Patrick Arthur Devlin, Baron Devlin,
PC,
FBA (25 November 1905 – 9 August 1992) was a British judge and legal philosopher. The second-youngest English
High Court judge in the 20th century, he served as a
Lord of Appeal in Ordinary
Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, commonly known as Law Lords, were judges appointed under the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876 to the British House of Lords, as a committee of the House, effectively to exercise the judicial functions of the House o ...
from 1960 to 1964.
In 1959, Devlin headed the
Devlin Commission
The Devlin Commission, officially the Nyasaland Commission of Inquiry, was a Commission of Inquiry set up in 1959 under the chairmanship of Mr.Justice Devlin, later Lord Devlin, after African opposition to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasalan ...
, which reported on the State of Emergency declared by the colonial governor of
Nyasaland
Nyasaland () was a British protectorate located in Africa that was established in 1907 when the former British Central Africa Protectorate changed its name. Between 1953 and 1963, Nyasaland was part of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasala ...
. In 1985 he became the first British judge to write a book about a case he had presided over, the 1957 trial of suspected serial killer
John Bodkin Adams
John Bodkin Adams (21 January 18994 July 1983) was an Irish-born British general practitioner, convicted fraudster, and suspected serial killer. Between 1946 and 1956, 163 of his patients died while in comas, which was deemed to be worthy of ...
.
[Devlin, Patrick; "Easing the Passing", London, The Bodley Head, 1985] Devlin was involved in the debate about homosexuality in British law; in response to the
Wolfenden report
The Report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution (better known as the Wolfenden report, after Sir John Wolfenden, the chairman of the committee) was published in the United Kingdom on 4 September 1957 after a suc ...
, he argued, contrary to
H. L. A. Hart, that a common public morality should be upheld.
Devlin's daughter Clare, then aged 81, said in 2021 that her father had sexually abused her from the age of 7 until her teens.
Early life and education
Patrick Devlin was born in
Chislehurst
Chislehurst () is a suburban district of south-east London, England, in the London Borough of Bromley. It lies east of Bromley, south-west of Sidcup and north-west of Orpington, south-east of Charing Cross. Before the creation of Greater L ...
, Kent. His father was an Irish Roman Catholic architect whose own father came from
County Tyrone
County Tyrone (; ) is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the thirty-two traditional counties of Ireland. It is no longer used as an administrative division for local government but retai ...
, and his mother was a Scottish Protestant, originally from
Aberdeen
Aberdeen (; sco, Aiberdeen ; gd, Obar Dheathain ; la, Aberdonia) is a city in North East Scotland, and is the third most populous city in the country. Aberdeen is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas (as Aberdeen City), a ...
. In 1909, a few years after Devlin's birth, the family moved to his mother's birthplace. The children were raised as Catholics. Two of Devlin's sisters became nuns; one brother was the actor
William Devlin and another became a
Jesuit
, image = Ihs-logo.svg
, image_size = 175px
, caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits
, abbreviation = SJ
, nickname = Jesuits
, formation =
, founders ...
priest.
Devlin joined the
Dominican Order
The Order of Preachers ( la, Ordo Praedicatorum) abbreviated OP, also known as the Dominicans, is a Catholic mendicant order of Pontifical Right for men founded in Toulouse, France, by the Spanish priest, saint and mystic Dominic of ...
as a
novice
A novice is a person who has entered a religious order and is under probation, before taking vows. A ''novice'' can also refer to a person (or animal e.g. racehorse) who is entering a profession with no prior experience.
Religion Buddhism
...
after leaving
Stonyhurst College
Stonyhurst College is a co-educational Roman Catholic independent school, adhering to the Jesuit tradition, on the Stonyhurst Estate, Lancashire, England. It occupies a Grade I listed building. The school has been fully co-educational sinc ...
, but left after a year for
Christ's College, Cambridge
Christ's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college includes the Master, the Fellows of the College, and about 450 undergraduate and 170 graduate students. The college was founded by William Byngham in 1437 as ...
