Tom Denning, Baron Denning
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The Right Honourable Alfred Thompson Denning, Baron Denning, OM, PC (23 January 1899 – 5 March 1999) was an English barrister from Hampshire who became Master of the Rolls (the senior civil judge in the Court of Appeal of England and Wales) and was generally well liked, both within the legal profession and outside it. Lord Denning was a judge for 38 years, retiring at the age of 83 in 1982.
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Early history
Born in Whitchurch in Hampshire, Denning was the fourth of five sons of Charles Denning and his wife Clara. Denning's father was a draper. His mother had been a school teacher. He was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, after which he taught mathematics at Winchester College before returning to study law at Magdalen, where he was later made an honorary fellow. He trained at Lincoln's Inn, and was later a bencher of the Inn (by 1982, he had been made an honorary bencher of both Gray's Inn and the Middle Temple). He was called to the English bar in 1923, and was appointed a High Court judge and knighted in 1944. Only four years later he was appointed a Lord Justice of Appeal as well as a Privy Counsellor, and in 1957 he became a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary with a life peerage as Baron Denning, of Whitchurch in the County of Southampton. He also served as Master of the Rolls from 1962 to 1982, later receiving the Order of Merit in 1997 in recognition of his distinguished career. He first married in 1932. His wife Mary died nine years later. He remarried in 1945 to Joan, who died in 1992.
He became well known for his judgments, which frequently pushed the law in novel directions. The world renowned High Trees case: Central London Property Trust Ltd v. High Trees House Ltd [1947] K.B. 130 was a milestone in English contract law, and made Denning's name early on in his career as an innovator in legal reasoning. The case founded the doctrine of equitable estoppel or 'promissory estoppel'. However, Denning's doctrine has been criticised by legal academics, who argue that he paid little regard to the existing law, and that the doctrine is the result of his attempt to find a resolution that equated to his personal notion of 'justice'.
Legal career
Denning spent twenty years as the Master of the Rolls, presiding over the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal, after five years as a Law Lord, shifting to the Court of Appeal at his request because he was happier with that post than one in the more senior court. Court of Appeal judges sit in threes, and the Lords in fives (or more), so it was suggested that to get his way in the Court of Appeal Denning only had to persuade one other judge whereas in the House of Lords it was at least two. The other 'benefit' of the Court of Appeal is that it hears more cases than the House of Lords, and so has a greater effect on the law. During his 20 years as Master of the Rolls, he could choose both which cases he heard, and the judges with whom he sat. Therefore, on most issues, he effectively had the last word; comparatively few cases went on to the House of Lords, Britain's highest court of law.
In 1963, Denning was appointed by then Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to look into the role of the police and security services in the Profumo affair.<ref>Picknett, Lynn, Prince, Clive, Prior, Stephen & Brydon, Robert (2002). War of the Windsors: A Century of Unconstitutional Monarchy, p. 241, 246. Mainstream Publishing. ISBN 1-84018-631-3.</ref> However, much of his report was devoted to an investigation of Stephen Ward, a man whom Denning alleged to cater for others' "perverted tastes".<ref>Picknett, et al., p. 242.</ref> However, Ward was a relatively minor player in the affair — his only relation to it was introducing then Secretary of State for War John Profumo to Christine Keeler, whom the latter became intimately involved with.<ref>Picknett, et al., p. 240.</ref> Conspiracy theorists have insinuated that Denning was involved in a cover-up to protect members of the establishment — allegedly including members of the royal family — from being pinned as the culprits.<ref>Picknett, et al., p. 245.</ref>
Of his move down the legal hierarchy, Denning quipped, "To most lawyers on the bench, the House of Lords is like heaven. You want to get there someday — but not while there is any life in you." The last sitting British judge not bound by a mandatory retirement age, he was forced to retire after remarks interpreted as racially insensitive though generally understood not to have indicated such feelings.
