| In Ireland, the service is held in the two parish churches of the Four Courts: one is Catholic, one is Protestant and both are called St Michan's.
I love the tradition, not least for that back-to-school feel as well as the sheer pageantry of it all with the incense, judges in their morning suits and top hats and refreshments at King's Inns. I also love its solemnity, as the Holy Ghost is asked to bestow wisdom, morality and judgment upon the shoulders of the legal profession.
For all its ceremony, the Red Mass is a grave, necessary reminder of the awesome powers and responsibilities of all those who dispense justice, including judges, lawyers, government and gardai.
It also gives an opportunity to reflect on what has gone before and what lies ahead.
By any stretch of the imagination, the 2014/2015 legal year is truly historic. It is the year that will see the establishment, finally, of the Court of Appeal.
That court will act as a filter and, if all goes to plan, relieve the Supreme Court of its hitherto kitchen sink status. It should leave the Supreme Court, currently nursing backlogs of four years for appeals, to deal only with cases of exceptional public and constitutional importance.
The new Court of Appeal, which required 10 judicial appointments in all, has decimated the High Court of some of its most experienced judges.
Standard attrition factors such as death, retirement (recent and pending) and promotion, have led to extraordinary changes in our judicial landscape.
But the new Court of Appeal is, as Chief Justice Susan Denham said yesterday, the most important development in the structure of the courts since the foundation of the State. It has also led to the biggest shake-up in the composition of our judiciary since the foundation of the State.
Forget the Seanad: these are appointments that will shape Irish society for generations to come. These are unelected people who, individually or collectively, may have the final say on some of the most profound, pressing socio-economic issues in our lifetimes.
The numbers speak for themselves: since 2010, there have been 62 judicial appointments. Of that 62, 53 judges have been appointed since 2011 when Fine Gael and Labour swept into power on the back of its now rather grubby promise of a "democratic revolution". The "revolution" included the establishment of a Judicial Council. An independent, transparent body that would oversee issues such as judicial appointments, conduct, complaints by members of the public - as well as judicial pay and pensions - the idea of a Judicial Council has been bandied about for more than 20 years. There's still no sign of it.
To counteract claims of cronyism, we were also promised reform of the judicial appointments process.
Today, eight judges will be nominated to the High Court: eight judges in one single day.
Yes, the appointments are structurally necessary, not least because Ireland boasts the lowest number of judges per capita in 47 European countries and because of the demands of the new court. But the most radical shake up of the third branch of government has taken place without any reform of the widely-criticised and deeply political judicial appointments process.
Judges themselves have made an impassioned plea for political allegiance to have no bearing on appointments to judicial office. Judge Denham previously remarked that the relative success of the administration of justice in Ireland has been "achieved in spite of, rather than because of" the appointment system. And just last month Supreme Court judge John MacMenamin warned generally of the risk of judges becoming "politicised".
The Coalition, which in my view did a spectacular job of denigrating judicial office - so much so that a number of high-calibre lawyers are known to have spurned the bench - has come over all Augustinian on judicial appointments.
It says it wants to depoliticise judicial appointments process, but not just yet. It all smacks of a cynical, missed opportunity.
We are blessed, for the most part, with a judiciary whose independence is fiercely protected, internationally recognised and one that protects the citizen against the excesses of the State.
It is a shame that such a landmark task of reshaping the bench was conducted under such out of touch, old school and out of favour political rules. |