UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
HONORARY CONFERRING
Tuesday, 4 September 2012 at 5.30 p.m.
TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY PROFESSOR COLIN SCOTT, UCD School of Law, University College Dublin on 4 September 2012, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa on BRYAN MCMAHON
President, Distinguished Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen
Born in 1941, a native of Listowel, County Kerry, Bryan McMahon graduated from UCD with the BCL degree in 1962 and LLB (graduate law) degree in 1963. He went on to study as a Fellow at Harvard Law School. He was awarded a PhD in Law from UCC in 1972 for his study of the law relating to the liability of occupiers of land for harm caused to visitors.
He brought back from his studies in the United States to Ireland the knowledge and ambition that would contribute substantially to the development of both the law and the professionalization of university law schools in Ireland. He was, successively lecturer, professor and head of school in the Faculty of Law at University College Cork.
The period at UCC put Bryan McMahon in the vanguard of innovation in Irish Legal Education. He exploited his knowledge of and contacts in the US system to recruit a series of visiting academics from the United States to assist in developing both elements of clinical legal education and legal research and writing classes along American lines. Having studied Common Market Law in Harvard Bryan was well placed to introduce the subject to the curriculum in Cork, some years before Ireland’s accession to the EEC in 1973. He subsequently collaborated with Finbarr Murphy on the pioneering textbook European Community Law in Ireland published in 1989.
Bryan McMahon has been highly innovative and productive as a legal scholar. The first edition of the magisterial volume on the Irish law of torts, written with William Binchy, appeared in 1981 and the 4th edition is due out later this year. Binchy and McMahon undertook for the first time a comprehensive analysis of the case law, unearthing what William Binchy has recently described as ‘a treasury of unreported Supreme Court judgements’. Fully taking into account the wide range of cases and statutory measures bearing on tort law, Binchy and McMahon rendered that law both intelligible and accessible for practitioners and students alike. Their work was one of the initial steps towards firmly establishing a law textbook tradition in Ireland which now covers most areas of legal education and practice. Nor is Binchy and McMahon a dusty tome. Rather it draws on the widest variety of scholarly and policy sources, nationally and internationally, to identify but also to critique the law. The impact of this work alone has been immense not only in the field of tort, but in setting the benchmark for ambitious scholarship in the field of Irish law.
For many, the achievements as educator, legal scholar, and Department leader would be sufficient for one career. In his mid-40s Bryan McMahon was appointed senior partner in Houlihan and McMahon solicitors in Ennis, County Clare. He combined this with a part time professorship in the National University of Ireland, Galway. Bryan had been routinely deploying his expertise in EC law whilst in Cork. The shift to full time practice was not so radical a change. Bryan McMahon was appointed as a judge of the District Court in 1999 and promoted to be a judge of the High Court in 2007, a position from which he retired in 2011. His judgements are characterised by elegance, fluency and directness which serves to support and demonstrate the very high quality of his legal analysis.
Bryan McMahon has made numerous other contributions to Ireland’s legal system and wider public life. The many public appointments to leadership positions reflect the very high esteem in which he is held. What is valued is the rare combination of qualities which include the capacity for wise judgement and for creativity. He was appointed chair of the Board of our treasured national theatre, the Abbey, in 2005, a position to which he was re-appointed in 2011. Other public roles have engaged him in issues of law reform and oversight and governance of higher education. He chaired the National Crime Forum in 1998, has chaired both the National Archives Council and the Irish Universities Quality Board and was recently appointed Chair of the Governing Body of UCC. He chaired the Referendum Commission in respect of judges’ pay in 2011.
Bryan McMahon is one of Ireland’s foremost jurists and an exemplar of how one may bring rich talents and passions to many different spheres during a diverse and successful career. For his multiple contributions to legal scholarship, legal education, the law and the wider public and cultural life of Ireland we honour Bryan McMahon today.
Praehonorabilis Praeses, totaque Universitas,
Praesento vobis hunc meum filium, quem scio tam moribus quam doctrina habilem et idoneum esse qui admittatur, honoris causa, ad gradum Doctoratus in utroque Jure, tam Civili quam Canonico; idque tibi fide mea testor ac spondeo, totique Academiae.