. At Cambridge, Devlin read both History and Law, and was elected
President
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
* President (education), a leader of a college or university
* President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...
of
Cambridge Union
The Cambridge Union Society, also known as the Cambridge Union, is a debating and free speech society in Cambridge, England, and the largest society in the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1815, it is the oldest continuously running debati ...
in 1926. He graduated in 1927, having obtained a
Lower Second for both parts of his degree.
Legal and judicial career
He joined
Gray's Inn
The Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, commonly known as Gray's Inn, is one of the four Inns of Court (professional associations for barristers and judges) in London. To be called to the bar in order to practise as a barrister in England and W ...
in 1927, passing the
bar
Bar or BAR may refer to:
Food and drink
* Bar (establishment), selling alcoholic beverages
* Candy bar
* Chocolate bar
Science and technology
* Bar (river morphology), a deposit of sediment
* Bar (tropical cyclone), a layer of cloud
* Bar ( ...
exam in 1929. He worked as
devil
A devil is the personification of evil as it is conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. It is seen as the objectification of a hostile and destructive force. Jeffrey Burton Russell states that the different conceptions of ...
for
William Jowitt
William Allen Jowitt, 1st Earl Jowitt, (15 April 1885 – 16 August 1957) was a British Liberal Party, National Labour and then Labour Party politician and lawyer who served as Lord Chancellor under Clement Attlee from 1945 to 1951.
Backgro ...
while Jowitt was
Attorney-General
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general (sometimes abbreviated AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. The plural is attorneys general.
In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have exec ...
, and by the late 1930s had a successful commercial practice. During the Second World War he worked for several government ministries. He
took silk in 1939 and was Attorney-General of the
Duchy of Cornwall
The Duchy of Cornwall ( kw, Duketh Kernow) is one of two royal duchies in England, the other being the Duchy of Lancaster. The eldest son of the reigning British monarch obtains possession of the duchy and the title of 'Duke of Cornwall' at ...
between 1947 and 1948.
High Court judge
In 1948, Jowitt (by then
Lord Chancellor
The lord chancellor, formally the lord high chancellor of Great Britain, is the highest-ranking traditional minister among the Great Officers of State in Scotland and England in the United Kingdom, nominally outranking the prime minister. Th ...
) made Devlin, then aged 42, a
High Court judge, assigned to the
King's Bench Division; he received the customary
knighthood
A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the ...
later that year. He was the second-youngest person to be appointed to the High Court bench in the 20th century. From 1956 to 1960 he also served as the first President of the
Restrictive Practices Court.
Trial of John Bodkin Adams
Amongst many commercial and criminal cases that Devlin tried, perhaps his most famous case was the 1957 trial of
John Bodkin Adams
John Bodkin Adams (21 January 18994 July 1983) was an Irish-born British general practitioner, convicted fraudster, and suspected serial killer. Between 1946 and 1956, 163 of his patients died while in comas, which was deemed to be worthy of ...
, an
Eastbourne
Eastbourne () is a town and seaside resort in East Sussex, on the south coast of England, east of Brighton and south of London. Eastbourne is immediately east of Beachy Head, the highest chalk sea cliff in Great Britain and part of the l ...
doctor indicted for murdering two of his patients
Edith Alice Morrell
Edith Alice Morrell (20 June 1869 – 13 November 1950) was a resident of Eastbourne, East Sussex, England, and patient of Dr John Bodkin Adams. Although Adams was acquitted in 1957 of her murder, the question of Adams' role in Morrell's death ...
an elderly widow and
Gertrude Hullett
Gertrude or Gertrud may refer to:
Places In space
*Gertrude (crater), a crater on Uranus's moon Titania
*710 Gertrud, a minor planet
Terrestrial placenames
* Gertrude, Arkansas
* Gertrude, Washington
* Gertrude, West Virginia
People
* Gertrude ...
, a middle-aged woman whose husband had died four months before her death. Although the
Attorney-General
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general (sometimes abbreviated AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. The plural is attorneys general.
In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have exec ...
