Patrick Devlin, Baron Devlin

Patrick Arthur Devlin, Baron Devlin, PC (25 November 1905 – 9 August 1992) was a British judge who served as a Law Lord. He wrote a report on Britain's involvement in Nyasaland in 1959. In 1985 he became the first British judge to write a book about a case he had presided over, the 1957 trial of suspected serial killer John Bodkin Adams. Devlin is also well known for his part in the debate around homosexuality in British law; in response to the Wolfenden report, he argued, contrary to H. L. A. Hart, that a common public morality should be upheld.

Patrick Devlin was born in Chislehurst, Kent. His father was an Irish Roman Catholic architect whose own father came from County Tyrone, and his mother was a Scottish Protestant, originally from Aberdeen. In 1909, a few years after Devlin's birth, the family moved to his mother's birthplace. The children were raised as Catholics, two of Devlin's sisters became nuns, and a brother became a Jesuit priest (another brother was the actor William Devlin). Patrick Devlin joined the Dominican order as a novice after leaving Stonyhurst College, but left after a year for Christ's College, Cambridge.

At Cambridge, Devlin read both history and law, and he graduated in 1927, joining Gray's Inn and passing the bar exam in 1929. He worked as junior barrister for William Jowitt while Jowitt was Attorney-General, and by the late 1930s he had become a successful commercial lawyer. During the Second World War he worked for various ministries of the UK Government, and in 1948 Jowitt (by then Lord Chancellor) made Devlin (then aged 42) a High Court judge, the second-youngest such appointment in the 20th century. Devlin was knighted later that year.

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