The Legal Writing of Professor V. T. H. Delany
![handle is hein.journals/nilq15 and id is 482 raw text is: 470 NORTHERN IRELAND LEGAL QUARTERLY
THE LEGAL WRITING OF PROFESSOR V. T. H. DELANY
The death of any legal author is a shock to his readers. The
knowledge that no further works will appear over a familiar name
is at first difficult to assimilate, and then regrettable to accept. When
the author has been specially prolific, writing on a wide range of
legal topics, the loss is felt all the more keenly. And in the field of
Irish law, where more writing is needed but opportunities for public-
ation are not so frequent as they are in some other jurisdictions, the
death of such an author is an even greater loss. So, when Dr.
Vincent Delany, then Regius Professor of Laws in the University of
Dublin, died on 17th January 1964, the Irish legal world was deprived
of one who, in addition to his many other activities, had contributed
to Irish legal writing in many ways. Had he lived, there was un-
doubtedly much more which he would have contributed to legal
publications in Ireland and elsewhere. As it is, he left behind a sub-
stantial quantity of legal writing, the product of intense activity in
a dozen or so years and of a wide-ranging interest in many fields of
law. Others have written of Dr. Delany's academic achievements,
of his work as a law teacher, of his personal qualities and his varied
interests., The purpose of this paper is to mention some of his
numerous legal works, and thereby to show something of the contri-
bution made to the exposition of Irish law by an academic author
(but one with very practical interests) writing in the middle of the
twentieth century. There is a certain appropriateness in the fact that
this tribute appears in the pages of the newly revived Northern Ireland
Legal Quarterly. Most of Dr. Delany's law teaching was done in
Belfast, where he was successively lecturer and reader in the Faculty
of Law at Queen's University for over nine years before he returned
to Trinity College, Dublin, first to the Chair of Laws and then to the
Regius Chair. Moreover, he had contributed to this journal in its
previous incarnation.2 But his writing spanned both Irish juris-
See Saracen in the Irish Times, 20th January 1964; R.F.V.H. [euston],
The Times, 23rd January 1964; (1964) 98 Irish Law Times and Solicitor's
Journal 66; F.H.N. [ewark], (1964) 2 Justice (Dublin) 1; J. R. Coghlan,
(1962-3) 28-29 Irish Jurist 39. See also (1964) 2 Irish Yachting 25. For an
example of a learned article by Dr. Delany in another field, see The Develop-
ment of the River Shannon Navigation (1958) 3 Journal of Transport History
185.
2 See (1952) 9 N.I.L.Q. 206; (1953) 10 N.J.L.Q. 135; (1955) 11 N.I.L.Q. 216;
(1957) 12 N.I.L.Q. 92; (1959) 13 N.I.L.Q. 137; (1960) 13 N.I.L.Q. 316;
(1961) 14 N.I.L.Q. 540. These articles are referred to in later sections of this
paper.
[Vol. 15, No. 4](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/nilq15&div=61&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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The Legal Writing of Professor V. T. H. Delany
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