's decision to charge Adams with the murder of Morrell, whose body had been cremated, was questioned, Devlin considered the Morrell case, although six years old, was stronger than that of Mrs Hullett, who had clearly committed suicide and the extent, if any, of Adams' involvement in this was uncertain.
Bodkin Adams was tried on the Morrell charge. Devlin considered that the prosecution, although it had not been wrong to bring the case to trial, had not prepared its case adequately as the
Attorney-General
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general (sometimes abbreviated AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. The plural is attorneys general.
In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have exec ...
was a busy minister and the next most senior member of his team
Melford Stevenson did not make up for his leader's absence. The prosecution had not presented a coherent case, particularly on motive, and in his summing up Devlin said that the defence case was a manifestly strong one.
[Devlin, (1985), pp. 167, 177.] In contrast, the defence led by
Geoffrey Lawrence Q.C. had, in his view, presented a meticulously prepared and ably argued case. Devlin directed the jury not to find for the prosecution unless they rejected all the defence arguments, and accepted this was a summing up for an acquittal.
Adams was then found not guilty on the Morrell charge. Controversially, the prosecutor –
Attorney-General
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general (sometimes abbreviated AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. The plural is attorneys general.
In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have exec ...
, Sir
Reginald Manningham-Buller – claimed in Parliament that the acquittal was the result of Devlin's judicial misdirection and even more controversially, he entered a
regarding the Hullett charge. Devlin later termed this "an abuse of process", done because the prosecution's case was deficient, and left Adams under the suspicion that there might have been some truth in talk of mass murder.
Devlin received a phone call from the Lord Chief Justice
Lord Goddard at the time defence and prosecution were making their closing speeches. In the event of Adams being acquitted, Goddard suggested that Devlin might consider an application to release Adams on bail before the Hullett trial which was due to start afterwards. Devlin was initially extremely surprised because he had never heard of anyone accused of murder being granted bail, although he considered that Lord Goddard was not deterred by the lack of any precedent. However, he considered that such an application might be justified in the particular circumstances of this case, and invited the Attorney-General and Geoffrey Lawrence to discuss the issue.
In 1985, two years after the death of Adams, Devlin wrote an account of the trial, ''Easing the Passing'' – the first such book by a judge in British history. ''Easing the Passing'' provoked a great deal of controversy within the legal profession. Some disapproved of a judge writing about a case he had presided over, while others disliked Devlin's dismissal of Manningham-Buller's approach to the case.
Lord Hailsham told judge
John Baker: "He ought never to have written it" before adding with a laugh, "But, it's a jolly good read".
Court of Appeal and House of Lords
In 1960, Devlin was made a
Lord Justice of Appeal
A Lord Justice of Appeal or Lady Justice of Appeal is a judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, the court that hears appeals from the High Court of Justice, the Crown Court and other courts and tribunals. A Lord (or Lady) Justic ...
, and the following year, on 11 October, he became a
Law Lord
Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, commonly known as Law Lords, were judges appointed under the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876 to the British House of Lords, as a committee of the House, effectively to exercise the judicial functions of the House ...
and
life peer
In the United Kingdom, life peers are appointed members of the peerage whose titles cannot be inherited, in contrast to hereditary peers. In modern times, life peerages, always created at the rank of baron, are created under the Life Peerages ...
, as Baron Devlin, ''of West Wick in the
County of Wiltshire''. He retired in 1964, at the age of 58, having completed the minimum 15 years then necessary to qualify for a full judicial pension. He said that his retirement was due in part to his boredom with the large number of tax cases that came before the House of Lords.
He himself explained in an interview: "I was extremely happy as a judge of first instance. I was never happy as an appellate judge ... for the most part, the work was dreary beyond belief. All those revenue cases ..."
After retirement, Devlin was a judge on the Administrative Tribunal of the
International Labour Organization
The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a United Nations agency whose mandate is to advance social and economic justice by setting international labour standards. Founded in October 1919 under the League of Nations, it is the first and o ...
until 1986. He was also chairman of the
Press Council from 1964 to 1969, and
High Steward of Cambridge University from 1966 until 1991. He spent time writing about law and history, especially the interaction of law with moral philosophy, and the importance of juries. He was active in the campaigns to reopen the
Guildford Four
Guildford ()
is a town in west Surrey, around southwest of central London. As of the 2011 census, the town has a population of about 77,000 and is the seat of the wider Borough of Guildford, which had around inhabitants in . The name "Guildf ...
and
Maguire Seven cases. He died aged 86 in
Pewsey, Wiltshire.
