LORD DENNING

This morning I finished reading Lord Denning: A Life (1993) by Iris Freeman.  This biography of English Judge Alfred Thompson "Tom" Denning (1899-1999) is a survey of the life and career of the most famous British Judge of the 20th Century.

When I began reading this book, about all I knew about Lord Denning was that he had served as "Master of the Rolls," which is a senior appellate judge position in England, and that he was noted as the most influential English judge of the twentieth century.

Denning is best described as the Earl Warren of the English Common Law on civil cases.  Denning always sought to do what he thought was substantial justice, and he never let a statute or a precedent to the contrary get in his way.

From a humble lower middle class family, Denning and his brothers and sister strove to achieve.  One of Denning's brothers finished his army career as a General and another as an Admiral in the Royal Navy.  One brother was killed in the First World War and another died from TB contracted while serving in the Navy.  While still a teenager, Denning served as a combat engineer in the Royal Army on the Western Front in 1918.  After the war he earned a degree in mathematics from Magdalen College, Oxford.  After teaching mathematics for a while and finding it boring, Denning turned to the law.  Denning was admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1921.  After a pupillage in a barristers chambers, and passage of final bar examinations, Denning was called to the Bar in June, 1923.

Denning became a successful and much sought after barrister.  Denning's personal life was marked by tragedy.  For years Denning had pursued Mary Harvey, the daughter of an Anglican clergyman.  Mary had consistently rebuffed Denning's advances until 1930 when she finally agreed to marry him.  Six months before their wedding, Mary was diagnosed with the tuberculosis which would eventually kill her.  Mary and Tom had one son, Robert, born in 1938.  Mary died in 1941.  Denning later married a widow, Joan Stewart.  Joan and Tom remained married until Joan's death in 1992.

In March 1944 Denning was appointed a High Court Judge of the Probate, Admiralty and Divorce Division.  In 1945 Denning was transferred to the King's Bench Division.  While a judge of the King's Bench Division, Denning first came to public prominence when he was appointed to hear appeals of service men and women who claimed to have become disabled due to their war time service and who had been denied disability benefits.   Up to that time, the burden of proof was upon the claimant to prove that his disability was service related.  Denning ruled that the burden of proof fell upon the government to prove that the claimants injuries were not related to war service.  This ruling made Denning a hero to the British press and public.

One of Denning's most famous cases is Central London Property Trust Ltd. v. High Trees House Ltd.
The facts are as follows:  (from Wikipedia):  "In 1937, High Trees House Ltd leased a block of flats in Clapham, London for a rate of 2500 pounds a year from Central London Property Trust Ltd.  Due to the conditions during the beginning of World War II occupancy rates were drastically lower than normal.  In January 1940, to ameliorate the situation, the parties made an agreement in writing to reduce the rent by half.  However, neither party stipulated the period for which this reduced rental was to apply.  Over the next five years, High Trees paid the reduced rate while the flats began to fill, and by 1945, the flats were back at full occupancy.  Central London sued for payment of the full rental costs from June 1945 onwards."  Based on the doctrine of promissory estoppel, Denning ruled that if a party reasonably leads another to believe that he will not enforce his full legal rights that he may be estopped from doing so later.

The Temple of Promissory Estoppel, the High Trees Apartment Building

In October, 1948 Denning became a Lord Justice of Appeal or a "law lord" in the House of Lords.  Despite being the highest court of the United Kingdom, at that time the House of Lords were bound by their own precedents and could not overrule a previous case.  Denning struggled all his career against this rule.  Although Parliament finally granted the House of Lords the right to overrule their own precedents, to Denning's great chagrin the Court of Appeal was never given this right.

In 1962, Denning realized a life long career goal and returned to the Court of Appeal as Master of the Rolls.  The Court of Appeal sits in panels of three.  Denning was famous for being the dissenter.  Freeman recounts how Denning would turn to one of his colleagues and say
     DENNING:  "We are going to allow the appeal, aren't we?"
     1ST Lord Justice:   "No, Tom. We're not."
     DENNING:  "Very, well."
Then Denning would turn to the third judge and say:  "We're going to allow the appeal, aren't we?"
     2nd Lord Justice:  "No, Tom.  We're not."
     DENNING:  "Very well, then.  Both of you will have to dissent."

Although Denning is just about universally revered for standing up for the little man against the government and corporations, Denning is responsible for limiting the right of jury trial in personal injury cases in Britain.  Denning held that "the judge ought not, in a personal injury case, to order trial by jury save in exceptional circumstances.  Even when the issue of liability is one fit to be tried by a jury, nevertheless he might think it fit to order the damages to be assessed by a judge alone."

There is much in the legal landscape surrounding Lord Denning's career that is familiar to the American lawyer.  However, there is also a lot that is, quite frankly, alien.  The Supremacy of Parliament means that no act of parliament can be overturned or questioned in the courts.  The highest courts in the land are bound by their previous decisions even if they are now convinced that those decisions are wrong.  The idea that an appeals court can, on its own initiative, restrict the right of a Plaintiff to have their case decided by a jury strikes the American as almost tyrannical.

Denning became best known by the public for his investigation and report on the Profumo Scandal.  John Profumo was the Secretary of State for War in the British cabinet.  Stephen Ward was a doctor who specialized in acting as a pimp for the rich and famous.  Ward procured a call girl, Christine Keeler, for Profumo.  At the same time, Keeler was sleeping with the naval attache for the Soviet Embassy, Yevgeni Ivanov.  In 1963, the lid blew off the scandal and Profumo's affair with Keeler was publicly exposed.  The Prime Minister, Harold Macmillon, asked Lord Denning to inquire into whether there was any breach of national security.  Denning's 70,000 word report caused a sensation.  Although Denning concluded that was no breach of national security, the report gave all the juicy details and became a best seller.  The Daily Telegraph said that it was "the raciest and most readable Blue Book ever published."

Lord Denning on the day the Profumo report was released.

During his long career, Denning and his second wife, Joan, traveled all over the world giving speeches and lectures on the law.  Denning was much in demand as a speaker and lecturer.  Denning was also considered a hero to many law students in Britain and the Commonwealth Countries.  Even now, you can buy T-shirts which say "Lord Denning is My Homeboy."

Even though advancing in years, Denning refused to retire.  After turning eighty, like many old men, Denning began to have what can only be described as "diaherrhea of the mouth."  In a book titled What Next in the Law published in 1982, Denning suggested that blacks were unfit to serve on juries because they and other immigrant groups had different moral standards than white Englishmen.  The controversy caused by these remarks caused Denning to finally resign at age 83.

Even in retirement, Denning remained controversial.  In 1990 in an interview with author A.N. Wilson which was published in The Spectator, Denning said that the Guildford Four, suspected IRA terrorists whose convictions were overturned, should have been hanged.  "They'd probably have hanged the right men.  Just not proved against them, that's all."

Throughout his life, Denning was a devout Christian and a devoted member of the Church of England.  Occasionally, he let his conservative Christian beliefs dictate his judgment on cases.  Being morally opposed to divorce, Denning sometimes let his prejudices show.  In an infamous example, Denning once ruled that custody of a child should be given to the father because if custody were given to the mother there would be no hope of reconciliation.  In 1977 Denning told the Christian Lawyer's Fellowship "Without religion there can be no morality, and without morality there can be no law."

After a long and full life and career which spanned almost the whole of the twentieth century, Lord Denning finally died at age 100 on March 5, 1999.

I enjoyed reading this book, which was published seven years before Lord Denning's death.  Lord Denning's life and career has drama, romance, and intellectual stimulation.  Five out five gavels.