Patrick Devlin, Baron Devlin

Patrick Arthur Devlin, Baron Devlin PC FBA (25 November 1905 – 9 August 1992) was a British judge and legal philosopher. The second-youngest English High Court judge in the 20th century, he served as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary from 1960 to 1964.

Quotes

• Each jury is a little parliament. The jury sense is the parliamentary sense. I cannot see the one dying and the other surviving. The first object of any tyrant * * * would be to make Parliament utterly subservient to his will; and next to overthrow or diminish trial by jury, for no tyrant could afford to leave a subject’s freedom in the hands of 12 of his countrymen. So that trial by jury is more than an instrument of justice and more than one wheel of the constitution; it is the lamp that shows that freedom lives.
  • Trial by Jury (Stevens & Sons, 1956) as quoted by Russell B. Long in the U.S. Congressional Record — Senate (1 June 1964) p. 12305. Differently quoted in J. Kendall Few, In Defense of Trial by Jury, vol. 1 (American Jury Trial Foundation, 1993) p. 257: "The object of any tyrant would be to overthrow or diminish trial by jury, for it is the lamp that shows that freedom lives."

• I think...that it is not possible to set theoretical limits to the power of the State to legislate against immorality. It is not possible to settle in advance exceptions to the general rule or to define inflexibly areas of morality into which the law is in no circumstances to be allowed to enter. Society is entitled by means of its laws to protect itself from dangers, whether from within or without. Here again I think that the political parallel is legitimate. The law of treason is directed against aiding the king's enemies and against sedition from within. The justification for this is that established government is necessary for the existence of society and therefore its safety against violent overthrow must be secured. But an established morality is as necessary as good government to the welfare of society. Societies disintegrate from within more frequently than they are broken up by external pressures. There is disintegration when no common morality is observed and history shows that the loosening of moral bonds is often the first stage of disintegration, so that society is justified in taking the same steps to preserve its moral code as it does to preserve its government... the suppression of vice is as much the law's business as the suppression of subversive activities.
  • The Enforcement of Morals (London: Oxford UP, 1959) Lecture 1

• The judges of England have rarely been original thinkers or great jurists. Many have been craftsmen rather than creators. They have needed the stuff of morals to be supplied to them so that out of it they could fashion the law.
  • Quoted in Anthony Sampson, Anatomy of Britain (London: Hodder and Stroughton, 1962) pt. 1, ch. 10, p. 153

• Ability isn't the most important thing. In most cases the facts aren't really very difficult to get at: no, the most important thing for a judge is—curiously enough—judgment. It’s not so very different from the qualities of a successful businessman or civil servant. I’m always struck by how alike men in high positions seem to be. It’s rather like seeing a lot of different parts of the stage, and finding that they’re all Gerald du Maurier in the end.
  • Quoted in Anthony Sampson, Anatomy of Britain (1962) p. 156