Peter O'Brien, 1st Baron O'Brien

Background and education

O'Brien was born at Carnelly House, Clarecastle, County Clare the fifth son of John O'Brien, Liberal Member of Parliament for Limerick, and his wife Ellen Murphy, daughter of Jeremiah Murphy of Hyde Park, County Cork. He was a nephew of Mr. Justice James O'Brien of the Court of King's Bench (Ireland). He was educated at Clongowes Wood College and Trinity College, Dublin and was called to the Irish Bar in 1865.

Legal and judicial career

O'Brien joined the Munster circuit and built up a successful practice, and in 1880 became a Queen's Counsel. The following year he was appointed Junior Crown Counsel at Green Street, Dublin, becoming Senior in 1882, and was made a bencher of the King's Inns in 1884. He was one of the principal prosecutors in the Phoenix Park murders, and it is said that his life was threatened as a result. He unsuccessfully stood for the House of Commons as the Liberal candidate for County Clare in 1879: his defeat is said to have been due to his opposition to Irish Home Rule. In 1887 O'Brien was appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland, becoming Attorney-General for Ireland and an Irish Privy Counsellor the following year. He was finally appointed Lord Chief Justice of Ireland in 1889, holding the office for twenty-four years.

As Attorney General he was considered to be a highly efficient civil servant; even Arthur Balfour, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, who thought poorly of most of the Irish Law Officers with whom he worked, praised O'Brien for his hard work. He showed great skill in "packing" juries in politically sensitive cases with jurors who could be trusted to convict, thus earning the nickname "Peter the Packer" which stuck to him all his life. Maurice Healy attributed his success with juries to "his uncommon knowledge of the minds of his countrymen". As a judge, Healy adds, O'Brien could nearly always see the truth, but due to the laziness which was his main fault as a judge, he did not always manage to convey the truth to the jury.

Opinions on his judicial ability vary: A. M. Sullivan wrote that as a pupil of the great Chief Baron Christopher Palles he must have learned the principles of common law but was too lazy to apply them. Palles himself is said to have remarked of one of O'Brien's judgments "you never learned that law from me!" However his judgement in R. (Bridgeman) v. Drury [1894] 2 I.R. 489 where he refused to allow the members of Dublin Corporation to charge the ratepayers of Dublin for a particularly lavish picnic, is still often quoted both for its legal principle and its remarkable wit and sense of humour. His judgment in Ussher v Ussher (1912), on whether a marriage conducted according to the Roman Catholic rite can be valid if there is only one witness to it, has also been praised as "careful and erudite."

He was created a Baronet, of Merrion Square in the County of the City of Dublin, on 28 September 1891, and was ennobled as Baron O'Brien, of Kilfenora in the County of Clare, in 1900.

Personal life

Lord O'Brien married Annie Clarke, daughter of Robert Hare Clarke of Bansha Castle, County Tipperary and his second wife Anne Butler, in 1867 and had three children: James, who died young, Ellen (who died in 1930) and Anne Georgina. His only son having predeceased him, he died without male heirs at Airfield, Stillorgan, County Dublin on 7 September 1914, his barony and baronetcy thus becoming extinct.

His daughter Annie Georgina published an affectionate memoir of her father a few years after his death. His main personal foibles were his refusal to wear the judicial wig, and a lisp so pronounced that it often made his remarks from the Bench difficult to follow.

Maurice Healy in his own memoir The Old Munster Circuit described O'Brien as a man of considerable legal ability and great natural kindness, who was deservedly very popular; on the other hand he was rather vain and self-important, and inclined to stand on the dignity of his office.