Some senior barristers have expressed private misgivings about a High Court decision to allow a former judge of the court, Barry White (71), to return to working as a lawyer.
Mr White (71), a father of four, argued he needed to work because his €78,000 annual pension was not “adequate” for his family’s needs.
Mr Justice Max Barrett ruled in the High Court yesterday that the Minister for Justice had breached Mr White's constitutional rights to work and earn a livelihood by refusing last year to include him on the panel of counsel for criminal defence work.
The Minister erred in law in deciding that Mr White must be regulated by the Bar Council before he could return to his specialised line of practice before the Circuit Court and beyond, the judge said.
One barrister commented afterwards that “the independent nature of the judiciary requires a divide between those who practise and those who decide.”
Moving from the bench back to practising as a barrister was “not like being transferred from Liverpool to Tottenham Hotspur,” he said.
Another said that while he did not think “the walls are going to come crumbling down”, he nevertheless felt uncomfortable about judges coming back into practice, given the size of the country.
“If you have spent years being told by them what to do, their being an authority figure, and the bowing and scraping that goes on . . . It’s like the school principal is now sitting next to you in class.”
Some barristers felt the decision damaged the perceived independence of the judiciary and said they would feel very uncomfortable practising alongside the former judge.
Competitive advantage
Others worried that his former status might give him a competitive advantage when it came to securing work.
“I personally believe there is a problem with judges coming back to practice like this,” said one barrister, who did not want to be named.
However, another Law Library source said he thought there would have to be a very good argument for saying someone should not be allowed to work.
Another barrister said it was a "scandal" that Ireland does not have a judicial council that would look after matters such as training for judges, dealing with complaints against them and overseeing rules for judges who wished to return to practice.
In other common law jurisdictions, there were “cooling off periods” of varying numbers of years for judges who wished to return to practising in courts equal to, or lower, than those in which they had presided.
