The UCD Ulysses Medal is the highest honour bestowed by University College Dublin.

The award was inaugurated in 2005, as part of the university’s 150th anniversary celebrations, to highlight the “creative brilliance” of its most famous alumnus, James Joyce. It is awarded to individuals whose work has made an outstanding global contribution.

Previous recipients of the Ulysses Medal include the godfather of AI, Professor Geoffrey Hinton (2024); Booker Prize winning Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood (2018); and world leading philosopher and social theorist Professor Jürgen Habermas (2010).

In presenting Judge O’Leary with the Ulysses Medal, UCD said it recognises her leadership role as a leading scholar, judge, and judicial statesperson in preserving the fundamental freedoms promised under European Law.

A graduate of University College Dublin and the European University Institute in Italy, Judge O’Leary spent years lecturing on EU law at a number of universities alongside working as a référendaire and chef de cabinet at the Court of Justice of the European Union.

She was appointed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in 2018 and became its president in 2022.

UCD hailed her “pivotal role” in protecting the ECtHR at the Reykjavik summit in 2023, the outcome of which saw the Council of Europe’s political leaders re-commit “to the Convention system as the cornerstone of the Council of Europe’s protection of human rights”.

It also welcomed her “stunning dissent” in Ireland v UK (2018) on the meaning of ‘torture’, an “exemplar of principle against what she termed ‘judicial acrobacy’ on the part of her judicial colleagues”.

The university also said she “led the court in progressive directions, notably in its ground-breaking climate justice ruling Klimaseniorinnen”.

“Future generations will bear an increasingly severe burden of the consequences of present failures and omissions to combat climate change,” Judge O’Leary wrote in her leading judgment.

Professor Cathryn Costello, full professor of global refugee and migration law at UCD Sutherland School of Law, delivered the official citation for Judge O’Leary at the awarding ceremony.

She said: “The role of the president of the court is onerous and public-facing. [They] must be both a judicial diplomat engaging with states and an independent voice for human rights.

“In this role, Judge O’Leary truly excelled. There is a resounding consensus amongst the human rights community on the commitment, gravitas, and strategic vision she displayed as president, befitting this challenging moment in European history.

“Her presidential speeches and writings are wonderful resource — full of insight, a pan-European sensibility, and an urgent sense of the seriousness of the threats to human rights and democracy across Europe today.”