By David Langwallner

In the 4 previous contributions in this great advocates series it might look like an old boy talking or writing about other old boys which of course might be perceived as exclusionary or perhaps sexist. So who are the pathfinders in breaking the old boys advocates club.

Well in Ireland Mrs Robinson but although a great lawyer and activist not perhaps an advocate of the calibre of Rose Heilbron and this is a series about advocates. Of course Helibron ultimately became the first female High Court judge but that is just the codicil of a career as an advocate for which she is best remembered.

Her biography by her daughter (2012) who from bitter personal experience stands in the mothers footsteps as a great advocate and who filleted me in a court case once is an insight a bit like the book I have written hitherto on Jeremy Hutchinson of a bygone era when life was simpler and I think much better. It is noticeable how despite the stressors of the profession both Hutchinson and Rose Heilbron lived till a ripe old age.

She undertook mixed work but criminal defence work is warped into Rose Helbrons career.

Like Jeremy Huthchinson she defended the cab rank principle to the hilt as do I and also was not picky about her clients. She is quoted at Page 291 of the biography as saying

“I defend people not cases.”

Quite right too. You are not there to judge your clients however unsavoury.

Nor to be judged by those who disapprove of your clients. There is a growing and awful trend.

Her career has very defining progressive features. A consistent approach to those accused of either assisting of performing or having abortions. In the England of the time it must have been very brave. In fact as a judge her defining moment may also have been in 1987 when a typical pro life ideologically driven intervention sought to prevent an abortion. These types of activists are far too prevalent in Irish public life still, very powerful and dangerous acting without restraint and often criminally. Their prevalence in academia sinister and dangerous with the organizations of Youth Defence and Libertas in Ireland disproportionately influential and powerful.

It was noticeable that the legendary jurist Dworkin who argued for the fundamental constitutional right to an abortion was most apprehensive when I met him for lunch about even appearing in The College Historical Society given the activities of these people. He felt his life was in danger.

Her representation of the cricketer Leary Constantine on discrimination on the grounds of colour from a hotel is also a defining civil liberties achievement.

But it is criminal law that defines her. She was clearly from transcripts an impassioned advocate and orator but also a lawyer. The two are distinct and rarely coupled. In the famous Christie v Leachinsky (1947) led The House of Lords determined that a person must be informed of the reason for the arrest It is clear she was not just a sonorous Portia as the newspapers suggested but thus also a very good technical lawyer. Also evident in her representation in the case of Donald Johnson where she secured an acquittal on evidence admitted by inducements.

It was the age of the death penalty and that of course accentuates the interest and the gravity of the responsibility of the advocate.

It is also clear that wrongful convictions perturbed her greatly and the conviction wrongfully of Gerard Kelly plagued her in the same way the Harry Gleeson case in Ireland plagued Sean McBride and indeed me.

The matter was revisited by the Court of Appeal in 2003 and she lived long enough to see it declared a miscarriage of justice where there were significant issues of the non disclosure of evidence then and now a major problem. In fact police tampering and doctoring of files with the enlistment of corrupt prosecutors has reached epic proportions in Ireland.

The police in Ireland a bandit organization out of control. Toxic and criminal.

Page 134 of the book gives a flavour of her colourful use of language so in The Bloom murder case in 1952 her peroration reached Marshall Hall type proportions:

“It was passion, infatuation, obsession and you may think he never got it out of his system.”

This led to the mild judicial rebuke that common sense should not be moved by oratory but it often is.

She was a rock star of her time when trials were often well attended. So in the Carlisle murder trial 50 women packed the benches. It seems distant now.

Advocacy as a form of popular entertainment.

She as do I used notebooks and wrote everything out in longhand the only way really. A computer screen is an artificial process and should only transcribe that which has been worked and edited and reedited

A noted other legal triumph was the infamous case of Sweet v Parsley where Sweet was convicted of cannabis growing on absolute liability criteria even though he had no knowledge his land was being used for that purpose. The House of Lords endorsed her legal submissions and imported a mens rea requirement and a very old and conservative House of Lords clearly unused to the beatnik generation.

The incessant press coverage and indeed public speaking engagements gained far too much attention from the censorious bar council of that age. In this respect the protectionist cartel of the Irish bar is living in a dark age even now for nefarious reasons. She even had to gain permission and appear in a broadcast by the legendary Ed Murrow with the even more legendary US Supreme Court Judge William O’ Douglas, the last of the great liberal judges.

Hated by the conservatives of his age but a liberal icon.

It is a glittering career but one reflects what opportunities progressives of that era in the UK and elsewhere had to make a difference. How they were nurtured and protected in more ruly, structured, ordered and simpler times.

Which is not to gainsay the enormous achievements and landmark litigation spiced with parochial Liverpuddlian colour.

She married a half Irish man well no one is perfect.

Writteen by David Langwallner