Mr Justice Denis Pringle, who has died aged 96, became a High Court judge in 1969 but he was best known for his presidency of the Special Criminal Court during the period 1974-76. The court was created in 1972 to deal with serious crimes involving terrorism and the shooting of gardai.
Mr Justice Pringle defended the existence of the no-jury court, saying it would not be fair to ask an ordinary jury to deal with such cases.
When he resigned from the court in 1976, he said he hoped it would not become permanent and that conditions would quickly make it possible to abolish it.
In the Special Criminal Court he presided over trials involving the Tiede Herrema kidnapping, the Rose Dugdale case and the murders of Senator Billy Fox and Garda Michael Reynolds.
In 1974, Mr Justice Pringle handed down a landmark judgment in which he ruled that a section of the Adoption Act was unconstitutional. A young Dublin couple had challenged a portion of the Act which prohibited them from adopting the wife's illegitimate son.
Mr Justice Pringle found in their favour. In his judgment, he said: "I do not agree that the restriction imposed was a reasonable one and, even if it were, it could not be valid if it infringed the Constitution, as I am satisfied it did."
He was born in Dublin on May 16th, 1902, the son of Robert William Pringle and Alberta (nee Henshaw).
He was educated at Castle Park School, Dalkey, Co Dublin; Hailebury College, Hertfordshire, and Trinity College, Dublin. He married Marjorie McDowell and they had two children, Elizabeth and Margaret.
Mr Justice Pringle became the first chairman of An Bord Pleanala in 1976, set up by the Fine GaelLabour coalition government to remove the functions of planning appeals and similar matters from political control.
He chaired a committee in 1978 which produced the first detailed proposals for a comprehensive system of State legal aid in civil cases.
The committee identified the area of family law as causing the most obvious hardship and suffering among those in need of legal aid.
Mr Justice Pringle will be buried this morning in the graveyard adjoining Kilternan Parish Church, near where he lived.