Law Adviser to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland

The Law Adviser to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was a law officer of the Crown in nineteenth-century Ireland.

The office was created in 1831 to ease the heavy workload of the existing Irish Law Officers, the Attorney General for Ireland and the Solicitor General for Ireland.[1]

No specific duties were assigned to the Law Adviser when the office was created: he appears at first to have been simply a general assistant to the Law Officers. Later he was given the tasks of drafting Parliamentary Bills, and of advising lay magistrates on any legal problems which they referred to him.[2] Cases involving State security also fell under his remit: Denis Heron in 1867 was heavily occupied in prosecuting the trials which followed the Fenian Rising. [3]

At first the Law Adviser was usually a Serjeant-at-law, but in time the position was open to rising barristers who hoped in due course to be appointed to the Bench; later it seems to have been felt that the offices of Serjeant and Law Adviser should be separate. The Attorney General generally had the final word in the appointment: certainly this was so in 1841 when Francis Blackburne insisted on the appointment of Abraham Brewster, despite strong opposition from Daniel O'Connell, who disliked Brewater.[4]

The Law Adviser's duty to advise magistrates on points of law was open to criticism as an interference by the Crown with the independence of the judiciary. In particular John Naish, the last nineteenth-century Law Adviser, was attacked by political opponents for openly assisting magistrates in their ongoing struggle with the Irish National Land League, and for suggesting that they rely on an obscure medieval statute, 34 Edward III c.1, to imprison those who could not find surety for their good behaviour; since the statute had clearly been intended only to deal with cases of riot, this was arguably a deliberate misreading of the law. Perhaps because of this controversy the office was left vacant after Naish's promotion to the office of Solicitor General in 1883. It was briefly revived in 1919, but finally abolished by the Irish Free State in 1924.[5]

Sketch of Charles Robert Barry, Law Adviser 1865-1866

List of Law Advisers 1831-1883,1919-1920

incomplete

The office was vacant 1883-1919

The office lapsed in 1920 and was abolished in 1924

References

  1. ↑ Casey, James The Irish Law Officers Round Hall Sweet and Maxwell 1996 p.47
  2. ↑ Casey p.48
  3. ↑ Obituary for Denis Caulfield Heron in the Downside Review (1881)
  4. ↑ Delaney, V.T.H Christopher Palles Allen Figgis and Co Dublin 1960 p.60
  5. ↑ Ministers and Secretaries Act 1924 s.6
  6. ↑ Ball, F. Elrington The Judges in Ireland 1221-1921 John Murray London 1926 Vol.ii p.359
  7. ↑ Hart, A. R. History of the King's Serjeants at law in Ireland Dublin Four Courts Press 2000 p.179
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