Kevin Dixon

Who is Kevin Dixon?

Kevin Dixon was an Irish barrister and judge.

He was born in Dublin and educated at Belvedere and University College Dublin. He was called to the Bar in 1926 and became a Senior Counsel in 1940. He served as Attorney General from 1942 to 1946 when he was appointed a judge of the High Court where he served until his death in 1959.

He was generally considered the best Irish Chancery judge of his time with a particular knowledge of trade union law and the law of charitable bequests. Despite the inevitably dry subject matter of many of his judgements, some of them display a considerable sense of humour. He was the High Court judge in the celebrated Constitutional test case O'Byrne v Minister for Finance on the interpretation of the guarantee that a judge's salary shall not be reduced, a subject which remains controversial today. Dixon's ruling that notwithstanding the guarantee judges are liable to pay income tax was upheld by a majority of the Supreme Court. It was generally agreed that only his premature death prevented his promotion to the Supreme Court.