Francis Alexander FitzGerald

Francis Alexander FitzGerald (1807-1897) was an Irish barrister and judge, who had a distinguished judicial career. He resigned from the Bench in somewhat unusual circumstance on a point of principle.

He was the third son of Maurice FitzGerald (died 1838), Royal Physician to the British Crown at Madras, and his wife Mary Burton. William FitzGerald, Bishop of Killaloe and Clonfert (1814-1883), was his youngest brother.

He was born on 5 June 1807, in Madras, India; his family moved to Ireland when he was a young boy and settled in County Limerick. He went to a local school and then the University of Dublin where he took his B.A. with a gold medal in 1827. He entered Middle Temple the same year, and was called to the Irish Bar in 1834.

He was widely regarded as a fine common lawyer, but his greatest expertise was in the field of equity: it was said that his arguments were so subtle that no judge could resist them. He was never appointed a Law Officer and seems to have had little interest in politics, although he would occasionally take a brief for the defence in political trials, notably that of William Smith O'Brien in 1848. He took silk in 1849, and was a Bencher of the King's Inns. He was spoken of as a possible Lord Chancellor of Ireland, but was passed over for the office. He became third Baron of the Court of Exchequer (Ireland), and following the reorganisation of the Irish Courts system in 1877, continued to sit as a judge of the Exchequer Division. It was said that he was offered a seat on the new Irish Court of Appeal, but refused, as he believed that judges should not seek promotion.

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