Hubert Cecil Wine

Hubert C. Wine (3 April 1922 - 15 November 2011) was a solicitor, District Court judge and prominent member of the Irish Jewish community who served as the chairman of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland for fourteen years.

He was educated at the Dublin Talmud Torah and Trinity College, Dublin, and was called to the bar. His family were antique dealers in Dublin. In his younger days he was an international table-tennis player, and won Irish singles and doubles championships. He worked alongside the future Labour party TD and government minister Mervyn Taylor with Herman Good Solicitors.

In 1976 he was appointed a District Judge in Dublin, he retired from the bench in 1992. In 1989 in the Dun Laoghaire District Court, he highlighted the situation caused by cutbacks whereby the health board was not providing suitable detention facilities for juvenile offenders by refusing to send a 13-year-old girl to detention in an adult facility.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Wine

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/obituaries/2011/1126/1224308175...

http://www.ajr.org.uk/journalpdf/1976_september.pdf

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/old-cutbacks-take-a-long...

Although there was a considerable legal tradition in his community, which included well-known lawyers like Herman Good (appointed a judge in 1966) and later Mervyn Taylor and Alan Shatter, Wine's father, Louis, was implacably opposed to his career path, wanting him instead to take over his own Grafton Street antiques business.

Born in 1922, Hubert Wine grew up in Rathmines in Dublin and attended the nearby Sandford Park school. He was inspired to follow a legal career after hearing radio reports of the trial of Bruno Hauptmann for the kidnapping of the Lindberg baby.

Apprenticed to the firm of Herman Good & Company at the age of 16, he was national table tennis champion of Ireland in 1945 while pursuing his legal studies at Trinity College. It is said that his father reluctantly attended his graduation and only much later congratulated him on his achievements.

In reality Hubert Wine was a very successful lawyer in a legal practice with a large working-class clientele and when his father retired from the antiques business he also took over the running of the firm, making him a very wealthy man.

Appointed a Judge of the District Court in 1976 by the coalition government of Liam Cosgrave, he sat in Chancery Street in central Dublin for a number of years. In his first year on the bench he sentenced a man to 14 days in jail for membership of an illegal organisation, the IRA. He was later attacked in his office by an associate of the man, who hurled himself through a glass door to get at him and the judge required surgery for an eye injury.

However, Judge Wine refused Garda protection and turned up in court the following day wearing an eye patch.

He served for most of his career as a judge in Dun Laoghaire court, hearing the diverse cases that came before him with humour and compassion. He was always reluctant to send people to jail, but did so when circumstances required.

He became increasingly concerned about teenagers who were committing multiple offences, but were being left free to roam the streets because the State had made no provision for juvenile offenders. The most celebrated case was a request from the Director of Public Prosecutions to withdraw charges against a homeless 15-year-old, which the judge refused to grant because he wanted to highlight the failure of successive governments on the issue.