In April 1996 - the late Garrett Cooney having temporarily succumbed to a bout of laryngitis - it fell to Donal O Donnell, a recently appointed 38-year-old senior counsel, to open the appeal of Senator Des Hanafin against the High Court s refusal to invalidate the wafer-thin passage of the October 1995 divorce referendum.
Had Shane Ross sat at the back of the Supreme Court chamber during that appeal, he could not have failed to have been struck by the conspicuous brilliance of O Donnell s advocacy, a staging post on a journey that was to mark him out as the great appellate and constitutional lawyer of his generation.