Tom Denning, Baron Denning
Alfred Thompson Denning, Baron Denning, , was an English barrister and judge. He was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 1923 and became a King's Counsel in 1938. Denning became a judge in 1944 when he was appointed to the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice, and transferred to the King's Bench Division in 1945. He was made a Lord Justice of Appeal in 1948 after less than five years in the High Court. He became a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary in 1957 and after five years in the House of Lords returned to the Court of Appeal as Master of the Rolls in 1962, a position he held for twenty years. In retirement he wrote several books and continued to offer opinions on the state of the common law through his writing and his position in the House of Lords.
Margaret Thatcher said that Denning was "probably the greatest English judge of modern times". One of Lord Denning's successors as Master of the Rolls, Lord Bingham, called him "the best known and best loved judge in our history". Denning's appellate work in the Court of Appeal did not concern criminal law. Mark Garnett and Richard Weight argue that Denning was a conservative Christian who "remained popular with morally conservative Britons who were dismayed at the postwar rise in crime and who, like him, believed that the duties of the individual were being forgotten in the clamour for rights. He had a more punitive than redemptive view of criminal justice, as a result of which he was a vocal supporter of corporal and capital punishment." However, he changed his stance on capital punishment in later life.
Denning became one of the highest profile judges in England in part because of his report on the Profumo affair. He was known for his bold judgments running counter to the law at the time. During his 38-year career as a judge, he made large changes to the common law, particularly while in the Court of Appeal, and although some of his decisions were overturned by the House of Lords several of them were confirmed by Parliament, which passed statutes in line with his judgments. Appreciated for his role as "the people's judge" and his support for the individual, Denning attracted attention for his flexible and equitable attitude to the common law principle of precedent. He commented controversially about the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four.
Early life and studies
Denning was born on 23 January 1899 in Whitchurch, Hampshire, to Charles Denning, a draper, and his wife Clara Denning. He was one of six children; his older brother Reginald Denning later became a staff officer with the British Army, and his younger brother Norman Denning became Director of Naval Intelligence and Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff. Denning was born two months earlier than expected and almost died at birth; he was so small and weak that he was nicknamed 'Tom Thumb' and could fit in a pint pot. He was named after Alfred the Great by his sister Marjorie, and was baptised on 23 April 1899 at All Hallows Church, Whitchurch.Denning, along with his older brother Gordon, began his schooling at the National School of Whitchurch, one of many set up by the National Society for the Education of the Poor. Both boys won scholarships to Andover Grammar School, where Denning excelled academically, winning four prizes for English essays on the subjects of "The Great Authors", "Macaulay", "Carlyle" and "Milton". The outbreak of the First World War saw most of the schoolmasters leave to join the British armed forces, being replaced by female teachers. At the time Denning wanted to become a mathematician, but none of the new teachers knew enough mathematics to teach him; instead, he taught himself. He qualified to study at University College, Southampton, but was advised to stay at school and apply to Oxford or Cambridge in a few years. He sat the Oxbridge examination when he was sixteen and was awarded a £30 a year exhibition to study mathematics at Magdalen College, Oxford; the money was not enough to live on, but he accepted nevertheless. Although he had been accepted by a college he still needed to gain entry to the university as a whole, which meant passing exams including Greek – which had not been taught at Andover Grammar School. Denning managed to teach himself enough of the subject to pass, and matriculated to Oxford in 1916.
In addition to his Magdalen Scholarship he gained a scholarship from Hampshire County Council worth £50 a year. After arriving he made a favourable impression on Sir Herbert Warren, the president of Magdalen College, who upgraded the exhibition to a Demyship of £80 a year and arranged for the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths to give Denning a £30 a year scholarship. Despite military training in the early morning and evening, Denning worked hard at his studies, and obtained a First in Mathematical Moderations, the first half of his mathematics degree, in June 1917.
War service
Denning was told he would be ineligible to serve in the Armed Forces because of a systolic heart murmur, which he believed the doctor diagnosed because he was tired of sending young men off to die. He successfully appealed against the decision, and enlisted on 14 August 1917 as a cadet in the Hampshire Regiment before being sent to the Royal Engineers Oxford University Officer Training Corps. He trained at Newark and was temporarily commissioned as a second lieutenant on 17 November 1917. Although he was old enough to serve in the armed forces, regulations meant that he was not allowed to serve in France until he was nineteen.In March 1918, the German Army advanced closer to Amiens and Paris and Denning's unit was sent to France to help stop the advance. Under continuous shell fire for three months, the company and the 38th Infantry Division held their section of the line, with a unit under Denning's command building a bridge to allow infantry to advance over the River Ancre. Denning went two days without sleep while building these bridges; shortly after one was completed, a German aeroplane dropped a bomb on it, forcing them to start again. The unit advanced over the River Ancre and the Canal du Nord, but Denning fell ill with influenza and was in hospital for the last few days of the war. When writing of his experiences in World War I in The Family Story, Denning summed up his war service with characteristic pithiness in just four words: "I did my bit".
