ROBINSON, MARY

born May 21, 1944, Ballina, County Mayo, Ire. ne Mary Teresa Winifred Bourke president of Ireland (Uachtarn na hireann) from 1990 to 1997. Robinson was educated at Trinity College and King's Inns in Dublin and at Harvard University in the United States. She served at Trinity College as Reid professor of penal legislation, constitutional and criminal law, and the law of evidence (196975) and lecturer in European Community law (197590). A distinguished constitutional lawyer and a renowned supporter of human rights, she was elected to the Royal Irish Academy and was a member of the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva (198790). She sat in the Seanad (upper chamber of Parliament) for the Trinity College constituency (196989) and served as whip for the Labour Party until resigning from the party over the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, which she felt ignored Unionist objections. She was also a member of the Dublin City Council (197983) and ran unsuccessfully in 1977 and 1981 for Dublin parliamentary constituencies. Nominated by the Labour Party and supported by the Green Party and the Workers' Party, she became Ireland's first woman president in 1990 by mobilizing a liberal constituency and merging it with a more conservative constituency opposed to the Fianna Fil party. As president, Robinson adopted a much higher profile than her predecessors, and she did much to communicate a more positive and modern image of Ireland. She left office a few months before her term expired to take up the post of United Nations high commissioner for human rights. Michael Marsh