Richard Wilberforce, Baron Wilberforce

Lord Wilberforce

Richard Orme Wilberforce, Baron Wilberforce, PC (11 March 1907 – 15 February 2003) was a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary in the House of Lords from 1964 to 1982.

Richard Wilberforce was a great-great-grandson of the famous abolitionist William Wilberforce, and son of a judge of the Lahore High Court. He grew up in India and attended Winchester College and New College, Oxford, and was later elected a Fellow of All Souls College. He was called to the Bar in 1932 and became a Queen's Counsel in 1954.

He was first appointed to the bench in 1961 as a Chancery judge. Then in 1964 he was appointed to the House of Lords as a Lord Appeal in Ordinary, made additionally a life peer as Baron Wilberforce, of the City and County of Kingston-upon-Hull. He is the only judge in recent times to have been appointed to the House of Lords straight from the High Court Bench, without serving in the Court of Appeal. His decisions were known for being reserved and cautious.

Wilberforce was Chancellor of the University of Hull between 1978 and 1994.

Famous judgments

Lord Wilberforce gave many important and prescient judgments, including his judgments in the following cases:

• Boardman v Phipps [1967] 2 AC 46
• Boys v Chaplin [1969] 2 All ER 1085
• Barclays Bank Ltd v Quistclose Investments Ltd [1970] AC 567
• McPhail v Doulton [1971] AC 424
• Prenn v Simmonds [1971] 1 WLR 1381
• Ebrahimi v Westbourne Galleries Ltd [1973] AC 360
• Anns v Merton London Borough Council [1978] AC 728
• Johnson v Agnew [1979] 1 All ER 883
• Photo Production Ltd v Securicor Transport Ltd [1980] AC 827
• College of Nursing of the United Kingdom v Department of Health and Social Security (1981)
• Ramsay v IRC [1982] AC 300
• Brinkibon Ltd v Stahag Stahl und Stahlwarenhandelsgesellschaft mbH [1983] 2 AC 34
• McLoughlin v O'Brian [1983] 1 AC 410

• Williams & Glyn's Bank v Boland
• Frazer v Walker and Radomski
• Eastham v Newcastle United FC
• R v Inland Revenue Commissioners, ex parte National Federation of Self-Employed & Small Business Ltd

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Publications

• with Alan Campbell and Neil Elles, The Law of Restrictive Practices and Monopolies (2nd edn London, Sweet and Maxwell 1966) LCCN 66-070116
• Law and economics: Being the presidential address of the Rt. Hon. Lord Wilberforce (Holdsworth Club 1966)

External links

• Guardian obituary