WHEN MRS Justice Susan Denham assumes her new role as Chief Justice the two most senior legal positions in the State will for the first time be held by women. Following Attorney General Máire Whelan’s appointment to the Government, Mrs Denham’s will belatedly bring to a welcome new high the representation of women in the law, in the footsteps of the likes of Mella Carroll and Agnes Cassidy, the first on the High Court and District Court respectively.
In this regard Mrs Justice Denham is already a trail-blazer; in 1992 she became the first woman on the Supreme Court, and is now its longest serving member. Her colleague, Ms Justice Fidelma Macken, was the first Irish woman sent to the European Court of Justice. Their achievements reflect the transformation of the presence of women in the profession – Mrs Denham spoke last year of her sense of her place as “a member of a generation on a cusp of time in the legal world”.
As a member of the Church of Ireland, she will also be the State’s first Protestant Chief Justice, a fact which years ago, would have raised more eyebrows than her gender. To this generation it may even seem strange to acknowledge the fact, but it is also an important milestone for the new Ireland.
The new Chief Justice brings to the post a long track record of engagement in the reform of the administration of justice. The Courts Service owes its creation to a committee she chaired, the Working Group on a Courts Commission, and she served on its board from its inception. The commission’s six reports also laid the basis for the Commercial Court and a number of other innovations. She has chaired the working group which has recommended the establishment of a court of appeal.
As secretary to the Committee on Judicial Conduct and Ethics, she has been a strong advocate for the long-awaited judicial council to promote judicial ethics and education, to speak for the judges, and to discipline its wayward members. She is a strong defender of the “fragile bastion” of judicial independence, but likely, sources suggest, to prove a pragmatic interlocutor with the Government on judges’ pay.
In terms of judicial philosophy, she is seen by colleagues as leaning to the liberal side of a court that is difficult to define in ideological terms, and to be more willing than most of the bench to countenance judicial activism. She is liked personally and well regarded by the bar, and seen as likely to promote a more user-friendly, open, and modern court system.