Robert Goff, Baron Goff of Chieveley
Robert Lionel Archibald Goff, Baron Goff of Chieveley, was an English barrister and judge who was Senior Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, the equivalent of today's President of the Supreme Court. Best known for establishing unjust enrichment as a branch of English law, he has been described by Andrew Burrows as "the greatest judge of modern times". Goff was the original co-author of Goff & Jones, the leading English law textbook on restitution and unjust enrichment, first published in 1966. He practised as a commercial barrister from 1951 to 1975, following which he began his career as a judge. He was appointed to the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords in 1986.
Goff was born in his mother's family home in Perthshire, Scotland, and was raised in Hampshire, England. He obtained a place at New College, Oxford, but was called up in December 1944 and served in the Scots Guards in Italy until going to Oxford in October 1948. He earned a first-class degree in Jurisprudence there, and three weeks after receiving his examination results was offered a fellowship at Oxford. He accepted this on condition that he could be called to the Bar first. He was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1951, and appointed fellow and tutor at Lincoln College, Oxford, and a university lecturer in Jurisprudence in 1952. He was High Steward of the University of Oxford from 1991 to 2001.
As one of the few early academics-turned-judges, Goff long advocated a complementary view of the role of the legal academic and judge. In this respect, the former Lord Justice of Appeal Sir Stephen Tomlinson said that "no judge has done more than Robert to ensure that the views of legal academic commentators now regularly inform the decision-making in our higher courts".
Towards the later part of his life, he developed an interest in sharing perspectives with foreign lawyers and judges. For building bridges between judges in the United Kingdom and Germany, Goff was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Early life and education
Robert Goff was born on 12 November 1926, as the second child and only son of Lionel Trevor Goff and Isobel Jane Higgon. Lionel studied at Eton College and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and was commissioned in the Royal Artillery in 1897. As a young officer, Lionel fought in the Second Boer War, was wounded in the siege of Ladysmith and was mentioned in dispatches. He also served in the First World War, and was wounded in 1917 and again mentioned in dispatches. He remained hospitalised for his wounds until 1921. In 1923, he married Isobel Higgon, née Denroche-Smith, a widow of Archie Higgon, who had been killed in action in 1915. Isobel's family home was near Alyth, North Perthshire, and her father had been a civil servant in Bengal.Robert was brought up at the Goff home in Monk Sherborne, Hampshire. He had a closer relationship with his mother than his father. Lionel's principal interests were in fishing, hunting, shooting and riding, and he did not share his son's passion for music. Likewise, Robert did not share his father's interests, and gave up shooting after he turned eighteen.
Goff attended a dame school in Basingstoke until he was eight. Thereafter, he attended St Aubyns School, Rottingdean, and started at Eton College in September 1939, at the beginning of the Second World War. While at Eton, he focused on classical languages and history, preferring these to science subjects. There, Henry Ley, an organist who had played at the coronation of King George VI, encouraged his love for the piano and taught him to play. He left Eton in December 1944, having received a deferred offer of admission to New College, Oxford, for after he completed his military service.
Military service
In December 1944, towards the end of the Second World War, Goff was called up for service with the British Army and was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Scots Guards. His service number was 354970. He trained for battle in the Far East, having been told that he would be deployed there in September 1945. Following the surrender of Japan in August 1945, these plans were cancelled.Instead, Goff spent some time on guard duty at Windsor Castle, and then volunteered to serve in the force being sent to Italy to counter Marshal Tito, where he remained until July 1948. During this period, he spent his leave travelling and exploring northern Italy, skiing, and pursuing cultural interests, while introducing the men under his command to them.
On occasion, he would combine setting up communications posts with visits with his men to see Italian art, including Michelangelo's David and Piero della Francesca's Polyptych of Perugia.
University education
In 1948, Goff took up his place at Oxford for a two-year "shortened" Final Honour Schools course for ex-servicemen. Having been given a choice between reading Jurisprudence, Greats or History, he chose Jurisprudence, with the aim of practising as a barrister after graduating.At New College, his tutors included Jack Butterworth and Wilfrid Bourne. He graduated with a first class degree in 1950, having served as steward of the Junior Common Room.
