George Gavan Duffy

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George Gavan Duffy

Portrait of George Gavan Duffy by Sir John Lavery

President of the High Court

In office
4 May 1946 – 20 June 1951

Nominated by Government of Ireland

Appointed by Seán T. O'Kelly

Preceded by Conor Maguire

Succeeded by Cahir Davitt

Judge of the High Court

In office
2 July 1936 – 20 June 1951

Nominated by Government of Ireland

Appointed by Domhnall Ua Buachalla

Minister for Foreign Affairs

In office
10 January 1922 – 25 July 1922

President Michael Collins

Preceded by Arthur Griffith

Succeeded by Arthur Griffith

Teachta Dála

In office
May 1921 – August 1923

Constituency Dublin County

Member of Parliament

In office
14 December 1918 – 24 May 1921

Preceded by Michael Louis Hearn

Succeeded by Constituency abolished

Constituency South County Dublin

Personal details

Born George Gavan Duffy

21 October 1882
Rock Ferry, Cheshire, England

Died 10 June 1951 (aged 68)

 Dublin, Ireland

Nationality Irish

Political party Cumann na nGaedheal

Margaret Sullivan
Spouse(s)
 

(m. 1908)

Children 2

 Charles Gavan Duffy (father)

Parent(s)

Relatives  Frank Gavan Duffy (half-brother)

 Louise Gavan Duffy (sister)

Education Stonyhurst College

Alma mater University of London

George Gavan Duffy (Irish: Seoirse Gabhán Ó Dubhthaigh; 21 October

1882 – 10 June 1951) was an Irish politician, barrister and judge who
served as President of the High Court from 1946 to 1951, a Judge of
the High Court from 1936 to 1951 and Minister for Foreign Affairs from
January 1922 to July 1922. He served as a Teachta Dála (TD) for
the Dublin County constituency from 1921 to 1923. He served as a Member
of Parliament (MP) for the South County Dublin constituency from 1918 to
1921.[1]

Contents

 1Family
 2Early career
 3Political life
o 3.1Recognition efforts
o 3.2Anglo-Irish Treaty
o 3.3Resignations
 4Barrister and judge
 5Death
 6References
 7External links
Family[edit]
George Gavan Duffy was born at Rose Cottage, Rock Ferry, Cheshire,
England, in 1882, the son of Charles Gavan Duffy and his third wife, Louise
(née Hall).[2] His half-brother Sir Frank Gavan Duffy (1852–1936) was the
fourth Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, sitting on the bench of
the High Court from 1913 to 1935.[2]
His sister Louise Gavan Duffy came to Ireland in 1907, taught in Patrick
Pearse's St Ita's school for girls Scoil Íde, was, with Mary Colum first
Secretary of Cumann na mBan, and was out in the Easter Rising of 1916,
in the GPO and Jacob's garrisons. She founded and ran Scoil Bhríde, a
bilingual school in Dublin, which is still in operation. Louise came originally
to Dublin, as her mother died in 1889. George was raised by three half-
sisters travelling from Austria and Germany, at Guilloy, Nice, France. He
spoke fluent Italian and French received education from Petit Seminaire.
From there he was sent to Stonyhurst College.[2]
He qualified with a solicitor's firm in London in 1907. He married Margaret
Sullivan, on 13 December 1908. They had two children, a son (Colum) and
a daughter (Máire). Colum Duffy was a legal scholar and law librarian at
the Law Society of Ireland.[2]

Early career[edit]
Gavan Duffy qualified as a solicitor and practised in London. He
defended Sir Roger Casement at his trial for high treason after the Easter
Rising. Although the case was unsuccessful and Casement executed, the
trial had an enormous effect on Gavan Duffy and in 1917, when he was
called to the Irish Bar, he came to live in King's Inns, Dublin, where he
became immersed in Irish political life.

