The former Supreme Court judge, Mr Justice Séamus Egan, who died yesterday, was renowned for his sharp legal mind and his ability to reduce complex arguments to one or two definitive sentences.
Mr Justice Egan became a Senior Counsel in 1962. In 1984, he was appointed to the High Court and five years later became a member of the Special Criminal Court. In 1991, he was appointed a Supreme Court judge. He retired in December 1995.
As a Supreme Court judge, he was one of the five judges who ruled on the controversial "X" case in 1992, stating that the amendment recognised that abortion was not always unlawful.
In 1995, Mr Justice Egan gave a dissenting judgment in the case of whether a tube, keeping a woman in a vegetative state alive, should be removed. He said removing it would be to kill a human being.
One of his most memorable High Court rulings was in the Trimbole case, where he freed an Australian fugitive who had been arrested under the Offences Against the State Act while warrants for his extradition were awaited.
The judge did not accept the police claim that they arrested Trimbole because they believed he was carrying a gun.
Born in Dublin, Mr Justice Egan studied at Blackrock College, UCD and King's Inns. After he was called to the Bar in 1945, he practised on the western circuit and in the Four Courts, where he was involved in many prominent trials. He successfully defended Francis McGirl in the Mountbatten murder trial in the Special Criminal Court.
He was a Connacht inter-provincial tennis player and a member of Milltown Golf club, Dublin.
Mr Justice Egan is survived by his wife Ada, and children Frances, Brian, Sandra, Rory, Adrienne, Karen and Suzanne. Six of his seven children are also associated with the legal profession.