John Naish, PC (Ire), QC (15 August 1841 – 17 August 1890) was an Irish lawyer and judge, who held a number of senior offices, including

Lord Chancellor of Ireland The Lord High Chancellor of Ireland (commonly known as Lord Chancellor of Ireland) was the highest judicial office in Ireland until the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. From 1721 to 1801, it was also the highest political office of ...

Early life

Born in Limerick on 15 August 1841, son of Carroll Naish of Ballycullen and his second wife Anne Margaret Carroll or O'Carroll, Naish was educated at Clongowes Wood School and Trinity College Dublin. He was an outstanding student, gaining numerous distinctions in mathematics, physics and natural science, as well as law. He got his BA in mathematics in 1862.

Early career

He was called to the Irish Bar in 1865, and practised on the

Munster Munster ( gle, an Mhumhain or ) is one of the provinces of Ireland, in the south of Ireland. In early Ireland, the Kingdom of Munster was one of the kingdoms of Gaelic Ireland ruled by a "king of over-kings" ( ga, rí ruirech). Following the ...

Circuit, becoming a QC in 1880. His reputation as a barrister was mixed: he was considered too nervous and retiring to be a good advocate, and disliked the rough-and-tumble of Court practice but hard work and academic brilliance compensated for this. He appeared in the celebrated

libel Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...

action brought by Canon O'Keeffe against

Cardinal Cullen Paul Cardinal Cullen (29 April 1803 – 24 October 1878) was Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin and previously of Armagh, and the first Irish cardinal. His Ultramontanism spearheaded the Romanisation of the Catholic Church in Ireland and ...

(who had placed the Canon under an interdict) and co-wrote with the future Mr. Justice Edmund Bewley an influential textbook on the Common Law Procedure Acts.

Law officer

He became Law Adviser to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (a deputy to the two senior law officers) in 1880. The office had become a very onerous one and was criticised for its excessively political nature since one of the Law Adviser's responsibilities was to advise magistrates on how to deal with proceedings with a political element. Naish is credited with having advised that magistrates in dealing with the Irish National Land League should rely on a fourteenth-century statute, the Justices of the Peace Act 1361, to imprison those who could not find

sureties In finance, a surety , surety bond or guaranty involves a promise by one party to assume responsibility for the debt obligation of a borrower if that borrower defaults. Usually, a surety bond or surety is a promise by a surety or guarantor to pay ...

for their good behaviour. This was a misinterpretation of the statute, which was clearly aimed only at cases of

riot A riot is a form of civil disorder commonly characterized by a group lashing out in a violent public disturbance against authority, property, or people. Riots typically involve destruction of property, public or private. The property targete ...

. These concerns about his obviously political conduct may explain why the office of Law Adviser was left vacant after his promotion to higher office.

Judge

He was Solicitor-General for Ireland from January 1883 and Attorney-General for Ireland from December 1883. He stood for the House of Commons at Mallow as the Government candidate in 1883, but in the fraught political atmosphere which followed the Phoenix Park murders, he was crushingly defeated by William O'Brien. He was appointed to the

Privy Council of Ireland His or Her Majesty's Privy Council in Ireland, commonly called the Privy Council of Ireland, Irish Privy Council, or in earlier centuries the Irish Council, was the institution within the Dublin Castle administration which exercised formal executi ...

in 1885 and served as

from May to July 1885 and again from February to June 1886; he was a Lord Justice of the Irish Court of Appeal 1885-6 and 1886–90.

Death and family

Naish's health failed when he was still in his late forties: he travelled to the Continent in hope of a cure, but died at the German

spa A spa is a location where mineral-rich spring water (and sometimes seawater) is used to give medicinal baths. Spa towns or spa resorts (including hot springs resorts) typically offer various health treatments, which are also known as balneothe ...

town of Bad Ems on 17 August 1890, two days after his forty-ninth birthday, and was buried there. His memorial can still be seen. He married Maud Dease of

County Westmeath "Noble above nobility" , image_map = Island of Ireland location map Westmeath.svg , subdivision_type = Sovereign state, Country , subdivision_name = Republic of Ireland, Ireland , subdivision_type1 = Provinces o ...

and they had three children.

J. Carrol Naish Joseph Patrick Carrol Naish (January 21, 1896 – January 24, 1973) was an American actor. He appeared in over 200 credits during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Naish received two Oscar nominations for his supporting roles in the films '' Sahara ...

, the

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood, ...

actor, was his great nephew, the grandson of his elder half-brother Carroll Naish.

Reputation

Delaney, in his biography of Christopher Palles, calls Naish an outstanding judge, even in an age when the Irish judiciary included such eminent figures as Christopher Palles himself,

Gerald FitzGibbon Gerald Fitzgibbon (8 October 1866 – 6 December 1942) was an Irish judge who served as a Judge of the Supreme Court from 1924 to 1938. He also served as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin University constituency from 1921 to 1923. Family Fit ...

, and Hugh Holmes. Elrington Ball, on the other hand, thought him a poor choice as Lord Chancellor: in Ball's view, Naish was a good academic lawyer but an unsuccessful barrister and a failure as a politician. As a Roman Catholic, however, he was an acceptable choice of Chancellor to Nationalists.Ball, F. Elrington ''The Judges in Ireland 1221-1921'' John Murray London 1926 Vol. ii p.313. The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' praises him as a brilliant academic, and while accepting that he had his faults as a barrister, agrees with Delaney that he was a great judge, perhaps the most eminent Irish judge of his time.

References

*''Concise Dictionary of National Biography''. {{DEFAULTSORT:Naish, John 1841 births 1890 deaths Solicitors-General for Ireland Attorneys-General for Ireland Lord chancellors of Ireland Members of the Privy Council of Ireland Irish Queen's Counsel