Judge who became an unexpected feminist icon on the bench

Miss Justice Mella Carroll: Miss Justice Mella Carroll, who died last Sunday, was a leading jurist who became an unlikely feminist…

Miss Justice Mella Carroll: Miss Justice Mella Carroll, who died last Sunday, was a leading jurist who became an unlikely feminist legal icon.

She was the second woman to become a senior counsel, the first to be elected chairman of the Bar Council and the first to be appointed as a High Court judge.

Although not associated with women's causes as a barrister, she was seen as a role model for women in the legal world, and she became a champion of women's rights through her role as chairwoman of the Second Commission on the Status of Women, one of her many public service roles outside her legal career.

It was this role, too, that brought her into public controversy, with her impartiality questioned by the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (Spuc) when she presided over their case against the Well Woman Clinic for providing information on abortion.

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She was born one of four children to Patrick and Agnes Carroll on March 6th, 1934, in Dublin. Her father was Garda commissioner and a barrister, though he did not practise at the Bar.

She attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Lower Leeson Street, UCD, where she did a BA in French and German, and the King's Inns, where she held the John Brooke Scholarship in 1957.

In UCD she was secretary of the Law Society, where, according to a fellow-member at the time who later followed her on to the bench, she used to write the minutes in verse.

She was called to the Bar in 1957 and became an SC in 1976. When she was appointed to the High Court in 1980 she had no known party political affiliations.

While at that time appointing a woman to the High Court was undoubtedly overdue, her appointment was not seen as a gesture towards promoting women, but as choosing the barrister with the background and qualifications for the job at the time.

After some years on the bench she asked that she not be addressed as "My Lord", or "Your Lordship", but simply as "judge", or "the court". At her retirement ceremony she joked that she wanted this rule etched on her heart when she died.

Asked to describe her, barristers repeatedly said she was "strong-minded and independent". She was seen as a good lawyer, though not constitutionally innovative. "Very pleasant to appear before, very careful and a stickler for detail", said one barrister. "In court she was quite a stern judge, though on a personal level she was not like that at all," said a senior counsel.

"She would have been considered quite a conservative judge, but in the area of equality she was very forward-looking," said a barrister who appeared before her in the 1980s. "In the Aer Lingus air hostess equal pay case she was prepared to give the Equality Act quite a wide interpretation. Unfortunately the Supreme Court did not agree."

She was appointed chairwoman of the Second Commission on the Status of Women in 1992, and, as well as being one of the high points of her public service career, this indirectly gave rise to one of the most controversial episodes in her legal career.

It was the year when abortion was much in the news, as in February the president of the High Court granted an injunction preventing a 14-year-old girl from going to England for an abortion, following a rape.

This decision was overturned by the Supreme Court, which ruled that a woman could travel abroad for an abortion if her life was in danger.

The question of whether the constitutional protection of the right to life of the unborn could suppress the right of freedom of travel was much discussed.

It also emerged that the government had negotiated a protocol to the Maastricht Treaty, due for referendum that year, copperfastening the abortion amendment in the context of European law.

The Commission on the Status of Women wrote to the Taoiseach seeking clarification of the Maastricht protocol, and arguing in favour of women's rights to information and travel, which were voted into the Constitution later that year.

In 1994 Spuc took a case against the Well Woman Clinic for providing abortion information. It fell to Miss Justice Carroll to hear the case, and Spuc demanded she disqualify herself on the basis that her letter on behalf of the Commission on the Status of Women showed bias in the matter being heard.

She refused to withdraw, stating that she had made a declaration in the presence of Almighty God that she would execute her office without fear or favour, and had always done so to the best of her ability.

Her ruling was appealed to the Supreme Court, which found in favour of Spuc, on the basis, not that there was any bias, but that there should be no apprehension of bias.

Almost a decade later she was faced by a new challenge in her treatment of the rights of the press during the trial of Catherine Nevin for the murder of her husband. She ruled that "colour" writing on the trial, describing the clothes and demeanour of the accused, would not be permitted, while not restricting coverage of the trial itself.

From 1991 on her name regularly came up in speculation about the Supreme Court, but it became clear that she had no wish to serve on the highest court in the State, preferring her independent role on the High Court.

She chaired or was a member of various public bodies, including the first Legal Aid Board, the Commission on Nursing and the Commission of Charitable Donations and Bequest. In recent years Miss Justice Carroll was awarded doctorates in law from the University of Ulster and the NUI, she was a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons since 2002, and was a very active chancellor of Dublin City University until earlier this year, when her health deteriorated.

She was involved in a number of charitable bodies, including St Francis Hospice, Raheny, and the Des Places Education Association, which took over the running of schools previously run by the Holy Ghost order.

She was president of the International Association of Women Judges from 2000 to 2002.

Unmarried, she was very close to her family and had a rich social life with them and a number of close friends. She was described as gregarious and full of fun, "a great person to go out on circuit with", according to a judicial colleague. She was widely travelled, including to India and China, and travel and opera were her passions.

She is survived by her brothers, Milo and Paddy, her sister Una (McCann), brother and sister-in-law and nine nephews and nieces.

Mella Carroll: born March 6th, 1934; died January 15th, 2006