Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet

Sir Alexander James Edmund Cockburn, 12th Baronet (December 24, 1802 - November 20, 1880) was Lord Chief Justice of England.

Life

His father, British envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to the state of Columbia, was the fourth son of Sir James Cockburn, 8th baronet, his three uncles having died without heirs. His mother was Yolande, daughter of the vicomte de Vignier.

He was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, of which he was elected a fellow, and afterwards an honorary fellow. He entered at the Middle Temple in 1825, and was called to the bar in 1829. Three years afterward, the Reform Bill was passed, and in 1833 Cockburn and MC Rowe published a parliamentary brief on the decisions of election committees.

In 1834 Cockburn was made a member of the commission to inquire into the state of the corporations of England and Wales. Other parliamentary work followed, and in 1841 he was made a Q.C..

In 1847 he decided to stand for parliament, and was elected unopposed as Liberal M.P. for Southampton. His speech in the House of Commons on behalf of the government in the Don Pacifico dispute with Greece commended him to Lord John Russell, who appointed him Solicitor-General in 1850 and Attorney General in 1851, a post which he held till the resignation of the ministry in February 1852.

In December 1852, under Lord Aberdeen's ministry, Cockburn again became Attorney General, and remained so until 1856, taking part in many celebrated trials, such as the Hopwood Will Case in 1855, and the Swynfen Will Case.

In 1854 Cockburn was made Recorder of Bristol. In 1856, he became Chief Jstice of the Common Pleas. He inherited the baronetcy in 1858. In 1859, Lord Campbell became Lord Chancellor, and Cockburn became Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, continuing as a judge for twenty-four years.

On November 20, 1880, he died of angina pectoris at his house in Hertford Street. As he never married and produced no heirs, the baronetcy became dormant upon his death.

Trials

Sir Robert Peel's secretary, Edward Drummond, was shot by Daniel McNaghten in 1843. Cockburn, briefed on behalf of the assassin, made a speech which helped to establish the insanity defense in Britain for the next century.

In 1844, he appeared in Wood v. Peel to determine the winner of a bet (the Gaming Act was passed in the following year) as to whether the Derby winner Running Rein was a four-year-old or a three-year-old. Running Rein could not be produced, and as a result Cockburn lost the case, while his strenuous advocacy of his client's cause had led him into making, in his opening speech, strictures on Lord George Bentinck's conduct in the case which should have been held back.

During the short administration of Lord Derby, Cockburn was engaged against Sir Frederic Thesiger Attorney General at the time, and Cockburn, in the case of a friar named Achilli who had accused John Henry Newman of libel. The jury who heard the case under Lord Campbell found that Newman's plea of justification was not proved except in one particular, a verdict which, together with the methods of the judge and the conduct of the audience, attracted considerable comment. The verdict was set aside, and a new trial ordered, but none ever took place.

In his tenure as Attorney General from 1852 to 1856, he led for the crown in the trial of William Palmer of Rugeley in Staffordshire - an ex-medical man who poisoned a friend named Cook with strychnine in order to steal from his estate. Cockburn made an exhaustive study of the medical aspects of the case and won a conviction after a twelve-day trial.

As a judge, he presided at the Tichborne Case, which lasted 188 days, of which his summing-up occupied eighteen.

He also played a role in the arbitration of the Alabama claims at Geneva in 1872, in which he represented the British government. and dissented from the majority view as to British liability for the actions of British-built privateer ships. He prepared the English translation of the arbitrators' award and published a controversial dissenting opinion in which he admitted British liability for the actions of the CSS Alabama, though not on the grounds given in the award, and discounted liability for the CSS Florida and CSS Shenandoah.

Preceded by: The Lord Campbell

Lord Chief Justice of England 1859–1880

Followed by: The Lord Coleridge

Preceded by: William Cockburn

Cockburn Baronet of Langton

Followed by: Title dormant

Reference

• This page incorporates information from Leigh Rayment's Peerage Page (http://www.angeltowns.com/town/peerage/)