Cooper, John, Pride Versus Prejudice: Jewish Doctors and Lawyers in England, 1890–1990. [hc, The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in association with Liverpool University Press, 2003] 978-1874774877 [pb, Littman Library, 2013] 978-1906764425 [This pioneering study is a treasure trove of new information, illustrating the lives and professional experiences of the people involved in such a way as to demonstrate clearly both the obstacles they faced and the status they achieved. Its wealth of detail, in many cases fleshing out the careers of leading Jewish professional figures for the first time, makes engaging reading. All the legal personalities mentioned below are reviewed in the Cooper volume. See especially chapters 12, “Jewish Solicitors, 1945–1990,” 14, “Jewish Barristers, 1945–1990,” and 15, “Jews in the Judiciary, 1945–1990,” pp. 369–396.
Section 7.4
Prominent U.K. Jewish Barristers, Solicitors and Judges
Prominent U.K. Jewish Barristers, Solicitors and Judges: [ChatGPT]
The narrative proceeds chronologically with careful attention to social context, starting with the Victorian and Edwardian eras. For the medical profession, the account of subsequent changes begins with the influx of Jews into medical schools after 1914. John Cooper goes on to describe the problems these Jewish medical students, most of them from immigrant families, encountered. Finding employment even as general practitioners was problematic, and almost insurmountable barriers confronted aspirants to consultant status. Afraid of antisemitic claims that Jews were flooding the market, the leaders of Anglo-Jewry even tried in the 1930s to dissuade young Jews from becoming doctors and lawyers. In this context, Cooper also considers the position of refugee doctors before and during the Second World War. The establishment of the National Health Service in 1948 resulted in fundamental changes, particularly in the way in which consultants were selected, and Cooper shows how this permitted Jewish doctors to enter specialties from which they had previously been excluded and to climb to the highest rungs within the medical hierarchy. He summarizes the careers of many prominent Jewish doctors.
The experience of Jews in the legal profession, both as solicitors and barristers, is examined in similar detail. Cooper sets the context with a discussion of the treatment of Jewish litigants in the early years of the twentieth century in the Whitechapel County Court and the criminal courts. He shows how the persistence of an anti-Jewish bias in the inter-war period limited opportunities for Jews and dissuaded them from entering the law; he also considers the position of Jewish refugee lawyers who came to England during the 1930s and 1940s. After the war, major changes in the economy and legal system allowed Jewish law firms to expand rapidly, challenging the dominance of the City law firms in the commercial world. Many of these firms consequently began to admit Jewish partners for the first time, and Jewish barristers, hitherto confined to the less remunerative areas of civil and criminal law, were likewise able to enter the more lucrative pastures of company and tax law. From the late 1960s, Jews were also promoted in increasing numbers to position on the High Court Bench. As well as giving a detailed picture of these mainstream developments the book also looks at the careers of Jewish communist, socialist, and maverick lawyers.
The story John Cooper tells will appeal not only to readers with a general interest in the subject but also to social historians. It is based on a wide range of sources, including newspapers and professional journals, archival material, law reports, and interviews conducted by the author, and there are detailed indexes of names and subjects. As well as providing an illuminating account of recent Jewish social history, the book makes a valuable contribution to the history of the medical and legal professions and to the scholarly debate as to whether or not antisemitism was of peripheral or central importance in Anglo-Jewish history. – Amazon]
Dame Rose Heilbron (1914–2005)
Heilbron, Hilary, (Rose Heilbron: The Story of England's First Woman Queen's Counsel and Judge [hc, Hart Publishing, 2012] 978-1849464017 [pb, Hart Publishing, 2019] 978-1509933631 [ - by Heilbron's daughter, herself a QC/KC. Probably the single most important Jewish criminal advocate of the early postwar period. Liverpool-born daughter of a Jewish hotelier, she became one of Britain's first two female KCs (1949), the first woman to lead the defence in a murder trial, and one of the leading criminal defenders on the Northern Circuit. She later became the first woman judge to sit at the Old Bailey and, in 1974, the second woman appointed to the High Court. A large part concerns Rose Heilbron's career as a criminal defence advocate, including the Cameo murder trials and other celebrated murder cases, before turning to her judicial career.]
Morton, James, "Dame Rose Heilbron," The Guardian, December 13, 2005 [Obituary emphasizing her pioneering career and major cases.]
“Dame Rose Heilbron: The First Woman to Sit as a Judge at the Old Bailey.” The Times (London), December 13, 2005. Obituary.
