, introduced by Gladstone.
Seven judges had heard an appeal concerning the terms of a landholding in Co Antrim, and produced seven separate judgments, which eventually ran to over 80 pages in the printed official law reports.
The majority of the judges agreed on the result but each gave a different analysis of the case and of the reasoning for his judgment.
O’Brien, moonlighting from his position as a young barrister, had only a couple of hours within which to grasp and summarise a set of inconsistent and untidily amended manuscript judgments, and the editor was terminally unimpressed with his effort.
O’Brien had been appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1913.
In May 1915 a coalition government was formed between the Liberals and the Unionists, to prosecute the War more vigorously.
In the division of offices between the parties it was agreed that O’Brien would be replaced by James Henry Mussen Campbell QC, a leading unionist and MP for Dublin University.
Irish nationalists protested loudly, and after a stand-off at Westminster, Campbell was induced to stand back and not insist on being appointed.
He regarded himself as having been betrayed and cheated and, nursing his grievance, for the next three years campaigned for what he called his “restoration” to office, at one stage telling his party leader, Andrew Bonar Law, that “I want the Chancellorship, you can get it for me.”
He regarded his appointment as Lord Chief Justice of Ireland in December 1916 as small consolation.
His eventual replacement of O’Brien in 1918 was part of a new hard-line policy of the government, following the great national resistance in April to the prospect of conscription.
The idea of a judge being dismissed may need explanation, and it was possible only in the case of the Lord Chancellor.
Every other judge held office “during good behaviour,” reflecting the fact that, to protect the independence of the judiciary and the integrity of the courts, formal impeachment was the only procedure for removal from office. The Lord Chancellor was different, since he was also a member of the executive branch of government, with an office in Dublin Castle.
O’Brien retired to England in 1920. Lloyd George’s letter of dismissal had offered him a peerage. He took the name of Lord Shandon, a reflection of the pride he felt in his native city, and actively participated in debates in the House of Lords.
He had no heir, and on his death in 1930 the title became extinct.
In his retirement O’Brien composed a memoir. He made two typescript copies, one of which is in the library of the King’s Inns. The second copy was left to his wife’s nephew, Gerald Horan, who had been his official secretary and subsequently Master of the High Court.
Gerald Horan died in 1949, and it is not known whether the copy is still in the possession of the Horan family, or indeed whether it still exists.
The Irish Legal History Society (ilhs.eu), which envisages publishing the memoir, would be interested to hear from anyone who might have any information on the subject.
Campbell resigned as Lord Chancellor in 1921, like O’Brien becoming a peer, taking the title of Lord Glenavy.
He did not however attend the House of Lords, instead subsequently making a very significant contribution to the establishment of the Irish Free State, as the first chairman of the Senate and as heading a committee that advised on the establishment of the new court system, as set up in 1924.
His grandson, Patrick Campbell, the third Lord Glenavy, wrote for The Irish Times in the 1930s and 1940s.