SPEECH BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY ROBINSON, ON RECEIPT OF DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF LAWS
RECEIPT OF DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF LAWS (HONORIS CAUSA) FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE ON 2 NOVEMBER, 1992
I am greatly honoured that the Council of the University of Melbourne has chosen to mark my State Visit to Australia by conferring on me the degree of Doctor of Laws.
I also deeply appreciate the kind and generous words and sentiments expressed by the President of the Academic Council, Professor Ferguson, in the citation. I would suggest, however, that in conferring this degree on me today, your honour not so much me personally as the Office which it is my privilege to hold and in honouring that Office you honour Ireland and its people.
I thank you for this generous gesture which is recognition and a celebration of the strong and important links that have for so long existed between our two nations. The conferral of an honorary degree is recognition that we have shared values and ideas despite the tyranny of distance and differences of dialect and nationality. Indeed during my time in Melbourne I have been greatly impressed by the immense contribution of the Irish to the State of Victoria, as indeed I am by the vital role which the Irish played in the life of this great University.
The Irish contribution to life in Victoria is especially marked in the fields of law and education, two vital areas which together are central to the development and maintenance of an equitable and ordered society, with which all citizens can readily identify, to which all can give allegiance and in which all can participate fully and freely.
As Professor Ferguson has already remarked, Irishmen played a decisive role in founding Melbourne University and in guiding it through its formative years. The University of Dublin, or Trinity College as it is more commonly known, was central to this process, and I was delighted to hear that the 400th anniversary of that College was celebrated here in April of this year. It was at that famous institute of learning that I myself received my third level training in the field of law and that I taught law for many years. In a certain sense you are forging another symbolic link in the past when you honour me with this degree today.
The founder and first Chancellor in 1853 of the University of Melbourne was Redmond Barry, from Co. Cork, a Trinity man. His successor, William Foster Stawell, was a friend, also from Co. Cork and also a Trinity man. The fourth Chancellor, William Edward Hearn, one of four original Professors at the University, was a Trinity man from Cavan. The breadth of Hearn's talents can be gathered from the fact that he left his post as Professor of Greek in Galway to assume the Chair of Modern History and Literature, Political Economy and Logic here in Melbourne, and later surrendered this professorship and was appointed founding Dean of the faculty of law in 1873.
All three were legal men who contributed not only to the University but to the legal and judicial systems evolving in Victoria at that time. Indeed in the 80 years or so from 1855, the Irish influence on law in Victoria was so strong that every Chief Justice was Irish-born, the tradition continuing in an unbroken line from Stawell to Madden, Higgenbotham and Irvine, until the latter's retirement.
John Madden, who was born in Cork, was one of the first four law graduates of this University in 1865. He was also the first recipient of the degree of Doctor of Laws in Australia. This degree was conferred on him by this very University of which he later became Chancellor. Today we might say that the first and latest on whom that degree has been conferred by this University were Irish. I am mindful not to emulate John Madden in all things as he once gave a judgement in the Supreme Court lasting eight hours.
We in Ireland are unashamedly proud of the contribution which our fellow countrymen have made to the University of Melbourne and to the legal profession in this State. I feel particularly honoured in that context that the Council of this University should have chosen to confer on me the degree of Doctor of Laws. In so honouring me, you honour Ireland. I thank you most sincerely.