Tom Denning, Baron Denning

The Right Honourable The Lord Denning OM PC DL
Portrait by Peter Keen, 1964
Master of the Rolls
In office 19 April 1962 – 29 September 1982
Preceded by	The Lord Evershed
Succeeded by	The Lord Donaldson of Lymington
Lord of Appeal in Ordinary
In office 24 April 1957 – 1962
Preceded by	The Lord Oaksey
Succeeded by	The Lord Evershed
Lord Justice of Appeal
In office 12 October 1948 – 1957
High Court Judge
In office 7 March 1944 – 1948
Personal details
Born	Alfred Thompson Denning (1899-01-23)23 January 1899 Whitchurch, Hampshire
Died	5 March 1999(1999-03-05) (aged 100) Royal Hampshire County Hospital, Winchester
Spouses	Mary Harvey ​ ​ (m. 1932; died 1941)​ Joan Stuart ​ ​ (m. 1945; died 1992)​
Children	1
Alma mater	Magdalen College, Oxford Lincoln's Inn
Profession	Barrister, judge

Alfred Thompson Denning, Baron Denning, OM, PC, DL (23 January 1899 – 5 March 1999), was an English barrister and judge. He was called to the bar of England and Wales in 1923 and became a King's Counsel in 1938. Denning became a judge in 1944 when he was appointed to the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice, and transferred to the King's Bench Division in 1945. He was made a Lord Justice of Appeal in 1948 after less than five years in the High Court. He became a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary in 1957 and after five years in the House of Lords returned to the Court of Appeal as Master of the Rolls in 1962, a position he held for twenty years. In retirement he wrote several books and continued to offer opinions on the state of the common law through his writing and his position in the House of Lords.

Margaret Thatcher said that Denning was "probably the greatest English judge of modern times".^[1] One of Lord Denning's successors as Master of the Rolls, Lord Bingham, called him "the best known and best loved judge in our history".^[2] Denning's appellate work in the Court of Appeal did not concern criminal law. Mark Garnett and Richard Weight argue that Denning was a conservative Christian who "remained popular with morally conservative Britons who were dismayed at the postwar rise in crime and who, like him, believed that the duties of the individual were being forgotten in the clamour for rights. He had a more punitive than redemptive view of criminal justice, as a result of which he was a vocal supporter of corporal and capital punishment."^[3] However, he changed his stance on capital punishment in later life.

Denning became one of the highest profile judges in England in part because of his report on the Profumo affair. He was known for his bold judgments running counter to the law at the time. During his 38-year career as a judge, he made large changes to the common law, particularly while in the Court of Appeal, and although some of his decisions were overturned by the House of Lords several of them were confirmed by Parliament, which passed statutes in line with his judgments. Appreciated for his role as "the people's judge" and his support for the individual, Denning attracted attention for his occasionally flexible attitude to the common law principle of precedent. He commented controversially about the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four.