Lord Denning

• Jurisdiction: South Africa
• Date: 27 May 2019
• Author: Max Loubser
• Published date: 27 May 2019
• Pages: 3-9

LORD DENNING

Lord Denning died on 5 March 1999. His life spanned almost the entire

20th century (1899-1999) and he died just six weeks after celebrating his

100th birthday. He had retired in 1982 at the age of 83, after serving for

38 years as a judge, the last 20 of which as Master of the Rolls, the

president of the civil division of the Court of Appeal of England and

Wales. In the course of this extraordinary judicial career Lord Denning

became, in the words of Lord Bingham, the Lord Chief Justice of

England and Wales, the "best-known and best-loved judge in the whole

of our history") Michael Beloff QC in a tribute refers to him as "the

outstanding English judge of the century".

2

The obituary in The Times

refers to him as "the most widely known member of the English

judiciary".

3

In the course of his extraordinarily long judicial career Lord Denning

had an immense influence on the development of the English law and

delivered judgments that fundamentally affected most areas of the law. In

the numerous tributes paid to him over the years the focus was almost

invariably on his inclination to develop the law to serve justice and

fairness, often in an adventurous and imaginative way. In his view the law

was there to serve the people and to protect freedom: freedom of the

person, of conscience, of the press and generally freedom under the law.

Denning was educated at Andover Grammar School, from where he

won a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford. The First World War

interrupted his university career and he served from 1917 to 1919 with the

Royal Engineers. After the war he graduated with a double first in

mathematics and became a schoolmaster for a year at Winchester. He

then went back to Oxford and obtained another first, this time in law. He

was called to the Bar by Lincoln's Inn in 1923 and took silk in 1938. He

was appointed to the High Court Bench in 1944, when he was 45. His

subsequent judicial promotion was rapid. He was appointed to the Court

of Appeal in 1948 and in 1957 to the House of Lords. Five years later in

1962 he took the unusual step of leaving the House of Lords and

returning to the Court of Appeal as Master of the Rolls.

His own version of his appointment as Master of the Rolls is the

following:

4

"In 1962 Lord Evershed, the Master of the Rolls, resigned and became himself a Lord of

Appeal in Ordinary. Who was to succeed him? We all wondered. Then at lunch one day in the

1

Address at the Service of Thanksgiving at Westminster Abbey on 17 June 1999, printed in 1999

Magdalen College Yearbook

140.

2

The Times

6 March 1999.

3

The Times

6 March 1999.

4

Lord Denning

The Family Story

(1981) 197.

3

(2001) 12 Stell LR 3

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