The Right Honourable The Viscount Sankey GBE KStJ PC KC |
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Lord Chancellor | |
In office 7 June 1929 – 7 June 1935 |
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Monarch | George V |
Prime Minister | Ramsay Macdonald |
Preceded by | The Viscount Hailsham |
Succeeded by | The Viscount Hailsham |
Personal details | |
Born | 26 October 1866 |
Died | 6 February 1948 (aged 81) |
Nationality | British |
Political party | Labour |
Alma mater | Jesus College, Oxford |
John Sankey, 1st Viscount Sankey GBE KStJ PC KC (26 October 1866 – 6 February 1948) was a British lawyer, judge, Labour politician and Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, famous for many of his judgments in the House of Lords. He gave his name to the Sankey Declaration of the Rights of Man (1940).
He was the son of Thomas Sankey, of Moreton, Gloucestershire, by his wife Catalina (née Dewsbury), and was educated at Lancing, Sussex and Jesus College, Oxford, graduating with a second-class BA in Modern History in 1889 and a third-class Bachelor of Civil Law degree in 1891. He was called to the Bar, Middle Temple, in 1892. In 1909 he was appointed a King's Counsel.
Sankey became a judge of the High Court, King's Bench Division, in 1914. He was appointed a Lord Justice of Appeal in 1928. He was raised to the peerage as Baron Sankey, of Moreton in the County of Gloucester, in 1929 on being appointed Lord Chancellor in Ramsay MacDonald's Labour government. He was one of the few Labour politicians to follow MacDonald into the National Government in 1931, and served as Lord Chancellor until 1935, when Stanley Baldwin re-entered office. In 1932 he was created Viscount Sankey, of Moreton in the County of Gloucester.