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About the author
Bryan McMahon, former judge of the High Court, received his BCL and LLB degrees from University College Dublin before accepting a fellowship to Harvard Law School, where he was awarded the LLM in 1965. Mr Justice McMahon was subsequently Professor of Law and Head of the Department of Law in University College Cork for 20 years. In 1987, he went into private legal practice, while holding a part-time professorship at University College Galway. In 1999 he was appointed to the Bench as a Judge of the Circuit Court and in 2007 to the High Court, from which he retired in April 2011. Mr Justice McMahon has co-authored many legal texts, including Law of Torts, Casebook on Irish Law of Torts, European Community law in Ireland, etc. Mr Justice McMahon has chaired, at the request of the government, The National Crime Forum, the National Archives Advisory Council, and Referendums for the Amendment of the Constitution. He has lectured extensively in Europe and USA on a variety of legal topics. He is currently Chair of the Governing Body of University College Cork, and a former Chairman of the Abbey Theatre, Ireland's national theatre. He was awarded an LL.D (honoris causa) by University College, Dublin in 2012.William Binchy BA BCL LLM (NUI) MA (DUBL) FTCD (1995), Barrister-at-Law.
William Binchy is a practising barrister. He was Regius Professor of Laws at Trinity College, Dublin from 1992 to 2012 and continues to lecture on its Master of Laws Degree programme. He was formerly a special legal adviser on family law reform to the Irish Department of Justice and Research Counsellor to the Law Reform Commission. He was a Commissioner with the Irish Human Rights Commission for two terms, from 2000 to 2011.
He was Visiting Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (Michaelmas Term 2002) and Visiting Fellow at the Institute of European and Comparative Law, Oxford (June 2011). He has authored, co-authored and co-edited books on private international law, torts and family law, and acts as expert witness in private international law in litigation throughout Europe.
He has represented Ireland at the Hague Conference on Private International Law on the themes of marriage and inter-country adoption and the Irish Human Rights Commission at the United Nations during the formulation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. He was a member of the Hederman Committee on the Offences Against the State Acts.
He has acted as consultant to the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs in relation to the Timor-Leste judicial system and is editor of a book on comparative aspects of the Timorese legal system. He has organised an annual workshop at Trinity College Dublin for African Chief Justices and senior judiciary and has co-edited books on comparative aspects of the legal systems of South Africa, Tanzania and Botswana.
