Michael Sachs (judge)

Sir Michael Alexander Geddes Sachs (8 April 1932 - 25 September 2003) was the first English solicitor to be appointed as a High Court judge. Since his appointment in 1993, only three other solicitors have been appointed to the High Court - Lawrence Collins in 2000, Henry Hodge in 2004 and Gary Hickinbottom in 2008.

Sachs was born in Glasgow, the son of a GP and a nurse. He was raised in Penrith and educated at Appleby Grammar School and Sedbergh School. He read law at Manchester University and took his articles at Slater, Heelis & Co in Manchester.

After qualifying as a solicitor, and then undertaking National Service, he returned to Slater Heelis in 1959 to work on crime, family, personal injury and common law matters. He became a partner at Slater Heelis in 1962. He acted for defendants charged with offences relating to IRA bombings in the 1970s. He was president of Manchester Law Society in 1978-9, a member of the Law Society Council from 1979 to 1984, and chairman of the Law Society's standing committee on criminal law from 1982 to 1984.

His judicial career began in 1977, when was appointed as a deputy circuit judge. He became a recorder on 9 July 1980. He left his firm and retired from private practice in 1984, on being appointed a full circuit judge. He worked for 18 months in Liverpool and then in Manchester, mostly on criminal work.

After a rally in 1989, at which Dr Kalim Siddiqui, director of the Muslim Institute in London, suggested that there should be a vote on whether Salman Rushdie should die for his blasphemous novel The Satanic Verses, Sachs ordered the BBC to give their film of the rally to the police.

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