Cyril Asquith, Baron Asquith of Bishopstone

Cyril Asquith, Baron Asquith of Bishopstone, PC (5 February 1890 – 24 August 1954) was an English barrister and judge who served as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary from 1951 until his death three years later.

The youngest child of British prime minister H. H. Asquith by his first wife, Cyril Asquith followed the steps of his father and eldest brother into a distinguished academic career at Balliol College, Oxford, before serving in the British Army during the First World War. After the war he practised, with modest success, at the common law bar until 1938, when he was appointed to the High Court. He was promoted to the Court of Appeal in 1946 and to the House of Lords in 1951. The same year he was offered the Lord Chancellorship by Winston Churchill, but declined the post.

Asquith was widely regarded as possessing one of the finest minds on the bench, although his rapid rise, after an unremarkable career at the bar, was the cause for some adverse comment. According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, his career was an "undistinguished—although extraordinarily lucky" one.

At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he was commissioned into the 1/16th (County of London) Battalion, The London Regiment (Queen's Westminster Rifles) as a second lieutenant, eventually reaching the rank of captain. From 1916 to 1918 Asquith, who was deemed medically unfit for military service abroad, was employed by the Ministry of Munitions, serving for a time on the British War Mission in the United States.

After the war, Asquith was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1920, and was a pupil in the chambers of William Jowitt who, as Lord Chancellor, recommended Asquith's promotions to the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords. Between 1925 and 1938 he was Assistant Reader in Common Law to the Council of Legal Education. He took silk in 1936, was appointed Recorder of Salisbury in 1937, and was elected bencher of the Inner Temple in 1939. He was elected to the Liberal Party Council in 1936.

Judicial career Asquith was appointed a Justice of the High Court on 28 March 1938 to fill the vacancy left by the appointment of Mr Justice Porter to the House of Lords. He was assigned to the King's Bench Division and received the customary knighthood three days later. His appointment caused some surprise at the bar and bench. In 1941, he presided over the trial in camera of two German spies at the Old Bailey and sentenced them to death under the Treachery Act. He also chaired a number of tribunals and commissions: he was the High Court judge attached to the General Claims Tribunal in 1939, chairman of the Advisory Committee on the internment of enemy aliens in 1940, chairman of the Commission on Higher Education in Colonies in 1943–44, and chairman of the Royal Commission on Equal Pay in 1944–46.

After the war, following the death of Lord Justice MacKinnon in 1946, Asquith was appointed a Lord Justice of Appeal and was sworn of the Privy Council, on the recommendation of Lord Jowitt. On 23 April 1951, again on Jowitt's recommendation, Asquith was appointed a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and created a life peer as Baron Asquith of Bishopstone, of Bishopstone in the County of Sussex. In 1952 he was appointed to the Law Reform Committee and as chairman of the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee. In 1946, recommending Asquith's promotion to the Court of Appeal, Simon's successor Lord Jowitt wrote to Clement Attlee that:If he were to be appointed a member of the Court of Appeal, he would be one of a team, and under the tutelage of the Master of the Rolls he might be made to do some work … I recognise that his promotion would be regarded by the Bench and Bar as a reward for singularly unmeritorious services. On the other hand, I still believe he has the best brain of any of the King's Bench judges … I should be thankful to get rid of him from the King's Bench Division, as would many, many of the senior judges.

As to his impact, Robert Stevens thought that "perhaps because of his nature and his natural conservatism, he had virtually no impact in the Lords … It was an undistinguished period in the House of Lords as a final court of appeal; Asquith did nothing to ameliorate it."

Arms

Selected judgments

Victoria Laundry (Windsor) Ltd v Newman Industries Ltd 2 KB 528 — remoteness Candler v Crane, Christmas & Co 2 KB 164 — negligent misstatement Petroleum Development (Trucial Coast) Ltd. v. Sheikh of Abu Dhabi (1951) 18 ILR 144 — the Abu Dhabi Arbitration National Coal Board v England AC 403 — illegality