Lord Devlin received several honorary degrees, including from the universities of
Oxford
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
,
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
,
Glasgow
Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popu ...
,
Sussex
Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the Englis ...
,
Leicester
Leicester ( ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city, Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority and the county town of Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England. It is the largest settlement in the East Midlands.
The city l ...
,
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...
, and
Durham.
Other public activities
Hart–Devlin debate
After the
Wolfenden report
The Report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution (better known as the Wolfenden report, after Sir John Wolfenden, the chairman of the committee) was published in the United Kingdom on 4 September 1957 after a suc ...
in 1957, Devlin argued, initially in his 1959 Maccabean Lecture in Jurisprudence at the
British Academy
The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences.
It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars s ...
, in support of
James Fitzjames Stephen
Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, 1st Baronet, KCSI (3 March 1829 – 11 March 1894) was an English lawyer, judge, writer, and philosopher. One of the most famous critics of John Stuart Mill, Stephen achieved prominence as a philosopher, law ...
that popular morality should be allowed to influence lawmaking, and that even private acts should be subject to legal sanction if they were held to be morally unacceptable by the "reasonable man", to preserve the moral fabric of society (Devlin's "reasonable man" was one who held commonly accepted views, not necessarily derived from reason as such).
H. L. A. Hart supported the report's opposing view (derived from
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, Member of Parliament (MP) and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to ...
) that the law had no business interfering with private acts that harmed nobody. Devlin's argument was expanded in his book ''The Enforcement of Morals'' (1965). As a result of his debate with Devlin on the role of the criminal law in enforcing moral norms, Hart wrote ''Law, Liberty and Morality'' (1963) and ''The Morality of the Criminal Law'' (1965).
In the first lecture in "The Enforcement of Morals", Devlin argued that "society means a community of ideas; without shared ideas on politics, morals and ethics no society can exist". Violation of the shared morality loosens one of the bonds that hold a society together, and thereby threatens it with disintegration. So an attack on "society's constitutive morality" would threaten society with disintegration. Such acts could therefore not be free from public scrutiny and sanction on the basis that they were purely private acts. He explained:
While thus concluding that violations of the "moral code" were the law's business, Devlin observed that this did not mean that society necessarily had the power to intervene. He noted that the chief of the "elastic principles" limiting the power of the State to legislate against immorality was "toleration of the maximum individual freedom that is consistent with the integrity of society". He suggested that "the limits of tolerance" are reached when the feelings of the ordinary person towards a particular form of conduct reaches a certain intensity of "intolerance, indignation and disgust". If, for example, it is the genuine feeling of society that homosexuality is "a vice so abominable that its mere presence is an offence", then society may eradicate it.
Privately Devlin felt that antipathy to homosexuality had not reached an intensity of "intolerance, indignation and disgust". In May 1965, he was one of the signatories of a letter to ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' ( ...
'' calling for the implementation of the
Wolfenden reforms.
[
The American legal philosopher ]Joel Feinberg
Joel Feinberg (October 19, 1926 in Detroit, Michigan – March 29, 2004 in Tucson, Arizona) was an American political and legal philosopher. He is known for his work in the fields of ethics, action theory, philosophy of law, and political p ...
stated in 1987 that to a "modern" reader, Devlin's responses to Hart's arguments "seem feeble and perfunctory" and that most readers "will probably conclude that there is no salvaging Devlin's social disintegration thesis, his analogies to political subversion and treason, his conception of the nature of popular morality and how its deliverance is to be ascertained, or the skimpy place he allows to natural moral change". Feinberg does allow that Devlin has an important challenge to liberalism in his formulation of an argument as to why we "treat greater moral blameworthiness ... as an aggravating factor and lesser moral blameworthiness as a mitigating factor in the assignments of punishment".
