Lowry was admitted to the Bar of Northern Ireland in 1947. He was a High Court judge in Northern Ireland from 1964 until he became
Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland in 1971, when he was also made a Northern Ireland Privy Counsellor. In early 1972,
John Hume and other nationalist politicians challenged their conviction under a regulation of the 1922 Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act (Northern Ireland) that allowed any army officer to disperse an assembly of three or more people for the purpose of preserving public order. Lowry was one of three judges to find that the regulation was
ultra vires under Section 4 of the
Government of Ireland Act 1920, which forbade the
Parliament of Northern Ireland from making laws in respect to the
British Army, and the appeals were successful (R (Hume) v Londonderry Justices [1972] NI 91). he found that the Northern Ireland Act 1972 s. 1, by retrospectively validating the conferment of powers of arrest under the regulations, rendered lawful the otherwise unlawful arrest and subsequent detention of Gorman. Lowry was unable to implement
Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) as it was not incorporated into UK law until the
Human Rights Act 1998. In 1975, Lowry was appointed by
Merlyn Rees to chair the
Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention, an unsuccessful attempt to replace the collapsed
Sunningdale Agreement. In 1980, Lowry partly excused the actions of two members of the
Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) convicted of murder and bombing by stating they acted under the "powerful motive... that more than ordinary police work was justified to rid the land of the pestilence which had been in existence". This was criticised by the
Historical Enquiries Team of the
Police Service of Northern Ireland as "difficult to conceive of a statement more fundamentally flawed or calculated to destroy the confidence of a large section of the community in the court's independence and probity". Lowry presided over
Diplock court cases. He also presided over the
supergrass trial in 1983 where
Kevin McGrady, a former IRA member, gave evidence which led to the conviction of seven out of ten defendants. As a result, Lowry became an IRA target, narrowly missing death on at least three occasions. In 1982, having just survived a hail of IRA bullets, Lowry gave a planned lecture at
Queen's University, Belfast. He was an honorary
Bencher of the
King's Inns, Dublin, and of the
Middle Temple. ==Personal life==