PROFILE:Respected as a judge who knows her mind, Susan Denham is a very skilled negotiator
THE APPOINTMENT of Susan Denham as chief justice will be widely welcomed, not least because she is generally liked by judges, lawyers and court staff and she has a reputation for consideration and courtesy not shared by all her colleagues. But it is her experience of and commitment to reform of the courts system that is likely to be the hallmark of her tenure.
Since her appointment to the Supreme Court in 1992 at the young age of 46, she has been responsible for most of the reforms in the courts and recommended many more yet to take place. She chaired the working group on a courts commission established by the government in 1995 to review the management of the courts. It published six reports and two working papers, leading to the establishment of the Courts Service in November 1999.
The sixth report of the working group contained recommendations for regulating judicial conduct, suggesting an independent committee controlled by the judiciary and chaired by the chief justice, which could establish a code of ethics and have procedures for dealing with complaints.
It also made extensive proposals for the reform of the family law courts, including the modification of the in camera rule prohibiting the reporting of family law proceedings.
Shortly afterwards the judiciary was convulsed by the Sheedy affair, which led to the resignation of a Supreme Court and a Circuit Court judge, and it appeared a system for regulating judicial conduct was imminent. Over a decade later nothing has been done, despite a further report from a committee chaired by then chief justice Ronan Keane and including Mrs Justice Denham. It recommended the setting up of a judicial council on a statutory basis, providing for the representation, education and training of judges as well as a disciplinary mechanism. This has still to be legislated for, though the last government published the heads of a Judicial Council Bill last year and it features in the programme for government.
Mrs Justice Denham also chaired a committee on the need for a court of civil appeal to hear most appeals from the High Court, leaving the Supreme Court to deal with constitutional cases and those involving fundamental points of law. The need for this arises from the increasing volume of cases going to the Supreme Court, resulting in lengthy delays of up to three years.
Her proposals on this also went to the previous government, which accepted them, and the court of appeal is also in the programme for government.
All her time has not been spent on committees, and she has built up a reputation for liberal judgments. She gave the sole dissenting judgment in the Attorney General and the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children versus Open Door Counselling case, where the society sought to prevent the counselling service from offering abortion advice.
She and Mr Justice Fennelly gave dissenting judgments in the case between the Equality Authority and Portmarnock Golf Club, finding it was “a discriminating club”. She has issued judgments critical of gardaí in their handling of evidence.
However, she declined to follow Mr Justice Hedigan in the High Court when he ruled a lesbian couple and the child conceived with a friend constituted a “de-facto family”, stating there was no such institution in Ireland as a “de-facto family”.
In asylum cases she has steered a careful course between scrutinising the decisions of the Minister for Justice to ensure they comply with procedural fairness, and stressing the State’s right to control the entry, presence and exit of foreign nationals.
The eldest child of the former editor of The Irish Times,Douglas Gageby, she comes from a family with a tradition of both non-conformism and public service. Her father, from a Belfast Protestant family, served in the Army before entering journalism, and her maternal grandfather, Seán Lester, was the last secretary general of the League of Nations. She was educated at Alexandra College and Trinity College Dublin, where she studied legal science. There her activities included involvement in the fledgling Free Legal Aid Centres. She was a founder of the archaeology and folklife society, of which she became president.
She is married to paediatrician Brian Denham, and they have four children. She is very fond of dogs and horses and breeds Connemara ponies in the west of Ireland, a hobby that takes her away from the stresses of judicial life. She has never been directly linked to any party. Her relations with the Labour Party, with which her sympathies were thought to lie, were strained when her name was put forward for president of the High Court by Dick Spring amid the controversy over the appointment of Harry Whelehan, which ultimately brought down the Fianna Fáil/Labour coalition.
She was not consulted and did not want the job. She was not pleased to have her name dragged into the controversy, and her displeasure was made known.
However, that is all water under the bridge. The Government is likely to find in her a skilled negotiator for the judiciary who will be eager to press forward with reform.