Gerald Gardiner, Baron Gardiner

Gerald Austin Gardiner, Baron Gardiner CH (born May 30, 1900 in London ; † January 7, 1990 ibid) was a British lawyer who, as Lord Chancellor, carried out extensive reforms in the British legal system .

biography

Lawyer and opponent of the death penalty

After visiting the Harrow School , making it to the Old Harrovians belonged, he studied law at Magdalen College of Oxford University and began after the lawyer's approval in 1925 working as a lawyer .

As such, he advocated extensive basic and human rights as well as a reform of the judicial system. He later co-chaired the national campaign to abolish the death penalty alongside Victor Gollancz and published his views on the matter in Capital Punishment as a Deterrent (1956). In 1960 he was one next to John Mortimer to the lawyers of the Penguin publishing house in proceedings against the publication of of DH Lawrence written novel Lady Chatterley from 1928. The process ended with the publishing of criminal charges after the so-called Obscene Publications Act (Act obscene publications) was acquitted .

In 1963 he became a life peer with the title Baron Gardiner , of Kittisford in the County of Somerset , in the nobility raised and thus a member of the House of Lords .

Lord Chancellor and Reforms of the Legal System

After the Labor Party won the House of Commons elections in 1964, Prime Minister Harold Wilson made him Lord Chancellor .

During his tenure as Lord Chancellor, which lasted until the end of Wilson's tenure in June 1970, he implemented extensive reforms in the British legal system. In 1965, the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act initially suspended the execution of the death penalty for five years, and this suspension was extended to an indefinite period in 1969.

In addition, following the establishment of the Law Commission, which he initiated, there were reforms in the laws on termination of pregnancy through the Abortion Act 1967, which included a broad regulation of socio-medical indications, as well as homosexuality .

In 1965 he also appointed Elizabeth Lane, the first female judge at the High Court of Justice, and introduced compulsory training for justice of the peace .

After the Labor Party lost to the Conservative Party in the 1970 general election, he resigned as Lord Chancellor.

In 1973 he became Chancellor of the Open University in Milton Keynes, founded in 1969, and held this office until 1978.

Web links

• Chambers Biographical Dictionary , p. 580, Edinburgh 2002, ISBN 0-550-10051-2