Career
Academic career
Although Goff had intended to go straight to the Bar after graduation, these plans changed shortly after his examination results were released. Keith Murray, the Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, telephoned him to invite him to a meeting. At this meeting, Murray indicated that a fellowship and tutorship in law had become vacant following Harold Hanbury's appointment as Vinerian Professor of English Law, and that he wished to offer it to Goff. Goff, astonished, asked for half an hour to consider the proposal. In apparent surprise that Goff needed to think about the offer, Murray granted the time, following which Goff accepted the offer, on condition that he could first sit the Bar exams and be called to the Bar. Murray agreed to this and Goff was called by Inner Temple in 1951. In October 1951, he began teaching at Lincoln College, and remained there until the end of the 1954–55 academic year. Alongside his teaching, he served on various committees and briefly as dean in 1952–53 when the incumbent was on leave. His students included Swinton Thomas, who would become a judge of the Court of Appeal.Aware that he had done a shortened two-year course in law, in which he only studied six subjects in limited depth, Goff did "some pretty hectic and thorough preparation for tutorials". He taught a range of subjects, including Criminal Law and Roman Law. His schedule was hectic, teaching nearly 50 students in a single year, some of whom required multiple tutorials a week. To share the workload, the College permitted him to recruit a weekender.
This role was fulfilled by Pat Neill, who was then a Prize Fellow at All Souls College. He gave joint classes with Tony Honoré, where it is suggested that he met A. W. B. Simpson, his successor at Lincoln College. When he left full-time academia for the Bar, Sir Walter Oakeshott, Rector of Lincoln College, said that "there was widespread hope of his being content to go on as an academic lawyer, and by his departure law studies at Oxford, as well as the College, will suffer greatly".
''Goff & Jones on the Law of Unjust Enrichment''
In 1952, Goff was appointed to a Common University Fund lectureship in law, to take effect in 1953. In this capacity, he was required to give a series of lectures on any area of interest to him. When exploring texts for inspiration, he chanced upon "quasi-contracts", a concept traceable to Roman law, but which was at that point unrecognised in English law.Together with Ronald Maudsley, then the law tutor at Brasenose College, he set up a series of seminars in Restitution, also described as "Unjustifiable Enrichment" and "Quasi Contract". The lectures were not on the syllabus and not many students attended. They did attract academic attendees, some of whom, such as Peter North, went on to be distinguished academic lawyers.On the basis of these lectures, Goff and Maudsley jointly began work on the book that would later become Goff and Jones on the Law of Restitution. Goff had continued drafting the textbook after leaving academia for the Commercial Bar. At the time, work for junior barristers was limited, and so he spent considerable time working on the book at the Inner Temple library. During this period, Maudsley spent long stretches of time in the United States, and did not respond to Goff's communications.
In 1959, Goff was reading a Law Quarterly Review and came across an article written by Maudsley, which he believed to be based heavily on the material they had prepared in their joint lectures. Goff wrote to Maudsley once again, but upon not receiving a reply, concluded that Maudsley "was signing off and didn't feel able to tell me". As a junior barrister with a growing practice, Goff realised that if his book was to be completed, he would need a collaborator. A. W. B. Simpson introduced him to Gareth Jones, then fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, and later Downing Professor of the Laws of England, with whom he would eventually publish the book. Goff would later describe Jones as "the ideal co-author" and "beyond doubt, one of the finest teachers in the common law world".
The book publication took much longer than either Goff or Jones anticipated. The manuscript was submitted in late 1964. The page proofs, which arrived in 1965, had so many mistakes and required so many alterations that the publishers, Sweet & Maxwell, made the authors pay for a second set of proofs. As a result, Goff and Jones made practically no money from the first edition of the book, and Goff complained that Sweet & Maxwell "appeared to understand nothing about writing pioneering books". The book was finally published in 1966.
Upon its release, the book was quickly recognised as a significant work, and was largely favourably reviewed. Lord Denning reflected positively on it, calling it "a creative work" and comparing it to Sir Frederick Pollock's treatise on torts and the seminal textbook Anson's Law of Contract. Edmund Davies, then a judge of the High Court of Justice, described it as "admirable". The book's propositions caused some confusion in academic circles. Not knowing where it fitted, a university library classified it as Criminal Law, and a library of one of the Inns of Court refused to take the book in at all. The book's propositions were not unanimously welcomed. For example, they were resisted by Lord Diplock, who as late as in 1977 continued to declare judicially that "there is no general doctrine of unjust enrichment recognised in English law".
Goff submitted the textbook to the University of Oxford for the consideration of a higher degree, and he was awarded a Doctor of Civil Law in 1971. He would later receive honorary degrees from the universities of London, Bristol, Reading, Buckingham and City, University of London. In 1975, Goff was appointed to the High Court. Goff and Jones jointly wrote two further editions of the textbook, which were published in 1978 and 1986, respectively. In the latter year, Goff was appointed to the House of Lords.
He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1987, and would go on to hold Honorary Fellowships at three Oxford colleges: New College, Lincoln, and Wolfson.