ADDRESS AT THE SERVICE OF
THANKSGIVING FOR

*THE RT. HON. LORD DENNING, O.M.

**The Rt.Hon. Lord Bingham of Corn hill

Lord Denning is the best known-known and best-loved judge in the whole of
our history.

There have over the centuries been judges of strong character, powerful
intellect, great learning, courage, wisdom, compassion, eloquence, robust
commonsense. All these qualities Lord penning had in abundance. But he had
something more: a unique gift of human warmth which endeared him to everyone
who knew him and many who did not. .

The story of Lord Denning's upbringing in Whitchurch, with his parents, his
sister and his four brothers, has been so vividly and movingly told by him that it
is familiar to us all. But one thing in particular is striking. Throughout his long
life he remained unfailingly true to the values, beliefs, habits and tastes of his
early years. He was a devoted member of the Anglican Church, loving its
worship, liturgy and language. He answered to an unbending sense of duty. He
had an indefatigable capacity and inexhaustible relish for hard work. He had a
love of his country both deep and proud. He had a passionate love of the English
countryside, particularly the chalk uplands of North Hampshire and the magical
valley of the Test. He felt an instinctive respect for the continuity of our
institutions and traditions and for authority, if not always for the authorities. He
practised the virtues of thrift, sobriety and plain living. He had an unaffected
simplicity of speech and bearing. He believed, profoundly, in the brotherhood of
man and the worth of individual human beings. He was contemptuous of the
"fugitive, the trivial and the mean." The late Victorian principles by which he
governed his life are unfashionable today; and it is not surprising that his lifelong
adherence to them should have given ammunition to his critics in a later and more
permiSSive age .

• Westminster Abbey, Thursday, 17th June, 1999.
•• Then, the Lord Chief Justice of England & Wales, presently the Senior Law Lord of Appeal
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This is not the place and this is not the occasion to attempt any assessment of
Lord Denning's legal legacy. But nor, I think, would he wish us to ignore the
great work to which, during his now unrepeatable thirty-eight year tenure of high
judicial office, he devoted his life. There was little in the law which over that
time he did not touch; and little that he touched which he did not adorn. In the
vast body of cases which he decided, two chords in particular are dominant. The
first is fairness, a tenn which cannot (I believe) be accurately translated into any
other language: fairness in the treatment of the citizen by the state, ofthe litigant
by the judge, of the applicant by the tribunal, of the consumer by the supplier, of
the tenant by the landlord, of the customer by the bank, of the deserted wife by
her husband, of the member by the trade union or the profession, of the patient by
the hospital and the doctor, of the pm1y injured by a careless statement or act by
the author of the injury. The second chord is freedom: freedom of the press;
freedom of the person; freedom of mind and conscience; freedom from executive
interference; freedom under the law.

If wrapped in legal jargon, with an occasional dash of Latin, all these things
may sound technical and abstruse and remote from the humdrum realities of
everyday life. But in his mouth they never did. Lord Denning's judgments were
rooted not in discussion of abstract jurisprudential principle but in the vivid
experience of recognisable men and women. It was this human dimension,
coupled with a distinctive literary style, which gave his judgments their
unmistakable and very personal quality. We all have our favourites. I cannot
forbear to quote four of his:

"Old Peter Beswick was a coal merchant in Eccles, Lancashire.
He had no business premises. All he had was a lorry, scales and
weights ... "

"It happened on 19 April 1964. It was bluebell time in Kent. Mr
and Mrs Hinz had been married some ten years, and they had four
children, all aged 9 and under. The youngest was one. Mrs Hinz
was a remarkable woman ..... "

"Broadchalke is one of the most pleasing villages in England. Old
Herbert Bundy, the defendant, was a farmer there. His home was
at Yew Tree Farm. It went back for three hundred years. His
family had been there for generations. It was his only asset. But
he did a very foolish thing. He mortgaged it to the bank. Up to the
very hilt ... "

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MEMORIAL ADDRESS

"To some this may appear to be a very small matter, but to Mr
Harry Hook it is very important. He is a street trader in the
Bamsley market. He has been trading there for some six years
without any complaint being made against him; but nevertheless;
he has now been banned from trading in the market for life. All
because of a trifling incident ... "

The peculiar genius of Lord Denning was perfectly matched to the need of the
hour. "When Tom and I were young," wrote Lord Devlin, "the law was
stagnant." In Lord Hailsham' s words, "It seemed almost as if Our Lady of the
Common Law had gone into a decline ..... " The age of creation appeared to have
gone. That of literalists, slavish adherents of precedent and quietist acceptors of
the status quo appeared to have succeeded; and the glory of the common law
appeared to have been extinguished forever. That the law was aroused from its
torpor was not, of course, the work of one court or one judge. The credit must be
much more widely shared. But in any roll of the great emancipators Lord
Denning would be assured of an honoured place, probably at the head of the list.
For he brought a new, adventurous and imaginative vision to bear. He was more
concerned with the intention of a statute than with its precise terminology. He
was not overly respectful of precedent. He was prepared to entertain unorthodox
arguments if they appeared to lead to what he saw as justice. He did not shrink
from novelty. "What is the argument on the other side?" he asked in one case,
and answered:

"Only this, that no case has been found in which it has been done
before. That argument does not appeal to me in the least. If we
never do anything which has not been done before, we shall never
get anywhere. The law will stand still while the rest of the world
goes on: and that will be bad for both."

The secret of his attraction to the legal profession and to the general public was,
as Lord Devlin suggested, the belief that he opened the door to the law above the
law. He had, to the end, an almost uncanny insight into the thoughts and values
of his fellow-countrymen.