Denning's oldest brother, Captain John Edward Newdigate Denning, was killed near Gueudecourt on 26 September 1916 whilst serving with the Lincolnshire Regiment. His brother, Sub-Lieutenant Charles Gordon Denning, who saw action in the Battle of Jutland, died of tuberculosis on 24 May 1918 after serving with the Royal Navy on HMS Morris. Denning would describe his dead brothers as the best of him and his siblings.
Return to Oxford
Denning was demobilised on 6 February 1919, and returned to Magdalen College four days later. He initially thought about turning to applied mathematics, but decided on pure mathematics. He studied hard, not participating in any of the university's numerous societies or clubs so that he could better focus on his work, and graduated in 1920, placing in the first class of the Mathematical Greats. He was offered a job teaching mathematics at Winchester College for £350 a year, which he accepted. As well as mathematics, he taught geology, despite not having studied it; instead, he "read up on the night before". He found the job boring, and after viewing the Assize Court at Winchester Castle decided he would like to be a barrister.On the advice of Herbert Warren, he returned to Magdalen to study Jurisprudence in October 1921. Thanks to Warren, Denning was elected to the Eldon Law Scholarship, worth £100 a year, to finance his studies; when the news of Denning's election was brought, Warren wrote "you are a marked man. Perhaps you will be a Lord of Appeal some day". Denning took his final examinations in June 1922 and impressed the examiner, Geoffrey Cheshire, by correctly answering questions on the Law of Property Act which had been given Royal Assent only a few days before.
Denning gained a high grade in all his subjects except jurisprudence, which he described as "too abstract a subject for my liking". He did not return to read for a Bachelor of Civil Law but instead attempted to gain a prize fellowship at All Souls College; he failed to be accepted, something he put down to his poor pronunciation of Latin.
The Bar
Denning was admitted to Lincoln's Inn on 4 November 1921, choosing it because the Under Treasurer was a graduate of Magdalen College. On the advice of his brother's friend Frank Merriman he applied to 4 Brick Court, Middle Temple, a small set of chambers run by Henry O'Hagan. He was accepted and began work there in September 1922, before he had taken his final bar exam. He finished his final exam in May 1923 and came top in the bar examination, with the Inn awarding him a 100 guineas a year studentship of three years. He was called to the Bar on 13 June 1923, and was offered a tenancy by O'Hagan. His first few years were spent receiving small briefs from clients, including work prosecuting those who failed to pay rail tickets and fines. During this time, he also wrote a manual for the railway police giving guidance on incidents such as taxi drivers who refused to take a customer to a destination within the area specified by the Public Carriage Office. He wrote his first article in 1924 titled "Quantum meruit and the Statute of Frauds" on the decision in Scott v Pattison 2 KB 723; it was accepted by the Law Quarterly Review and published in January 1925.His work steadily increased in amount and quality throughout the 1920s and 1930s. By the 1930s, he was making most of his court appearances in the senior courts such as the High Court of Justice; in 1932 he was advised by his clerk that he should not be seen in the county courts, and that he should leave this work for lesser members of the chambers. In 1929, he helped edit several chapters of Smith's Leading Cases and in 1932 acted as a supervising editor for the 9th edition of Bullen & Leake's Precedents for Pleadings in the King's Bench Division. In 1932, he moved to his own set of chambers in Brick Court, and by 1936 he was earning over £3,000 a year. A significant case was L'Estrange v F Graucob Ltd 2 KB 394, where he successfully argued an exemption clause was incorporated because a contract was signed. He said that "If you are an advocate you want your client to win. If you are a judge you don't care who wins exactly. All you are concerned about is justice."
From 1937 until 1944, he was Chancellor of the Diocese of Southwark, and from 1942 to 1944 was Chancellor of the Diocese of London. He applied to become a King's Counsel on 15 January 1938. The appointments were announced on 7 April; he "took silk" on 9 April and received letters of congratulation from, among others, Rayner Goddard. After the start of the Second World War, Denning volunteered; he was too old for active service, and was instead appointed legal advisor to the North East Region. In 1941, he acted for the respondent in the case of Hoani te Heuheu vs Aotea District Maori Land Board AC 308, an important New Zealand constitutional case before the Privy Council, which held that treaty duties could be legally enforced only when they are incorporated into Acts of Parliament. In 1942, Denning took the case of Gold v Essex County Council 2 KB 293, which changed the law to make hospitals liable for the professional negligence of their staff.
In December 1943, a judge was taken ill, and Denning was asked to take his place as a Commissioner of Assize. This was regarded as a 'trial' for membership of the judiciary, and Denning was appointed Recorder of Plymouth on 17 February 1944. On 6 March 1944, while arguing a case in the House of Lords, Denning was taken aside by the Lord Chancellor and told that he wanted Denning to become a judge at the High Court of Justice in the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division. Denning accepted, and the announcement was made before the conclusion of the appeal.