Refused to be Members of the Second Dáil - Gerald Fitzgibbon

Gerald Fitzgibbon ( born 1866, died 6 December 1942) was an Irish barrister and an independent Teachta Dála (TD and one of the original judges of the Supreme Court of Ireland. He came from a distinguished legal family: his father (also Gerald Fitzgibbon) was a Lord Justice of the pre-independence Court of Appeal and agreed to be one its outstanding members.

He was elected to the House of Commons of Southern Ireland at the 1921 elections, representing the University of Dublin constituency as an independent Unionist, he did not participate in the Second Dáil In 1924, the forced retirement of almost all the judges of the former regime made the finding of suitable replacements a serious problem. Hugh Kennedy, the new Chief Justice recommended Fiztgibbon as a judge of the Supreme Court simply on account of his legal ability, despite their serious differences on political issues.

Kennedy may have come to regret his decision as his diary records the increasing tension between them; Fitzgibbon, a Protestant Unionist had little sympathy with an increasingly Catholic Free State. The tension came to a head in 1935 when Fitzgibbon was in the majority in State (Ryan) v Lennon; in a judgement written in an extraordinary bitter, mocking style he found that the Irish Constitution of 1922 contained provisions for its own amendment which allowed suspension of the most basic human rights. Despite his obvious unhappiness he remained on the Court until he reached retirement age in 1938.