To the advocate he was the perfect judge: courteous, unintimidating, open-
minded, very quick, self-deprecating, devoid of pomposity. He seemed genuinely
interested in every case, however, arid; he was warm and encouraging to
counsel, particularly the untried. Under his benign but exacting inquiry all

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THE DENNING LAW JOURNAL

advocates gave of their best. Unlike some other judges, he could demolish an
argument he judged to be false without needlessly humiliating its author. And for
all his interest and patience he was never indecisive; there was never any doubt
about who had won.

His longevity could on occasion be a problem. r recall one case in which my
argument depended heavily on an observation of Viscount Simon, speaking for a
unanimous seven-member House of Lords in 1942. I warmed to my theme. But
the Master of the Rolls interrupted. "Oh," he said, "but Lord Simon was very
sorry he ever said that. He told me so," But sometimes his encyclopaedic
knowledge of the cases, or his vivid imagination, would come to the aid of an
advocate cowering under the assault of his opponent or of Lord Denning's
judicial colleagues. Like all great judges he was of course, on occasion,
inconsistent and unpredictable. All depended on his, sometimes very personal,
perception of where the merits lay and what justice required. But that made the
hearing all the more absorbing. No wonder the Bar loved him. No wonder that
his colleagues embarked on so many hazardous journeys under his leadership.
No wonder that his exchanges with litigants representing themselves, conducted
on his side in his broadest Hampshire burr, were the stuff of legend. No wonder
that he inspired such loyalty among those who worked for him.

For five days a week, over a continuous period of more than twenty years,
Lord Denning presided in the Master of the Rolls' court, giving the first judgment
in every single case, usually as soon as the argument had ended. It was an
intellectual, and also a physical, achievement which will never be rivalled. His
energy, his interest and his appetite were unflagging. If the beleaguered advocate
were tempted to inquire, at 4 o'clock on a Friday afternoon, whether the court
might think it a convenient moment to rise, he would be disappointed.

I have so far said nothing of the private man. His devotion to the memory of his
first wife Mary, who died so tragically and so young, is a matter of record. He
was a very proud and very affectionate father of Robert, who followed in his
footsteps with great distinction to Magdalen College, Oxford, and a great
patriarch of his extended family. His attachment to his second wife Joan is
perhaps best expressed in a letter written on her death after nearly forty-seven
years of married life:

"I feel it is really an occasion for thankfulness for a long and
happy life - but for me it is all sadness at the loss of her so dear to
me."

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MEMORIAL ADDRESS

It would scarcely be possible to list the bodies to which, over the years, he
gave his loyalty and lent his energetic support. They would certainly include
Magdalen College, Oxford, Birkbeck College, London and the University of
Buckingham; the Inns of Court, particularly Lincoln's Inn, his parent Inn, and the
Law Society; the Lawyers' Christian Fellowship; the Cheshire Homes,
Cumberland Lodge and Outpost Emmaus; the Magna Carta Trust, the Public
Record Office, the Historical Manuscripts Commission; the Magistrates'
Association; the British Institute of International and Comparative Law; the
English Association; the National Association of Parish Councils; the National
Marriage Guidance Council; the Draper's Company; Queen Elizabeth College,
Greenwich; the City of London. But he still found time to arbitrate about sugar
cane in Fiji and bananas in Jamaica. He still accepted the Prime Minister's
invitation to report on the Profumo Affair, a task accomplished between June and
September of 1963; many years later he presided at a dinner in Lincoln's Inn to
celebrate the outstanding service ofMr ProfumO, to Toynbee Hall, an event which
testifies to the stature of both men. At an age when most men look for leisure,
Lord Denning turned author, publishing books in each of his last four years in
office, books valued by those who have them not only for their contents but also
for their very personal dedications. And throughout his term as Master of the
Rolls he travelled the world, tirelessly and repeatedly, giving lectures and
addresses, receiving honorary degrees, making friends and establishing a rapport
with the young of five continents which few men of any age have ever enjoyed.
To those who expect judges to be cold, formal, bloodless and pedantic he was a
revelation. The respect and affection' he inspired, particularly in the countries of
the Commonwealth, was indeed extraordinary: I recall meeting a Guyanese
advocate who practised from Denning Chambers in Georgetown and who had
christened his eldest son Alfred Thompson. Last year saw the opening of
Denning House in Calgary, Alberta. Many other examples could be given, in this
country and around the world. For all these services alone, Her Majesty's
appointment to the Order of Merit, unique for a professional judge, would have
been well-earned recognition.

We are privileged to remember Lord Denning as an unforgettable human being
whose hundredth birthday we recently celebrated with pride and pleasure. But
we also remember him as a great judge and it is as a great judge that he will take
his place in history. Not all his judgments, of course, will stand the test oftime;
some, indeed, were cut down in the pride of their youth; others were raked by
academic grapeshot. But more, many more, left an indelible imprint on the living
law of our country, and the spirit which inspired all these judgments will endure.
He saw the law not as a code of rules, but as a collection of human stories, each

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with a moral; not as a fetter, but as a source of freedom; not as an unwelcome but
inescapable response to the ills of society, but as a means of providing that
justice upon which good government and social harmony fundamentally depend.
He invested the art of the advocate and the role of the judge with a new nobility.
He always looked forward, never back. He sought to build, not to pull down.
Some well-known lines of Wordsworth provide, I think, an appropriate epitaph:

"Enough, if something from our hands have power
To live, and act, and serve the future hour;
And if, as toward the silent tomb we go,
Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower,
We feel that we are greater than we know."

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