William Huston Dodd

William Huston Dodd (1844-17 March 1930) was an Irish politician, barrister and judge. He held the Crown office of Irish Serjeant at law, sat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom as member for North Tyrone, and served as a judge of the High Court of Justice in Ireland from 1907-24. There is a sympathetic sketch of him in The Old Munster Circuit by Maurice Healy.

He was born in Rathfriland, County Down, the only son of Robert Dodd. He was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and Queen's University, Belfast where he took his bachelor's degree and then a master's degree. He entered the Middle Temple in 1871 and was called to the Irish Bar in 1873, becoming Queen's Counsel in 1884. In 1878 he married Ellen Hunter, daughter of Samuel Hunter of Coleraine, who died in 1916; they had no children. He was a long-standing member of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, and served as its President 1894-1896.

Dodd was throughout his life a loyal member of the Liberal Party, and this damaged his political career, as the Liberals were in opposition during the years when he might have expected to be appointed to the Bench, although he did become Third Serjeant-at-law, which was a Crown office, in 1892. He stood for Parliament, unsuccessfully, in North Antrim in 1892 and South Londonderry in 1895. In 1906 he reached the House of Commons at last, and was made a High Court judge the following year. According to Maurice Healy, his failure to reach the Bench until he was over sixty caused a good deal of friction with his colleagues, since he had a high opinion of his own legal ability, and was unwilling to defer to the judgments of men who were considerably younger than himself.

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