Remarks of The Hon. Mrs Justice Susan Denham

• Date: 01 January 2018

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Remarks by

THE HON. MRS JUSTICE SUSAN DENHAM*

Colleagues and friends, thank you for those kind words and for the Hibernian Law

Medal. I am honoured. It is a great pleasure to be here this evening, thank you for

the invitation. It is a particular pleasure to be in the company of my longstanding

friends, Chief Justice McLachlin and Lord Neuberger, of whom I have the greatest

admiration and who led the judiciary in their countries in an exemplary fashion.

It has been suggested that we make some reections on our judicial experiences.

When I reect on the years that I was at the Bar and on the Bench, there were very

signicant changes in my time.

College Zeitgeist

I was part of the generation that was an undergraduate in college in the 1960s.

While, I guess, we all consider our time in college to be special, the 60s had a special

electricity in the atmosphere. ere was a sense that we were the new generation

– the baby boomers – and that we were going to make great changes. ere was

a zeitgeist in the air on the campuses in Europe and the USA. e old order was

gone. We believed we could change the world, for the better. In the USA, students

were making their views known by activism, in demonstrations, and sit-ins, on

segregation and the Vietnam War. In France, students were at the barricades.

A-Changin’

e situation was explained by Bob Dylan in his song ‘e Times they are

A-Changin’’. One of the ve verses states:

Come Senators, Congressmen

Please heed the call

Don’t stand in the doorway

Don’t block up the hall

For he that gets hurt

Will be he who has stalled

ere’s a battle outside

And its ragin’!

It’ll soon shake your windows

And rattle your walls

For the times they are a changin’.

* e Hon. Mrs Justice Susan Denham is former Chief Justice of Ireland, having retired in July 2017.