Igor Judge
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I was deeply saddened to hear that Lord Judge died on Tuesday at the age of 82. He was lord chief justice of England and Wales from 2008 to 2013.
He last wrote to me on 4 October, thanking me for a piece I had written here about the swearing-in of his successor Lady Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill. “I am sorry that I was not well enough to be present,” he said, adding that he would see me again when he was “next fit for London”. Sadly, it was not to be.
As Carr rightly said yesterday,
Lord Judge was not only a remarkable judge and leader, he was also a true friend to so many of us.
A fuller statement will be issued in due course but for now our thoughts are with Lady Judge, their children and grandchildren.
Igor was totally devoted to Judith and their family, taking delight in everything they did. They were, of course, present at his valedictory ceremony in 2013, which I reported at the time.
He was also a forthright defender of democracy. I reported a lecture he gave a year ago in which he said the United Kingdom would face a “constitutional catastrophe” if governments were permitted to make laws without proper parliamentary scrutiny.
In it, he compared the events of 400 years ago with current developments, arguing that “government by proclamation has returned, insidiously, in disguise”.
It was a theme he had explored shortly before his retirement a decade ago. “We must remain vigilant against the slightest encroachment on judicial independence,” he told his fellow judges, “because without an independent judiciary the rule of law would collapse.”
This was at the annual dinner for the judges given by the City of London. The lord mayor, with a nod to Peter Cook, imagined that he too “could have been a judge but he never ’ad the Latin”. Despite that, Alderman Roger Gifford proposed a toast to the outgoing lord chief justice in what he described as “the proper language of the law”.
Raising a glass, Gifford said: “Propinamus tibi, Domine Iudex, qui in consilio, doctrina, benignitate admirabilissimus, necnon urbi Londinio benevolentissimus, semper fuisti. Ave, Domine Iudex, stupor mundi!”
Igor owed his distinctive Christian name to his mother, who admired Stravinsky. Contrary to popular myth, he was never Judge Judge.1 At Middle Temple, he was Master Judge. And for one triumphant night, at least, he was Domine Iudex, stupor mundi.
Today’s Telegraph carries an obituary of Lord Judge. His death is also reported in the Times of Malta: Malta-born Lord Judge dies aged 82. In the House of Lords, where Judge had been convenor of the cross-bench peers, there will be further tributes today. One came yesterday from another of Judge’s successors, Lord Burnett of Maldon, making his maiden speech: he said “the rule of law, the courts and an independent judiciary are not optional extras or simply a service, but one of the foundations on which all else is built”.
Update 10 November: Carr issued this tribute on behalf of the judiciary:
Lord Judge was a brilliant lawyer and the fairest of tribunals. And, as unassuming as he was, his phenomenal intellect and razor-sharp mind were never in doubt, alongside his incisive sense of direction. He led the judiciary tirelessly — with passion, commitment and energy. He was encouraging of every judge whom he encountered, whether in a training room, sitting on the bench or simply waiting together for a bus.
No list of judicial achievements or legal accolades can do Lord Judge full justice, and this is not the place to recount all of his many successes. But it is perhaps his qualities of humanity and personal warmth that marked him out above all. His words and actions of support, always perfectly-timed and delivered, will be remembered by so many of us.
A photograph of him, robed and smiling, hangs immediately in the corridor outside the Lady Chief Justice’s room. His generous spirit shines through, and he will always remain a presence in the corridors of the Royal Courts of Justice.
We share in a collective mourning at the passing of such a great lawyer, judge and leader, and a true champion of the rule of law and an independent judiciary.
As a High Court judge, he was Mr Justice Judge — abbreviated to Judge J. There is currently a judge called Jay J.
Igor Judge
This news about Lord Judge has truly ambushed me with sadness. I had come to regard this remarkable judge AND human being as ubiquitous and permanent; it is strange indeed how the mind can play such tricks since we all know -really- that nothing and no one are for ever.
If I may say so, Joshua’s segue about Lord Judge never having been “Judge Judge” is territory already covered by me in an earlier contribution to this substack. The (rather frivolous) jest of the local bar on his elevation to High Court Judge had been that he had been allowed to leapfrog over a Circuit Judgeship so as to avoid that “Judge Judge” elephant trap. I am of course once again reminded of Joseph Heller’s unique creation of “Major Major” and later on “Major Major Major” in “Catch 22”.
Enough of MY OWN segue now: Igor Judge was always , in the best possible sense, a figure to be reckoned with. When he had been at one time the Presiding [or is it Resident?] (High Court) Judge on “my” Circuit located in Birmingham in one Law Society representative capacity or another I had had quite a lot to do with him and speaking on a personal basis I always found him exceedingly welcoming, receptive and even handed.
Later on when he had been THE Presiding Judge with Lord Woolf as at the time Lord Chief Justice, “my” Criminal Law Committee had urged me to approach him on the then (and still) fraught subject of the disclosure provisions which had reposed so much trust and confidence in the police. By that time there had been many alarming and in my and the Committee’s view predictable examples of potential miscarriages of justice as a direct result of the law of unintended consequences. I make it plain that, however well intentioned had been the police officers (and sometimes prosecutors)concerned, many examples of non-disclosure had malignly crept in via those statutory changes which we had counselled against. As ever-I need to add- those were the cases WE HAD BECOME AWARE OF rather than those many others which we had had logically to assume had crept in under the radar. And so in response to my letter I had received an invitation to see him at the Royal Courts of Justice with the Committee’s then formidable Professional Adviser Roger Ede.
He had on our visit been courtesy and charm personified and had VERY kindly volunteered to us his own anxieties on this so vexed issue. We then had had a most productive discussion and his plan had been to arrange a further discussion with us to include the then relevant Minister Lord (Willie) Bach but for whatever reason that had failed to come to pass.
I had seen him quite a number of times after that since he had been an avid follower of seminars and very often a speaker there. His time discipline with speeches was an object lesson to so many and my firm impression was of a caring human being ever thirsting for knowledge and ever focused on achieving all that he personally might towards the public good.
Following “retirement” his interventions in support of the rule of law and due process and in favour of constructive rather than merely punitive sentencing had been realistic and immensely powerful.
Please, once again, forgive the length of this contribution; Lord Judge would have been seriously (though courteously) disapproving.
I was lucky enough to meet him when he was LCJ and was totally in awe as someone in the basement of the Judicial ladder. Once I had plucked up courage to talk to him he was incredibly chatty and friendly and even though I knew it wasn’t true, he treated me as if I was an equal. A great and very wise man.