Thomas Henry Bingham

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Lord Bingham in the robe of a Knight of the Order of the Garter

Thomas Henry Bingham, Baron Bingham of Cornhill , KG , PC , QC , FBA (born October 13, 1933 in London , † September 11, 2010 in Powys , Wales ) was a British judge and lawyer . He has held several senior judicial posts in the United Kingdom .

life and career

Bingham was born in London on October 13, 1933 . His parents worked as doctors in Reigate , Surrey , where he grew up. The father was an Ulster Presbyterian . Thomas Bingham attended Sedbergh School ( Winder House ), a public school in Cumbria . He did his military service with the Royal Ulster Rifles , and was there the Second Lieutenant from 1952 to 1954. He received a scholarship Gibbs to Modern History ( Modern History ) at Balliol College of the University of Oxford to study. There he graduated with the grade "very good". After graduating, he studied Law Fellowship with Eldon law for a career as a barrister , and graduated in 1959 as one of the best in class.

In 1959 he was on the London Bar Association Gray's Inn as a lawyer admitted. He joined a law firm in London run by Leslie Scarman as a barrister . From 1968 to 1972 he was Junior Counsel at the Department of Labor . In 1972, he was 38 years of Attorney ( Queen's Counsel ). In 1975 he was appointed recorder at the Crown Court , in 1980 a high court judge at the Queen's Bench Division and at the Commercial Court .

In 1977, he moved into public attention when he by the then Foreign Secretary David Owen to lead an investigation into a possible breach of the UN - embargo against Rhodesia by oil companies was commissioned in the south of the country. He was promoted to the Court of Appeal in 1986 and directed an investigation into the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International from 1991 to 1992 .

On October 1, 1992, he became a Master of the Rolls and began significant reforms in that office, including the replacement of certain oral hearings in major civil cases. He was the first high-ranking British judge to support the incorporation of the legal bases of the European Convention on Human Rights into the British legal system, which was accomplished with the passage of the Human Rights Act 1998.

As Lord Chief Justice , Bingham was from June 4, 1996 to June 6, 2000 for these regions of the kingdom the highest judge in the area of ​​general jurisdiction; he was personally responsible for ensuring that the addition and Wales was included in the official title. In 2000, he became the first appointed Senior Law Lord , a position previously held by the senior Lord of Appeal . His successor as Lord Chief Justice was Harry Woolf , who had been his successor in 1996 as Master of the Rolls .

He was an advocate for the separation of the judicial branch of the House of Lords from Parliament through the creation of a new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom , which was achieved through the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. The title of office he held has been "President of the Supreme Court" since the Court opened in October 2009; however, Lord Bingham retired in July 2008. He said he regretted not becoming the first president.

After his retirement, he focused his work on his duties as a teacher and lecturer in human rights .

Membership in the House of Lords

Bingham was named Life Peer and Law Lord as Baron Bingham of Cornhill , of Boughrood in the County of Powys on June 4, 1996 . With the title was a seat in the House of Lords , which he took as a crossbencher . Bingham gave his inaugural address in the House of Lords on July 3, 1996. On June 22, 2000, he last spoke there. He was last present for a vote on May 22, 2006.

Further offices and honors

From 1982 to 1986 he was Chairman ( Chair ) of the Council of Legal Education . From 1983 to 1993 he was a fellow at Winchester College and from 1986 visiting professor ( Visitor ) at Balliol College at the University of Oxford. He was a member of the Advisory Council of the Center for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary College at London University from 1989 to 1992. From 1989 to 1993 he was Chair of the King's Fund Working Party into Statutory Registration of Osteopaths and Chiropractors . At the Royal Postgraduate Medical School , he was a visiting professor from 1989 to 1999 ( Visitor ). From 1992 to 1996 he was a member of the Council on Public Records and from 1992 to 1996 President of the British Records Association .

He was visiting professor ( Visitor ) at Nuffield College, University of Oxford from 1992 to 1996. He was a member of the Royal Commission of Historical Manuscripts from 1994 to 2003. He was also a visiting professor at Darwin College of the University of Cambridge from 1996 to 2000 and at Templeton College at Oxford University from 1996 onwards.