Denning's 1982 book What Next in the Law was his downfall. In it, he seemed to suggest some members of the black community were unsuitable to serve on juries, and that immigrant groups may have had different moral standards to native Englishmen. His remarks followed a trial over a riot in Bristol. Two jurors on the case threatened to sue him, although some scholars have pointed out that his attitudes were not far out of line with opinions in the right-wing press of the day, and may have been taken out of proportion somewhat. Nonetheless, Lord Denning was forced to back down and avoided further conflict by apologising. He then announced he would be retiring. Later editions of the book assert Denning's commitment to representative juries and diversity.
Judgments
Whatever the truth of it, Lord Denning became immensely popular for his judgments which often bent the law into interesting directions, and his unusual prose style in giving judgment:
- 'The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail - its roof may shake - the wind may blow through it - the storm may enter - the rain may enter - but the King of England cannot enter - all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.' So be it - unless he has justification by law.: Southam v Smout [1964] 1 QB 308 at 320
One of Denning's most influential decisions in torts was his well articulated opinion regarding relational economic loss in Spartan Steel & Alloys, Ltd. v. Martin & Co., [1972] 3 All E.R. 557 (C.A.). While his fellow judges, Lawton LJ (concurring) and Edmund Davies LJ (dissenting), based their rulings on stare decisis and general tort principles (respectively). Denning based his judgment on a thorough analysis of relevant policy factors.
A notorious judgment was that in the appeal of the Birmingham Six in 1979. Denning's view was that
- "If the six men win, it will mean that the police are guilty of perjury, that they are guilty of violence and threats, that the confessions were invented and improperly admitted in evidence and the convictions were erroneous... This is such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say that it cannot be right that these actions should go any further." [1]
He also commented that "We shouldn't have all these campaigns to get the Birmingham Six released if they'd been hanged. They'd have been forgotten and the whole community would have been satisfied." The men's convictions were overturned in 1991 after it was shown that the police had indeed done all the things Denning described, and he admitted that the West Midlands police force had "let us all down" [2].
Death and legacy
Many of Denning's efforts to change the law were vindicated by the passage of time (and legislation) — in particular, his efforts to establish an abandoned wives' equity, small print exemption clauses, inequality of bargaining power, negligent mis-statement, liability of public authorities, and contractual interpretation.
Denning died a few months after his 100th birthday, the celebrations for which he was too frail to attend. At the event, Law Society President Michael Matthews said, "He was a towering figure in the law who made an enormous contribution to the law of this century, probably the major contribution". Eulogising Denning's death, a former Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham of St. Marylebone, said that Denning would go down in history as "one of the great and controversial judges of the 20th century".
The University of Buckingham's Law School organised a Symposium whereby each of the major area of law that Denning has had a profound influence on was discussed and debated. Each topic of discussion was chaired by someone with experience in that scope. E.g. The Rt. Hon. Lord Nolan on Public Inquiries. (Other Chairmen included Lords Woolf, Slynn). Afterwards the Law School's Law Society organised a Charity Dinner in which many of the guest speakers and attendees of the Symposium attended. The guest speaker was the then Vice-Chancellor of the Supreme Court, The Rt. Hon. Sir Richard Scott, now Lord Scott of Foscote, a Law Lord.
Lord Denning was more than simply a learned and gifted jurist. His judgments were sharp, pithy, and full of mischief. Perhaps his most famous case was Miller v. Jackson (1977) Q.B. 966, 976, or as it is far better known, The Cricket Case:
- In summertime village cricket is the delight of everyone. Nearly every village has its own cricket field where the young men play and the old men watch. In the village of Lintz in County Durham they have their own ground, where they have played these last 70 years. They tend it well. The wicket area is well rolled and mown. The outfield is kept short . . . [y]et now after these 70 years a judge of the High Court has ordered that they must not play there any more . . . [h]e has done it at the instance of a newcomer who is no lover of cricket.
The Law Students Society at the University of Western Ontario, in Ontario, Canada, named its biweekly pub nights after Lord Denning after he visited the law school in 1979.
See also
Notes and references
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