Thomas Molony

Sir Thomas Francis Molony, 1st Baronet, PC(Ire), QC (1865–1949) was the last Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. He was also the only Judge to hold the position of Lord Chief Justice of Southern Ireland although he did not hold that position under that title.

Molony qualified as a barrister in 1887 and became a Queen's Counsel in 1899. He served as Solicitor-General for Ireland (24 June 1912 to 10 April 1913) when he was appointed Attorney General for Ireland (10 April 1913 to 20 June 1913). Later in 1913, Molony was made a judge of the High Court for Ireland and from 1915 sat as a judge of the Court of Appeal for Ireland. He was also appointed to several governmental inquiries, notably one on certain shootings including that of Francis Sheehy-Skeffington in the wake of the 1916 Irish Easter Rising.

In terms of his own politics, Molony has been described as “a Home Ruler of the old stamp". He was opposed to the partition of Ireland. When the Government of Ireland Act was being drafted he declined an invitation to travel to London to advise on proposals relating to the creation of a separate judiciary for what was to be Northern Ireland. In correspondence with government officials, he expressed his particular disappointment that unlike previous Home Rule Bills, it was now proposed that the Irish judiciary would be divided. He opined that this would impose unnecessary expense, lead to duplication of administrative expenses and that the proposals were “detrimental to the dignity and authority of the Bench...and would tend to...prolong the separation of the two parts of Ireland, which it is hoped ultimately to re-unite".

Molony was appointed the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland in 1918 under Letters Patent from the King under the Great Seal of Ireland. At the time of his appointment, this was the second highest judicial posting in Ireland, second only to that of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland. However, Molony's position was shortly to be under attack. In 1920 the British Government began drafting Home Rule legislation which ultimately led later that year to the Government of Ireland Act. The draft legislation proposed that the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland would become the Lord Chief Justice of Southern Ireland. Molony “expressed disquiet at the apparent proposal to lessen the dignity and prerogatives of his own office". He sought the retention of the title of Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, at the very least for as long as he still held that post personally. In a letter to the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Molony sought an amendment to the legislation to insert a clause to provide that "nothing in the legislation shall affect the rank, title or precedence of the existing Lord Chief Justice of Ireland" (i.e. Molony). The Chief Secretary responded to the effect that it would be anomalous for there to be a Lord Chief Justice of Ireland and a Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland. Molony countered this by pointing to one such anomaly that was universally accepted:

...
Wikipedia