O'Higgins, Paul 1927-2008

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born October 5, 1927, in Surrey, England; died March 13, 2008. Legal scholar, educator, and author. O'Higgins was not widely known outside his field or beyond the borders of Ireland and England, where he taught for many years, but his colleagues and students respected him as a popular mentor and a generous collaborator. His specialties were somewhat narrow: Irish legal history and British labor and social security law. Within those specialties he was esteemed for his knowledge and understanding. O'Higgins taught at Christ's College and Peterhouse College, Cambridge, from about 1960 to 1984. In 1984 he was awarded the highly coveted Regius Chair of Laws at Trinity College, Dublin. The honor had been delayed for nearly twenty years because of politics—his own. O'Higgins was academically qualified for the professorship in the 1960s, but his political leanings were considered too far leftward for conservative institutions of higher learning in those days. The victory was short-lived, however, as ill health forced a return to England only three years later. O'Higgins then taught at King's College, London, until his retirement in 1992, and he continued his long fellowship at Christ's College until 1995. O'Higgins wrote or edited several books and compiled a handful of scholarly legal bibliographies. He was the author or coauthor of Workers' Rights (1976), Social Security Law (1979), Cases and Materials on Civil Liberty (1980), and Fairness at Work (1986). Later he was the coeditor of The Common Law Tradition: Essays in Irish Legal History (1990).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Ewing, K.D., C.A. Gearty, and B.A. Hepple, editors, Human Rights and Labour Law: Essays for Paul O'Higgins, Mansell (New York, NY), 1994.

PERIODICALS

Times (London, England), April 4, 2008, p. 71.