ATKIN, JAMES RICHARD Baron Atkin of Aberdovey (1867 - 1944), lawyer and judge

James Richard Atkin was born on 28 November 1867 in Brisbane, Australia, the eldest of three sons of Robert Travers Atkin (1841-1872) of Fernhill, co. Cork, a journalist and member of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland, and his wife Mary Elizabeth (née Ruck, 1842-1920) of Merionethshire, Wales. His parents had recently emigrated to Australia, but his father died young in 1872. By that time Atkin and his brothers were already back in the United Kingdom, living with their maternal grandmother at Pantlludw, Aberdyfi. Their mother, who travelled back to Australia a couple of months before their father's death, eventually returned to raise her sons in Wales.

Atkin attended Friars School in Bangor from 1876, and in 1878 he moved to Christ College, Brecon. He went on in 1885 to read classics at Magdalen College Oxford, where he was eventually made an honorary fellow in 1924 and the law students' Atkin Society was named after him in 1936. He was called to the Bar in Gray's Inn in 1891, becoming a Bencher in 1906, and in the same year he was appointed King's Counsel.

In 1893, Atkin married Lucy Elizabeth Hemmant (1867-1939), the daughter of a former friend of his father from Brisbane. The couple had eight children - six daughters and two sons. The eldest son was killed in the war in France in 1917. The family lived in Kensington, London, and from 1912 also had a house in Aberdyfi, Craig-y-don, where they spent their summer holidays.

As a legal practitioner, Atkin served on the South Wales and Chester circuit, but actually spent most of his time in London, especially once he began to obtain briefs connected with the broking firms and Stock Exchange. The success of his commercial law practice reflects the influence during his pupillage of his master Thomas Edward Scrutton; eventually both men were sat together in the Court of Appeal.

After more than twenty years practice as a barrister, Atkin became a judge of the King's Bench division of the High Court in 1913 and was awarded a knighthood. In 1919, he was appointed Lord Justice of Appeal and a member of the Privy Council, and finally in 1928 he became Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and was created Baron Atkin of Aberdovey. In the High Court, Atkin gained a reputation as a criminal judge, spending a lot of time on assizes. In the Court of Appeal, however, he started to focus again on commercial law.

As a law lord, he was highly praised for his common sense, straightforwardness and for being close to the 'ordinary man'. His unquestionable position as a leading member of the Lords' bench is remembered still today. He decided in numerous important cases that impacted the development of English law, such as Donoghue v. Stevenson (1932) which established the modern law of negligence in the UK. He is also recognized for his dissenting opinion in the Liversidge v. Anderson case (1941) defending subjects' rights in the face of official intervention.

Besides his various judicial duties, Atkin served on several important bodies in connection with World War I - including as chair of the War Cabinet Committee on Women in Industry and of the Termination of the War Committee. From 1924 he chaired the Irish Deportees Compensation Tribunal as well as the Committee on Crime and Insanity. In the 1920s he became interested in the scientific development of medicine and its impact on the law. He was a president of the Medico-Legal Society (1920-1927) and delivered several speeches on the subject (see British Medical Journal vol. 2/1920; vol 2/1923; vol. 2/1926). During World War II, Lord Atkin represented Australia on the War Crimes Commission set up by the British Government and other Allied countries, strongly supporting the idea of establishing an independent, international tribunal to deal with Nazi war crimes.

Lord Atkin was a member of the councils of Christ College, Brecon, Charterhouse, Surrey and the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he was chair of the Department of Law. His biggest impact on education, however, resulted from his appointment as chair of a committee to examine the position of legal education which published its report in 1934. He held that there was no reason why the law should not have the same importance in general education as it had in the times of Fortescue, Locke and Blackstone. He favoured holding classes in universities to give education in law to lay students who did not intend to become lawyers, and with that in mind he wrote a Foreword to Edward Jenks, Book of English Law (1928), and was involved in its composition. As a result of his efforts to extend legal education, the Legal Aid Act to give legal assistance to those who had not sufficient means was passed. Lord Atkin obtained several honorary degrees including one from the University of Oxford (1931), the University of Cambridge (1936), and the University of Liverpool (1939). In 1938, he was elected F.B.A.

Although born in Australia, Lord Atkin considered himself a Welshman. The early death of his father uprooted him from his Irish heritage, and he was raised by two Welsh women, his mother and grandmother. Throughout his life, he was a devout Christian much involved in the affairs of the Welsh Church, including its disestablishment (he gave legal advice on the drafting of the Church's new constitution). In 1938, on the other hand, he entered into the serious dispute with the Archbishop of Wales - Dr Charles Green - and the other Welsh bishops over the content of the pastoral letters issued by them about the illegality of solemnising the second marriages of those members of the Church who were divorced (a side effect of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1937). While spending time at his Welsh home in Aberdyfi, Lord Atkin regularly sat as a magistrate in the local court. While in London, he was involved in the work of the London Welsh Trust, serving as its president 1938-1944.

Lord Atkin died in Aberdyfi on 25 June 1944 following the contraction of bronchitis, and he was buried in the cemetery of St Peter's Church in Aberdyfi.

Author

• Łukasz Jan Korporowicz

Sources

• Who's who?, 1943
• Geoffrey Lewis, Lord Atkin (Oxford 1999)
• Lord Wright, 'In Memoriam Lord Atkin of Aberdovey. 1867-1944', The Law quarterly review, 60 (1944), 332-34
• H. C. Gutteridge, 'In Memoriam Lord Atkin of Aberdovey. 1867-1944', The Law quarterly review, 60 (1944), 334-40
• A. A. Morrison, 'Atkin, Robert Travers (1841-1872)', Australian Dictionary of Biography (originally published in vol. 3 (1969)
• Anthony Crockett, 'Un o'r Barnwyr Doethaf Erioed - Lord Atkin of Aberdovey v. the Archbishop of Wales et al.', in Thomas Glyn Watkin (ed.), Legal Wales: its past, its future: essays dedicated to Professor Dafydd Jenkins on his ninetieth birthday (Cardiff 2001), 101-112
• Allan C. Hutchinson, Laughing at the gods: great judges and how they made the common law (Cambridge 2011), pp. 111-139
• P. D. T. Applegarth, 'Lord Atkin: Principle and progress', The Australian Law Journal, 90 (2016), 711-51

Further reading

• Wikipedia Article: James Atkin, Baron Atkin
• Wikipedia Article: Robert Travers Atkin

Additional Links

• VIAF: 70932432
• Wikidata: Q799090

Published date: 2023-06-30

Article Copyright: http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/