Devlin, for his part, considered (mainly in the last lecture in "The Enforcement of Morals") that the supporters of John Stuart Mill's doctrine had not plausibly fitted into their own theories such violations of the moral code as euthanasia, suicide, a suicide pact, duelling, abortion, incest, cruelty to animals, bigamy, bestiality and other obscenity, committed in private between consenting adults, causing no harm to others.
Devlin Commission
In 1959, soon after the declaration of the state of emergency in Nyasaland, the British Cabinet
Cabinet or The Cabinet may refer to:
Furniture
* Cabinetry, a box-shaped piece of furniture with doors and/or drawers
* Display cabinet, a piece of furniture with one or more transparent glass sheets or transparent polycarbonate sheets
* Filin ...
under Prime Minister Harold Macmillan
Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986) was a British Conservative statesman and politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963. Caricatured as " Supermac", ...
decided to set up a Commission of Inquiry into the disturbances there and their policing, and appointed Devlin as chairman. Devlin was not Macmillan's choice for chairman, and he later criticised Devlin's appointment, criticising him for having "that Fenian
The word ''Fenian'' () served as an umbrella term for the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and their affiliate in the United States, the Fenian Brotherhood, secret political organisations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries dedicate ...
blood that makes Irishmen anti-Government on principle" and for being "bitterly disappointed at my not having made him Lord Chief Justice". He also called him a "hunchback
Kyphosis is an abnormally excessive convex curvature of the spine as it occurs in the thoracic and sacral regions. Abnormal inward concave ''lordotic'' curving of the cervical and lumbar regions of the spine is called lordosis. It can result ...
".
In response to an early draft of the commission's report, which was highly critical of repressive police methods, the government hurriedly commissioned the rival Armitage Report, which was delivered in July of that year and backed Britain's role there. Bernard Levin, among others, was of the opinion that: "The Government refused to accept the Devlin Report because it told the truth". Despite Macmillan's's rejection of the Devlin Report, once Iain Macleod
Iain Norman Macleod (11 November 1913 – 20 July 1970) was a British Conservative Party politician and government minister.
A playboy and professional bridge player in his twenties, after war service Macleod worked for the Conservative Researc ...
became Colonial Secretary later in 1959, he approached Devlin for advice.
Personal life
In 1932, Devlin married Madeleine Hilda Oppenheimer (1909–2012), daughter of the diamonds magnate Sir Bernard Oppenheimer, Bt. Together the couple had six children.
Devlin's daughter Clare claimed publicly in evidence to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in 2021, when she was 81, that he had sexually abused her from the age of 7 until her teens.
Bibliography
* Devlin, The Hon. Sir Patrick, ''Trial by Jury'', Stevens & Sons, 1956, 1966
* Devlin, Patrick, ''The Enforcement of Morals'', Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1965, 1968
* Devlin, Patrick, ''Too Proud to Fight'', 1974 (biography of Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of ...
)
* Devlin, Patrick, ''The Judge'', Oxford University Press, 1979, 1981
* Devlin, Patrick, ''Easing the Passing'', The Bodley Head, 1985
References
Notes
Sources
*
*
*
*
External links
Review of Devlin's autobiography
by Alan Watkins
Alan Rhun Watkins (3 April 1933 – 8 May 2010) was for over 50 years a British political columnist in various London-based magazines and newspapers. He also wrote about wine and rugby.
Life and career
Alan Watkins was born in Tycroes, Carmar ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Devlin, Patrick Devlin, Baron
1905 births
1992 deaths
Alumni of Christ's College, Cambridge
English barristers
English Roman Catholics
English legal writers
English people of Irish descent
English people of Scottish descent
Fellows of the British Academy
Knights Bachelor
Law lords
Members of Gray's Inn
Members of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council
Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom
People educated at Stonyhurst College
People from Chislehurst
Place of death missing
Presidents of the Cambridge Union
Lords Justices of Appeal
Attorneys-General of the Duchy of Cornwall
20th-century King's Counsel
Queen's Bench Division judges