Denis Coghlan, Chief Political Correspondent, recalls Rory O'Hanlon's political campaigning on issues such as divorce and abortion
The former High Court judge, Mr Rory O'Hanlon, led a life relatively free of controversy until the issues of abortion and divorce and his own strongly held religious beliefs forced him into confrontation with successive governments.
He was professor of criminal and constitutional law at UCD from 1962 to 1972 and became part of the government's legal team that successfully prosecuted the British government at the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg for the inhuman and degrading treatment of republican prisoners in Northern Ireland in the 1970s.
Chairman of the Civil Service Advisory Board in 1979, he was appointed to the High Court by a Fianna Fáil government in 1981. Eleven years later he became chairman of the Law Reform Commission and, within months, was deeply immersed in public controversy arising from the Supreme Court judgment in the X case.
Asked about the appropriateness of his behaviour at the time, the judge replied: "If I could contribute in any way to awakening the conscience of the Irish people, to get them to remember that in the UK close to one pregnancy in every five is now terminated by abortion, I would willingly break all the judicial protocols ever invented."
He criticised the X case judgment and called publicly for a new constitutional referendum with the wording: "The unborn child, from the moment of conception, should have the same right to life as a child born alive."
His intervention and the fact that he made no secret of his membership of Opus Dei brought criticism from the Fine Gael and Labour Party benches. But he also antagonised Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats by publicly opposing their efforts to deal with the X case judgment through three seperate referendums dealing with information, travel and the substantive issue of abortion.
Following a cabinet meeting of Fianna Fáil and Progressive Democrats ministers, Mr O'Hanlon was "summoned" to meet the Taoiseach to explain himself. In typical fashion, he drew attention to the separation of powers under the Constitution, and Mr Albert Reynolds had to change the "summons" to an "invitation".
Mr O'Hanlon was invited to remain out of public controversy or to resign his position as president of the Law Reform Commission. When he declined to do either, he was sacked.
His removal from the Commission led Mr Des Hanafin, chairman of the Pro-Life Campaign, to describe his treatment as "disgraceful". Following the referendums in 1992, he said the results on travel and information should be declared void because they conflicted with the natural law on which the Constitution was based. The Constitution, he said, recognised the Most Holy Trinity as the ultimate source of the natural law.
At about that time he ruled in the High Court that, in spite of Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act, RTE was wrong in not broadcasting the views of a trade union member simply because he was a member of Sinn Féin.
When the rainbow coalition brought enabling legislation on abortion travel and information before the Dáil early in 1995, Mr O'Hanlon said he would be betraying the trust God had imposed in him if he failed to speak out against it. The Bills, he said, were not in accordance with the Constitution. A few months later he retired as a judge of the High Court.
His retirement did not quench his crusading zeal. In June 1995 he campaigned against the referendum allowing introduction of divorce as "another milestone in the road to a secular State". As chairman of the No campaign, he criticised President Mary Robinson for effectively supporting a Yes vote and attacking the family and marriage.
Mr O'Hanlon's final two campaigns were successful when he spoke against the Nice Treaty and opposed the Government's abortion referendum in 2001.