British Judge Quotes

Norman Birkett, 1st Baron Birkett

William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield

Edward Law, 1st Baron Ellenborough

Alfred Denning, Baron Denning

Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet

Charles Abbott, 1st Baron Tenterden

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon

Prison is a most expensive way of making bad people worse.

Convicted Criminal: As God is my judge—I am innocent.
Lord Birkett: He isn't; I am, and you're not!

Norman Birkett, 1st Baron Birkett

The UK can be proud of its real contribution to this unique system and its influence in bringing about effective human rights protection throughout the European continent. It would be deeply regrettable if it were to allow its commitment to that system to be called into question by a failure to defend it against its detractors or to offer its strong support for the vital work of the court.

Governments always tend to want not really a free press but a managed or well-conducted one.

This contract is so one-sided that I am surprised to find it written on both sides of the paper.

Raymond Evershed, 1st Baron Evershed

In questions of international law we should not depart from any settled decisions, nor lay down any doctrine inconsistent with them.

William Wood, 1st Baron Hatherley

You cannot pick out one bit—pick out the plums and leave the duff behind.

In a criminal proceeding the question is not alone whether substantial justice has been done, but whether justice has been done according to law. All proceedings in poenam are, it need scarcely be observed, strictissimi juris; nor should it be forgotten that the formalities of law, though here and there they may lead to the escape of an offender, are intended on the whole to insure the safe administration of justice and the protection of innocence, and must be observed. A party accused has the right to insist on them as matter of right, of which he cannot be deprived against his will; and the Judge must see that they are followed.

Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet

One cannot look too closely at and weigh in too golden scales the acts of men hot in their political excitement.

Henry Hawkins, 1st Baron Brampton

It is of the greatest importance that the administration of justice should not only be free from spot or blame, but that it should be, so far as human infirmity could allow it to become, as free from all suspicion.

Edward Law, 1st Baron Ellenborough

I make it clear that it will be for me to decide as I think right within my terms of reference the matters which will be the subject of my investigation.

Brian Hutton, Baron Hutton

No rightly constituted mind can behold the wealth of beauty in the snow-flowers without being awed and humbled.

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan

Would you approve of your young sons, young daughters – because girls can read as well as boys – reading this book? Is it a book that you would have lying around in your own house? Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?

Mervyn Griffith-Jones

The family consists of those who live under the same roof with the pater familias; those who form (if I may use the expression) his fire-side.

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon

A learned County Court judge in a book of memoirs recently said that the overwhelming amount of his time on the bench was taken up with people who are persuaded by persons whom they do not know to enter into contracts that they do not understand to purchase goods that they do not want with money that they have not got.

Wilfred Greene, 1st Baron Greene

Whatever may be the case in a Court of morals, there is no legal obligation on the vendor to inform the purchaser that he is under a mistake, not induced by the act of the vendor.

Colin Blackburn, Baron Blackburn

Books delight us when prosperity smiles upon us; they comfort us inseparably when stormy fortune frowns on us.

Richard de Bury

This is a case of a barmaid who was badly bitten by a big dog.

Alfred Denning, Baron Denning

Prisoner, God has given you good abilities, instead of which you go about the country stealing ducks.

The hallmarks of a regime which flouts the rule of law are, alas, all too familiar: the midnight knock on the door, the sudden disappearance, the show trial, the subjection of prisoners to genetic experiment, the confession extracted by torture, the gulag and the concentration camp, the gas chamber, the practice of genocide or ethnic clansing, the waging of aggressive war. The list is endless, Better to put up with some choleric judges and greedy lawyers.

Thomas Bingham, Baron Bingham of Cornhill

Loss of freedom seldom happens overnight. Oppression doesn't stand on the doorstep with toothbrush moustache and swastika armband – it creeps up insidiously... step by step, and all of a sudden the unfortunate citizen realizes that it is gone.

Geoffrey Lane, Baron Lane

I wish popularity; but it is that popularity which follows, not that which is run after--it is that popularity which sooner or later never fails to do justice to the pursuit of noble ends by noble means.

William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield

We cannot suffer a person by his affidavit to arraign the whole justice of the country and its administration.

Charles Abbott, 1st Baron Tenterden

Postal voting on demand, however many safeguards you build into it, is wide open to fraud. It's open to fraud on a scale that will make election rigging a possibility and indeed in some areas a probability.

Masterly inactivity may be prudence to one man, desperate rashness to another.

Arthur Kekewich