Political life[edit]
Recognition efforts[edit]
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During the 1918 Westminster election, he was elected as a Sinn

Féin MP for South County Dublin.[3]
He was sent to Paris to join Seán T. O'Kelly, as an envoy of the newly
declared Irish Republic. Gavan Duffy published articles and pamphlets
urging recognition of Ireland as a sovereign nation at the Paris Peace
Conference, which caused increasing embarrassment to the French
establishment, who believed his publications were damaging Anglo-French
relations.
Gavan Duffy and O'Kelly sought France's help against Britain when the
treaties ending the First World War had not yet been signed; Britain had
been France's main ally for most of the war, in which France had suffered
enormous losses. In January 1919, Irish Republican Army had also started
the Irish War of Independence against Britain, and the
new Dáil had declared independence from the United Kingdom.
Further, the British position was that it was preparing a revised system of
Irish Home Rule which would be effected after the Peace Conference, and
that it had tried to solve the Irish Question at the Irish Convention in 1917,
which Sinn Féin had boycotted. Sinn Féin had joined in the campaign
against conscription in 1918.
In consequence all the Allies of World War I saw the Sinn Féin movement
as more or less hostile. A final letter of June 1919 demanding recognition
and addressed to the French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, the
chairman of the Peace Conference, was not replied to.[4]
Finally, after publishing a letter he had sent to Clemenceau in protest
against the former mistreatment of Terence MacSwiney in prison in 1917,
Gavan Duffy was banished from Paris. He was declared persona non
grata in December 1920. He then went to Rome and from there travelled
through Europe on behalf of the Ministry of the Irish Republic, without
securing its recognition.
Anglo-Irish Treaty[edit]

Duffy together with other members of the negotiation team (including Childers, Griffith, and
Barton) in December 1921

When Éamon de Valera chose his plenipotentiaries to negotiate the Anglo-

Irish Treaty in 1921; Gavan Duffy was chosen due mainly to his legal
expertise. He protested against signing the Treaty but did so reluctantly,
becoming the last person to sign. During the debates which followed in Dáil
Éireann, Gavan Duffy stated that he would recommend the Treaty
reluctantly but sincerely as he saw no alternative for the desired aim of
independence.
I do not love this treaty now any more than I loved it when I signed it, that I
do not think that...is an adequate motive for rejection to point out that some
of us signed the Treaty under duress, not to say that this treaty will not lead
to permanent peace. It is necessary before you reject the Treaty to go
further than that and to produce to the people of Ireland a rational
alternative. My heart is with those who are against the Treaty, but my
reason is against them, because I can see no rational alternative.[5]
Gavan Duffy placed the onus on the people who were responsible for
drafting the Constitution of the Irish Free State to frame it in accordance
with the terms of the Treaty. He disagreed, however, with Griffith's decision
to show the draft constitution to British Prime Minister Lloyd George who
immediately ordered that references to the King had to be inserted as well
as an Oath of Allegiance. Lloyd George threatened to start a war if the Irish
refused to sign; but Gavan Duffy did not believe it.
On 21 December 1921, he gave his main reason for supporting the treaty
in the Dail, the impact of a potentially renewed war on the people,
concluding:
You may gamble on the prospects of a renewal of that horrible war, which I
for one have only seen from afar, but which I know those who have so
nobly withstood do not wish to see begun again without a clear prospect of
getting further than they are to-day. We are told that this is a surrender of
principle. If that be so, we must be asked to believe that every one of those
who have gone before us in previous fights, and who in the end have had
to lay down their arms or surrender to avert a greater evil to the people,
have likewise been guilty of a breach of principle. I do not think an
argument of that kind will get you much further. No! The solid principle, the
solid basis upon which every honest man ought to make up his mind on
this issue, may be summed up in the principle that we all claimed when it
was first enunciated by the President, the principle of government by
the consent of the governed. I say that no serious person here, whatever
his feelings, knowing as he must what the people of this country think of the
matter, will be doing his duty if, under these circumstances, he refuses to
ratify the Treaty. Ratify it with the most dignified protest you can, ratify
because you cannot do otherwise, but ratify it in the interests of the people
you must.
Resignations[edit]
This prompted him to resign but he was compelled to remain in office,
serving as Minister for Foreign Affairs from January 1922 to July 1922. On
the outbreak of the Irish Civil War he resigned when the Provisional
Government refused to effect a court order for habeas corpus in favour
of George Plunkett (a son of Count Plunkett), who was detained without
charge with other republicans.
His tenure in office was cut short by his decision to resign again when
the Executive Council of the Irish Free State abolished the Republican
Courts and executed his good friend Erskine Childers.
He stood in the 1923 general election as an independent candidate but
failed to be re-elected.

