Michael Smith

Sir Michael Smith, 1st Baronet (1740–1808) was an Irish judge. He was the founder of a judicial dynasty, several of whose members were noted for eccentricity. He was also the first of the Cusack-Smith baronets of Tuam.

Background and early career He was born at Newtown, County Offaly, the son of William Smith (died 1747) and his wife Hester Lynch of Galway. The Smith family had come to Ireland from Yorkshire in the seventeenth century, and acquired substantial property in the Midlands. Michael revered the memory of his father, who died when his son was only seven, and later composed a eulogy which was inscribed on his father's tombstone.

Reputation

According to Elrington Ball, he was noted for learning and eloquence; in contrast to his son and grandson, who were both notably hot-tempered, he was invariably calm and self-controlled. His speeches were invariably well-reasoned, though critics complained that his delivery of them was stiff and monotonous. Daniel O'Connell, then a rising young barrister, who thought poorly of Irish judges in general, complained of Smith's inefficiency, yet praised him as "a gentleman and a scholar, polite, patient and attentive".

While his first marriage to a Roman Catholic suggests that he was personally tolerant of the practice of Catholicism, and he was in favour of Catholic Emancipation, one of his best-known judgments, Butler v. Moore, held that a priest has no legal privilege to withhold evidence of what was said under the seal of the confessional. This decision was overruled in the twentieth century.

Arms