John Stephenson

Sir John Frederick Eustace Stephenson (28 March 1910 – 1 November 1998) was an English barrister and judge, a Lord Justice of Appeal from 1971 until his retirement in 1985 and a member of the Privy Council. As a judge of the Court of Appeal he was known as Lord Justice Stephenson.

Early life

The second son of Sir Guy Stephenson CB, by his marriage to Gwendolen Talbot, a daughter of John Gilbert Talbot PC MP, Stephenson was a grandson of Sir Augustus Frederick William Keppel Stephenson (1827–1904) a Treasury Solicitor and Director of Public Prosecutions. He had two sisters, Margaret Eglantine (born 1907) and Jane (1914) and three brothers, Augustus (1909), Paul (1913) and H. J. Stephenson (1921–1943). Winchester College and New College, Oxford, holding scholarships at both. He took a first in Honours Moderations in 1930 and another in Literae Humaniores in 1932, graduating BA in 1932. His father died in 1930 while he was still an undergraduate at Oxford.

Career Stephenson was called to the Bar from the Inner Temple in 1934. In 1938 he joined the Royal Engineers (Territorial Army) as a sapper. In 1940 he was attached to the War Office and was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps, in which he was a captain in 1943, promoted Major in 1944 and Lieutenant-Colonel in 1946, serving in the Middle East and North West Europe. In 1946 he was appointed as Regional Intelligence Officer in Hamburg. Stephenson served in the Court of Appeal for fourteen years before retiring in 1985.

In 1979 the Church of Scientology of California sued the British Department of Health and Social Security for defamation in the English High Court. The DHSS had suggested that Scientologists were dangerous charlatans who would worsen rather than cure mental illness. The plaintiff demanded discovery of letters and medical records from people who had complained to the DHSS about the Church. Stephenson declined the request, citing the church's "fair game" policy, which he believed was still in force. He feared that the documents would be used "not for legitimate purposes of the action but for harassment of individual patients, informants and renegades named in them, not only by proceedings for defamation against them but by threats and blackmail".

Private life In 1951, Stephenson married Frances Rose Asquith (1925−2020), the younger daughter of Lord Asquith of Bishopstone, a Law Lord, and they had two sons and two daughters,

At the time of his death in 1998 his address was given in Who's Who as 26 Doneraile Street, London SW6, and he was a member of the Hurlingham Club, the Marylebone Cricket Club, and the Royal Wimbledon Golf Club.

Publication A Royal Correspondence: Letters of King Edward VII and King George V to Admiral Sir Henry F. Stephenson, 1938 (ed.)

Honours Knighted, 1962 Member of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, 1971 Honorary Fellow of New College, Oxford, 1979