George Gavan Duffy - Barrister and Judge

Barrister and Judge

Gavan Duffy returned to the Irish Bar and built up a large practice and was engaged in some notable constitutional cases such as the Land Annuities controversy in which he claimed that the Irish Free State could not be bound either in honour or in law to hand over annuities to Britain. He was appointed Senior Counsel in 1930 and Judge of the High Court in 1936. He acted as an unofficial legal advisor to de Valera during the drafting of the 1937 Constitution of Ireland and was consulted on many issues pertaining to it. He was also a member of the commission to set up the second house of the Oireachtas, Seanad Éireann, in 1937.

In 1946, at the height of his legal career, he was appointed President of the High Court, a position he held for the rest of his life. His most controversial judgement was in the Tilson case heard in 1950, where he applied the Ne Temere decree to the letter because the 1937 Irish Constitution gave the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland a "special position". The Supreme Court of Ireland then agreed with his judgement, but Gavan Duffy has been criticized since then for his rigid and intolerant opinion. He was a longstanding member of the hard-line Catholic organisation An Ríoghacht.

In 1945 Gavan Duffy also extended the privilege of clergy to evidence heard by Catholic priests hearing confessions, to the effect that a priest was not obliged to repeat the evidence to any other party, including a court of law. Proposals to reverse the privilege were published in 2012.

Gavan Duffy died at his home in Bushy Park Road, Terenure, on 10 June 1951.