Sir Ivan Lawrence (b. 1936)
Lawrence, Ivan, (My Life of Crime: Cases and Causes [hc, Book Guild Publishing, 2010] 978-1846244674 [pb, Book Guild Publishing, 2012] 978-1846247781 [Lawrence recounts decades as a leading criminal defence barrister—the Kray twins, serial killer Dennis Nilsen and other London underworld figures, murder trials, legal aid, judges, advocacy and miscarriages of justice—as well as his parliamentary career as Conservative MP for Burton (1974–97).. Of particular Jewish interest, he describes encountering professional antisemitism: according to James Morton's discussion of the memoir, Lawrence was refused a tenancy in chambers because it already had a Jewish member.]
Morton, James, "Life of Crime," Law Society Gazette, September 30, 2010. [Review/profile accompanying publication of Lawrence's autobiography.]
Sir Geoffrey Bindman (1933–2025)
Bindman, Geoffrey, "Aid Memoirs," New Law Journal, no. 7294, October 25, 2007. [It recounts his involvement with legal aid and access to justice from the beginning of his career.]
Bindman, Geoffrey, "Days of Yore Revisited," New Law Journal, no. 7982, June 10, 2022. [An autobiographical reflection on entering the profession in the 1950s, articles, solicitors' practice and the changing legal profession.]
Solicitor rather than barrister and enormously important to postwar British civil-liberties law. He qualified in 1959 after encountering explicit anti-Jewish discrimination when seeking articles, founded Bindman & Partners in 1974, and became one of Britain's leading human-rights and civil-liberties solicitors. His cases involved race discrimination, press freedom, government secrecy and human rights, and he represented Amnesty International in proceedings connected with Augusto Pinochet. He is most significant for civil liberties, human rights, legal aid and challenges to governmental authority, rather than ordinary criminal defence. – ChatGPT
Anthony Julius (b. 1956) — Solicitor-advocate at Mishcon de Reya. Best known publicly as Diana, Princess of Wales's divorce lawyer, but much more relevant to a Jewish-law bibliography for representing Deborah Lipstadt in David Irving's libel action, one of Britain's landmark cases concerning Holocaust denial. Julius is also a scholar of antisemitism and Jewish culture. His principal books are not autobiographical, but several are important in terms of their Jewish content:
Julius, Anthony, T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form [hc, Cambridge UP, 1995] 978-0521470636 [pb, Cambridge UP, 1996] 978-0521586733
Julius, Anthony, (Transgressions: The Offences of Art [U. of Chicago Press, 2003]) 978-0226415369
Julius, Anthony, (Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England [hc, Oxford UP, 2010] 978-0199297054
For Julius as a practising lawyer, however, the indispensable book is by his client:
Lipstadt, Deborah E., (History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier [hc, Ecco, 2010] 0060593768 [pb, Ecco, 2006] 978-0060593773 [- gives a detailed inside account of Irving v. Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt, including Julius's role in devising the defence strategy.]
Henry Milner
Milner, Henry, (No Lawyers in Heaven: A Life Defending Serious Crime [hc, Biteback Publishing, 2020] 978-1785906442 [Milner spent more than forty years as a criminal defence solicitor and represented Kenneth Noye, figures involved in the Brink's-Mat robbery, Freddie Foreman, John "Goldfinger" Palmer and participants in the Millennium Dome robbery. It is a rare modern memoir specifically from the perspective of a British criminal solicitor, rather than a barrister.]
Nigel Lithman KC
Lithman, Nigel, (Nothing Like the Truth: The Trials and Tribulations of a Criminal Judge [pb, Whitefox Publishing, 2021]) 978-1913532727 [Lithman had spent decades as a criminal barrister before becoming a Circuit Judge, so the book provides perspectives from both Bar and bench. It is anecdotal rather than scholarly but directly relevant to criminal justice.]
Sir Richard Henriques (b. 1943)
Henriques, Richard, From Crime to Crime: From Doctor Shipman to Operation Midland—17 Cases That Shocked the World [hc, Hodder & Stoughton, 2020 978-1529333480 [pb, Hodder Paperbacks, 2021] 978-1529333497 [Henriques recounts his involvement in major British criminal cases as prosecutor and judge: the James Bulger murder, Harold Shipman, the Morecambe Bay cockle-picker deaths, the transatlantic aircraft bomb plot, Jean Charles de Menezes, and his later investigation of Operation Midland. He appeared in 106 murder trials. Henriques's career bridges prosecution, judiciary, police investigation and criminal-justice review.]
Lord Harry Woolf (b. 1933)
Woolf, Harry, (An Uncommon Lawyer: Autobiography of the Rt Hon Lord Woolf, CH. Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2022. xii + 178 pp. ISBN 978-1509958429. [Woolf begins with his grandparents' arrival in England as Jewish immigrants and discusses his Jewish background and faith, as well as his career as barrister, Treasury Devil, judge, Law Lord, Master of the Rolls and Lord Chief Justice. It covers Strangeways, prison reform, sentencing, the Bulger killers, civil-justice reform and his later interfaith work through the Woolf Institute.]
