Lord Judge, brilliant Lord Chief Justice and unflinching champion of a free press – obituary

Lord Judge, who has died aged 82, was the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales from 2008 to 2013. Like Shakespeare’s Lord Chief Justice, Judge never did anything that “misbecame his place”. His copybook was so spotless that his fellow Lord of Appeal, Lord Dyson, when addressing the massed ranks of lawyers at Judge’s retirement gathering at the Royal Courts of Justice, was unable to drag up a single embarrassing tale about his colleague, and had to make do with praising his many good qualities instead.

Judge was known for his courtesy and geniality as well as for his formidable intellect. To a lay public, however, his professional achievements may seem less remarkable than the happy coincidence of his surname and his judicial function. Judge himself was more amused by his Christian name, Igor. He joked that if his mother, the distinguished Maltese musician Rosa Micallef, had not been so devoted to Stravinsky she would probably have named her son Wolfgang.

Igor Judge was born on May 19 1941 in Malta, and educated there until the age of 13, when he moved to England to attend the Oratory School in Oxfordshire. He later won an Open Exhibition to read history and law at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

After graduating, Judge was called to the Bar by Middle Temple in 1963 and developed a mixed common law practice, taking silk in 1979. The variety of cases in which he appeared as counsel indicates a versatile legal mind which bent to private commercial disputes, judicial review and even to the esoteric field of trade-union law: in 1987 Judge represented the Nottinghamshire miners who refused to stop working during the 1984-85 miners’ strike.

But it was at the criminal Bar that Judge thrived. As Queen’s Counsel, he appeared in the House of Lords in benchmark appeal cases on the admissibility of hearsay evidence in criminal trials and the offence of conspiracy.

His most glittering brief came in the late 1980s, when he was instructed on behalf of the respondent Crown in the case of R v Callaghan and others. “Callaghan and others” were better known as the Birmingham Six, and the case was their first, unsuccessful appeal against their earlier convictions in 1975 for the bombing of two Birmingham pubs. The convictions were finally quashed in 1991 on a second appeal (by which time Judge had moved on to the Bench), and the case has since become notorious for the failures of forensic evidence which led to the men’s imprisonment in the first place.

Judge also appeared as leading counsel for the respondent farmer in Attorney-General of the Duchy of Lancaster v GE Overton (Farms) Ltd, a case which considered whether Roman Imperial coins unearthed in the field of a Lincolnshire farmer were the property of the Crown by virtue of its ancient right of “treasure trove”. 

In a characteristically flamboyant judgment, Lord Denning considered diverse learned authorities – the earliest of which dated from the 13th century – on the meaning of “treasure trove”. Denning concluded that only coins made from at least 50 per cent gold or silver could properly be classed as “treasure”. Unfortunately, the coins in question had been so debased by the Imperial Mint’s admixing of less lustrous metals in the currency that they did not satisfy the definition. The Duchy’s appeal was dismissed.

In 1988, Judge was appointed a judge of the High Court and assigned to the Queen’s Bench Division, from where he was later elevated to the Court of Appeal in 1996. In 2005 he became the first president of the Queen’s Bench Division, a role newly created and incorporating some of the responsibilities that had previously been vested in the office of the Lord Chief Justice, which Judge would later inhabit.

On the appellate Bench, Judge heard many criminal cases. In R v Wood, he quashed a murder conviction on the grounds of diminished responsibility, owing to the defendant’s chronic alcoholism, the severity of which distinguished it from ordinary self-induced intoxication. In R v Darwin, he upheld the prison sentence given to a British couple – John Darwin, labelled the “canoe man” in the press, and his wife Anne – who fraudulently faked the husband’s death in a canoeing accident.

Judge also heard cases of significant public interest, on one occasion dismissing an appeal by the radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza against extradition to the United States. Judge acceded to the position of Lord Chief Justice in 2008 during a period of unprecedented government-led constitutional reform, when the most radical changes introduced by the 2005 Act of that name were being implemented, including the circumscription of the Lord Chancellor’s duties and the creation of the new Supreme Court. 

Judge was gravely concerned about the impact of these reforms, particularly on the office of Lord Chancellor, the incumbents of which had, exceptionally, since the 13th century wielded executive, legislative and judicial responsibilities. Judge warned that the divestiture of the last of these, as effected by the reforms, would leave both Cabinet and Parliament without anyone to speak on behalf of judges.

It fell to Judge also, as head of the judiciary, to represent his brethren in negotiations with the Government about cuts to judges’ pensions. This was not a cause that was expected to attract much public sympathy, but Judge fought hard none the less and, after a result which disappointed him, toured the country in sympathy to speak to the seething audiences of disaffected judges, which did much to allay their anger.

Judge was an unflinching champion of a free press, pointing out in his keynote speech at the Human Rights Law Conference in London in 2011 that “the independence of the judiciary and the independence of the media are both fundamental to the continued exercise and indeed the survival of liberties which we sometimes take for granted.” He also said: “It is the birthright of the citizen that the press be independent … And that is why, if you accept it as I do, the independence of the press is not only a constitutional necessity, it is a constitutional principle.”

In September 2013, Judge retired from the Bench and took up his seat in Parliament as a crossbench peer, in which capacity he continued to speak and write publicly about legal and constitutional affairs.

Though a defender of the European Convention on Human Rights, he (along with other judges and many politicians) was critical of the exorbitant jurisdiction claimed by Strasbourg over the national laws of signatory states, which he saw as a “dramatic and unconstitutional extension of judicial authority”. With characteristic and judicial fairness, he observed that this problem was partly attributable to the English courts’ over-reliance on Strasbourg jurisprudence, to the neglect of their own centuries-old English common law.

Judge believed that “the Strasbourg Court is an international court for a group of independent sovereign states, each with its own separate democratic constitution, given authority by Treaty to interpret the Convention. It has no authority to amend or override the constitutional arrangements in any country which is party to the Convention.” He considered it would be “a negation of the democratic process for Members of Parliament to be obliged to vote for a measure with which they disagree”.

His geniality was legendary. Once, while presiding in a serious criminal case in the Court of Appeal and told he was urgently needed on the telephone, he paused proceedings and rushed out, only to find that the caller was his young nephew asking for help with a parking ticket. Lord Judge calmly pointed out that he was a little tied up, but would speak later – his good humour unaffected.

Igor Judge married, in 1965, Judith Robinson, who survives him with a son and two daughters.

Lord Judge, born May 19 1941, died November 7 2023