He was president of the Seckford Foundation and the Friends of the National Archives . He was chairman of the British Society . He was a member of the LEPRA Health in Action Board of Trustees . He was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Cambrian Music Trust . He was also President of the Hay Festival and the 1525 Society of the Sedbergh School . In 2003 he became an honorary member of the British Academy .

In 2005 he became a Knight of the Order of the Garter , an honor as a personal gift from Queen Elizabeth II that is rarely given to judges. He received this award along with Lady Soames and Sir John Major . He was also President and Chairman ( Chairman ) of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law , which the Bingham Center for the Rule of Law established in his honor.

From 2001 to 2008 Bingham was High Steward of the University of Oxford, the second highest office in the academic hierarchy, and in 2003 he came second in the election of Chancellor after Chris Patten . In 2009 Bingham was involved with the British charity organization Reprive . There he was chairman ( Chairman ) and director.

Working in public

On November 17, 2008, in his first important speech since retiring as Senior Law Lord , to The British Institute of International and Comparative Law , he questioned the legality of the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the US , Great Britain and other states. He said that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was "a serious violation of international law" and accused the UK and US of acting like a "world citizenship".

In June 2009, Bingham was interviewed by lawyer Joshua Rozenberg on the rule of law in the international arena. The interview was conducted to raise awareness of the Bingham Center for the Rule of Law at The British Institute of International and Comparative Law . Bingham's reflections on the subject, particularly the prohibition of certain weapons in international conflicts, have been published in The Independent , as well as in The Daily Telegraph . Bingham had compared unmanned drones with cluster bombs and land mines and classified them as violating international law because of their effects.

His book, The Rule of Law , was published by Penguin in 2010 by founder Allen Lane .

In 2006 he gave the annual Sir David Williams Lecture at the Center for Public Law in the Faculty of Law at Cambridge University . The title of this talk was The Rule of Law . In January 2008 he presented the annual Hansard Lecture at the University of Southampton . In 2009 he gave the annual Jan Grodecki Lecture at Leicester University, entitled The House of Lords: Its Future .

Private and death

Bingham married Elizabeth Patricia Loxley on September 14, 1963. He had two sons and a daughter who lived with Dr. Jesse Norman ( MP ) is married.

Bingham died on 11 September 2010 at the age of 76 at his home in Cornhill, Powys in Wales to cancer .

Publications

literature

  • Stephen Sedley: Bingham, Thomas Henry, Baron Bingham of Cornhill (1933-2010). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of January 2008, accessed May 21, 2014.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Human rights in the (bus) queue? Article in The Times on November 20, 2007
  2. ^ Charles Mosley ( ed. ): Burke's Peerage & Baronetage, 107th edn . Burke's Peerage & Gentry Ltd, London 2003, ISBN 0-9711966-2-1 , p. 376 (BINGHAM OF CORNHILL, LP).
  3. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed May 5, 2020 .
  4. ↑ www.binghamcentre.biicl.org
  5. ↑ Lord Bingham of Cornhill to become Reprieve's new Chairman Message on the homepage of «Reprieve»
  6. ↑ Iraq War 'violated rule of law BBC News, November 18, 2008
  7. ↑ Top Judge: 'Use of drones intolerable' article in The Independent, July 6, 2009
  8. ↑ Unmanned drones could be banned, says senior judge Article in The Daily Telegraph, July 6, 2009
  9. ↑ Welcome to the Center for Public Law Homepage of the Center for Public Law
  10. ↑ The Rule of Law ( Memento of the original from October 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. The lecture The Rule of Law on the homepage of the "Center for Public Law" @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.cpl.law.cam.ac.uk
  11. ^ Prof. Jan Grodecki Lecture for the School of Law, to be given by The Lord Bingham of Cornhill KG Announcement on the homepage of the University of Leicester
  12. ↑ www.burkespeerage.com
personal data
SURNAME Bingham, Thomas Henry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bingham of Cornhill, Thomas Henry Bingham, Baron; Lord Bingham of Cornhill
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British judge and lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH October 13, 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH September 11, 2010
Place of death Powys , Wales