Woolf, Harry, Lord Woolf. (The Pursuit of Justice. Edited by Christopher Campbell-Holt. [hc, Oxford UP, 2008] 978-0199217090 [A collection of 26 major lectures and papers. Part III addresses crime and penal reform, including the Strangeways Prison Report, penal policy and sentencing.]
Sir Stephen Sedley (b. 1939)
Sedley, Stephen, Freedom, Law and Justice [pb, Sweet & Maxwell, 1999] 978-0421680906
Sedley, Stephen, (Ashes and Sparks: Essays on Law and Justice [hc, Cambridge UP, 2011] 978-1107000957 [pb, Cambridge UP, 2011] 978-0521170901 [As a practicing barrister, the Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Sedley wrote widely on legal and non-legal matters, and continued to do so after becoming a judge in 1992. This anthology contains classic articles, previously unpublished essays and lecture transcripts. To each, he has added reflections on what has transpired since or an explanation of the British legal and political context that originally prompted it. Covering the history, engineering and architecture of the justice system, their common theme relates to the author's experiences as a barrister and judge, most notably in relation to the constitutional changes which have emerged in the last twenty years in the United Kingdom. – Amazon]
Sedley, Stephen, Lions Under the Throne: Essays on the History of English Public Law. [hc, Cambridge UP, 2015] 978-1107122284 [pb, Cambridge UP, 2015] 978-1107559769 [Francis Bacon wrote in 1625 that judges must be lions, but lions under the throne. From that day to this, the tension within the state between parliamentary, judicial and executive power has remained unresolved. Lions under the Throne is the first systematic account of the origins and development of the great body of public law by which the state, both institutionally and in relation to the individual, is governed. – Amazon]
Sedley, Stephen, (Law and the Whirligig of Time [hc, Hart Publishing, 2018] 978-1509917099 [pb, Hart Publishing, 2023] 978-1509974221 [Another collection of essays on law, judging, politics, history and culture. The scholarly literature treats these books as important expressions of Sedley's conception of public law and the judicial role.]
Lord Cyril Salmon (1903–1991)
Evans, Sir Anthony, “Salmon, Cyril Barnet, Baron Salmon (1903–1991),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford UP, 2004; online ed., updated 2016. DOI: 10.1093/ref:odnb/49957. [This is probably the best single biographical source on Salmon: bringing in the prosperous Salmon/Gluckstein Jewish family, Cambridge and the Bar, wartime service as a judge advocate, judicial career, personality, jurisprudence, and elevation to the Lords.]
Cooper, John, Pride vs. Prejudice, op. cit., article on Lord Salmon [Salmon is treated not simply as an individual judge but as part of the social history of Jews entering the upper reaches of the English legal profession. Cooper emphasizes the contrast between Salmon's established Anglo-Jewish background and the later generation represented by Shaw. Cooper notes that Salmon became a High Court judge in 1957 and Lord Justice in 1964, whereas the real social broadening of Jewish judicial appointments came later.]
Finestein, Israel, “Salmon, Cyril Barnet, Baron,” Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., vol. 17. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA/Thomson Gale, 2007, p. 692 [Short but useful specifically because it places Salmon explicitly in Anglo-Jewish history. It mentions his Hebrew University lecture, his chairmanship of major royal commissions and his reputation for liberal values.]
Salmon, Cyril, Tribunals of Inquiry, Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1967[- a work by Salmon himself. It arose from lectures he delivered at the Hebrew University and concerns the difficult relationship between public inquiries, procedural fairness and individual rights. His expertise was especially important because he chaired the Royal Commission on Tribunals of Inquiry.]
“Lord Salmon (obituary)” The Times, 9 November 1991, p. 16.
Judge Myrella Cohen QC (1927–2002) - Unlike some Jewish judges whose Jewish identity was largely incidental to their professional careers, Cohen's Jewish identity was conspicuous and consequential: she was Orthodox/observant, active in Jewish organizations, chaired the British branch of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, and devoted considerable effort to changing the interaction between English divorce law and the Jewish get. At the same time, she had a substantial criminal-law-enforcement dimension, having spent many years as a Crown Court judge with a notably tough reputation and sitting at the Old Bailey. - ChatGPT
Freedman, Dawn, “Her Honour Myrella Cohen QC.” First 100 Years (Women in Law), 2019 [Biographical memoir of Cohen by her friend and fellow judge.]
