Patrick Devlin, Baron Devlin

Patrick Arthur Devlin (25 November 1905 - 9 August 1992) was a British lawyer, judge, and jurist.

Biography

Patrick Devlin was born in Chislehurst, Kent. His father was a Roman Catholic architect, originally from County Tyrone, and his mother was a Protestant, originally from Aberdeen. 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, and a brother became a Jesuit priest (another brother was an actor). Devlin joined the Dominican order as a novice after leaving Stonyhurst College, but left after a year for Christ's College, Cambridge.

At Cambridge, Devlin read both history and law, and he graduated in 1927, joining Gray's Inn and passing the bar exam in 1929. He worked as devil for William Jowitt while Jowitt was Attorney-General, and by the late 1930s he had become a successful commercial lawyer. During the Second World War he worked for various ministries of the UK Government, and in 1948 Jowitt (by then Lord Chancellor) made Devlin a High Court judge. He was 42, the second-youngest such appointment in the 20th century. Devlin was knighted later that year.

Amongst many commercial and criminal cases which Devlin tried, one of the most famous was the 1957 trial of John Bodkin Adams, a doctor suspected (but acquitted) of murdering some of his patients. In 1985 Devlin wrote an account of the trial, Easing the Passing.

After the Wolfenden report in 1957, Devlin argued 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", in order 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) that the law had no business interfering with private acts which harmed nobody. Devlin's argument was expanded in his 1965 book The Enforcement of Morals.

In 1960 Devlin was made Lord Justice of the Court of Appeal, and the following year he became a Law Lord. He retired in 1964 when he reached the minimum age for retirement (58).

After retirement, Devlin was a judge on the tribunal of the International Labour Organization until 1986. He was also chairman of the Press Council from 1964-69, and high steward of Cambridge University from 1966-91. He also 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 and Maguire Seven cases.

Devlin married Madeleine Oppenheimer in 1932, and they had six children.

External links

• Review of Devlin's autobiography by Alan Watkins