Barrister and judge[edit]

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for verification. Please help improve this article by adding
citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be
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Gavan Duffy returned to the Irish Bar and built up a large practice and was
engaged in some notable constitutional cases such as the Land Annuities
controversy in which he claimed that the Irish Free State could not be
bound either in honour or in law to hand over annuities to Britain. He was
appointed Senior Counsel in 1930 and Judge of the High Court in 1936. He
acted as an unofficial legal advisor to Éamon de Valera during the drafting
of the 1937 Constitution of Ireland and was consulted on many issues
pertaining to it. He was also a member of the commission to set up the
second house of the Oireachtas, Seanad Éireann, in 1937. As president of
the High Court he issues the ruling in State (Burke) v. Lennon that was
upheld by the Supreme Court of Ireland.
In 1946, at the height of his legal career, he was appointed President of
the High Court, a position he held for the rest of his life. His most
controversial judgement was in the Tilson Case heard in 1950, one year
before his death, in which he applied the ne temere decree to the letter as
de Valera's 1937 Irish Constitution gave the Roman Catholic Church in
Ireland a "special position".[6] The Supreme Court of Ireland concurred but
Gavan Duffy was criticised in some quarters for his ruling.[7][8] He was a
longstanding member of the Catholic organisation An Ríoghacht.[9]

Death[edit]
George Gavan Duffy died in a nursing home in Leeson Street, Dublin, on
10 June 1951.[2]

References[edit]
1. ^ "George Gavan Duffy". Oireachtas Members
Database. Archived from the original on 8
November 2018. Retrieved 12 February 2012.
 2. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e "Duffy, George
Gavan". Dictionary of Irish Biography. Retrieved 7
January 2022.
3. ^ "George Gavan
Duffy". ElectionsIreland.org. Archived from the
original on 20 October 2011. Retrieved 12
February 2012.
4. ^ See NAI file DFA ES Paris 1919; Official
Memorandum in support of Ireland's demand for
recognition as a sovereign independent state.
Presented to Georges Clemenceau and the
members of the Paris Peace Conference by Sean T.
O'Ceallaigh and George Gavan Duffy.
5. ^ Dáil Debates, 21 December 1921
6. ^ Irish Law Times Report vol.86 (1952) pp. 49–73
7. ^ Finola Kennedy, Family, economy and
government in Ireland; ESRI, Dublin (1989) pp. 70–
71.
8. ^ Donal Barrington, The family and education; The
Irish Monthly, Irish Jesuit Province, 1953.
9. ^ Maurice Curtis, A Challenge to Democracy:
Militant Catholicism in Modern Ireland, The History
Press Ireland, 2010, p. 55

External links[edit]
 Golding, G.M. George Gavan Duffy 1882–
1951: a legal biography (Dublin, 1982)
 Gavan-Duffy's speech on 21 Dec 1921,
pp.86–89
 Letter to Clemenceau demanding
recognition, June 1919
 "Duffy, George Gavan"  . Thom's Irish
Who's Who  . Dublin: Alexander Thom and
Son Ltd. 1923. p. 70   – via Wikisource.

Political offices

Preceded by Minister for Foreign Affairs Succeeded by

Arthur Griffith Jan 1922 – Jul 1922 Arthur Griffith

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Griffith Cabinet (1922)

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 Ministers for Foreign Affairs of Ireland

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Categories: 
 1882 births
 1951 deaths
 Early Sinn Féin TDs
 Ministers for Foreign Affairs (Ireland)
 Members of the Parliament of the United
Kingdom for County Dublin constituencies
(1801–1922)
 UK MPs 1918–1922
 Members of the 1st Dáil
 Members of the 2nd Dáil
 Members of the 3rd Dáil
 20th-century Irish lawyers
 Irish barristers
 Presidents of the High Court (Ireland)
 Alumni of King's Inns
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