“Her Honour Judge Myrella Cohen.” The Times, November 6, 2002. [A substantial obituary and an important contemporary source.]
Wright, Rosalind, “The Jewish Women Who Were Among the First to Seize the Opportunity to Be Lawyers.” The Jewish Chronicle, January 3, 2020. [A very useful retrospective placing Cohen alongside other pioneering British Jewish women lawyers. Wright notes that Cohen was the second Jewish woman to take silk, after Rose Heilbron, became a circuit judge in 1972, sat at the Old Bailey, and developed a formidable reputation in criminal cases. It also discusses her Orthodox observance and agunah activism.]
Unlike some Jewish judges whose Jewish identity was largely incidental to their professional careers, Cohen's Jewish identity was conspicuous and consequential: she was Orthodox/observant, active in Jewish organizations, chaired the British branch of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, and devoted considerable effort to changing the interaction between English divorce law and the Jewish get. At the same time, she had a substantial criminal-law-enforcement dimension, having spent many years as a Crown Court judge with a notably tough reputation and sitting at the Old Bailey.
Brief mentions from a long list of potential outstanding U.K. Jewish legal personalities:
Lord Lionel Cohen (1888–1973) —became the first Jewish Lord of Appeal in Ordinary (Law Lord) in 1951, after having been the first Jewish High Court judge and first Jewish Lord Justice of Appeal. An eminent authority on company law.
Lord Peter Goldsmith (b. 1950) — Liverpool-born and of Jewish background; one of Britain's leading commercial advocates before becoming Attorney General for England and Wales and Northern Ireland, 2001–07. As Attorney General he was the government's senior law officer and superintended the prosecution authorities, although he was not a career prosecutor. His tenure became especially famous—and controversial—because of his advice on the legality of the Iraq War.
Sir Sebag Shaw (1906–1982) —Appointed to the High Court in 1968 and Court of Appeal in 1975, he came from an East End Jewish background rather than the older Anglo-Jewish elite and became particularly associated with difficult criminal cases. Cooper regards his appointment as symbolic of the breaking-down of earlier class barriers.
Sir Philip Wien (1913–1981) — High Court judge from 1970, another important member of the first substantial postwar generation of Jewish judges.
Lord Leonard Hoffmann (b. 1934) — South African-born British Jewish jurist and one of the most intellectually influential Law Lords of his generation. Particularly important in commercial, intellectual-property, public and human-rights law.
Lord John Dyson (b. 1943) — Of East European Jewish ancestry; High Court judge, Lord Justice of Appeal, UK Supreme Court Justice (2010–12) and Master of the Rolls (2012–16).
Lord Lawrence Collins of Mapesbury (b. 1941) — Especially interesting because he began as a solicitor, becoming one of the first practising solicitors appointed QC, before being appointed to the High Court and eventually becoming a Justice of the UK Supreme Court. An important specialist in international law and conflict of laws.
Lord David Neuberger (b. 1948) — One of the outstanding British judges of the twenty-first century: High Court, Court of Appeal, Law Lord, Master of the Rolls and finally President of the UK Supreme Court, 2012–17. He has spoken publicly about the Jewish history of the British judiciary and has chaired the Advisory Committee on Holocaust-era art spoliation.
Lord Terence Etherton (1951–2025) — High Court judge, Lord Justice of Appeal, Chancellor of the High Court and Master of the Rolls, 2016–20. His Jewish identity was unusually visible: grandson of immigrants from the Russian Pale, Hebrew speaker, warden of West London Synagogue and married there in a Jewish ceremony. He was also Britain's first openly gay senior judge.
Lady Hazel Cosgrove (b. 1946) is worth adding so that the list is genuinely British rather than simply English. A Scottish Jewish lawyer, she became the first woman appointed permanently to Scotland's Court of Session in 1996, after serving as sheriff and temporary judge.
There are numerous other Jewish senior judges who merit inclusion in a fuller list—among them Sir John Balcombe, Sir Bernard Rix, Sir Robert Jacob, Sir Gavin Lightman, Sir Hugh Laddie, Sir Michael Burton, Sir Stephen Silber, Sir Bernard Eder and others—but they are somewhat less central to a crime/law-enforcement bibliography because much of their distinction lies in commercial, chancery or specialist civil law.
The striking historical pattern is that Jewish prominence is much stronger in criminal defence and especially the senior judiciary than in the professional prosecution service. There was also a dramatic generational change: Cooper shows that before the late 1960s Jewish High Court appointments were largely confined to the highly assimilated Anglo-Jewish elite; from 1968 onward judges of East European immigrant and middle-class Jewish backgrounds increasingly reached the senior bench. – ChatGPT