Geoffrey Lawrence, 1st Baron Oaksey

Geoffrey Lawrence, 3rd Baron Trevethin and 1st Baron Oaksey (2 December 1880 – 28 August 1971), presided as the lead British judge at the Nuremberg trials after World War II, serving as President of the International Military Tribunal.

Born in London on 2 December 1880, he was the youngest son of Lord Trevethin, who briefly held the post of Lord Chief Justice of England in 1921–22. The Lawrence family originally came from Builth Wells in Radnorshire, Wales. He was educated at Haileybury—where Clement Attlee was a junior student—and at New College, Oxford. Called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1906, he joined the chambers of Sir Robert Finlay, which specialized in appellate cases before the House of Lords and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Finlay relied heavily on Lawrence, who often acted as lead counsel for Canadian cases while Finlay served as junior.

Commissioned a second lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery Territorial Force on 26 September 1914, he was promoted to temporary lieutenant the following month. He served in France with the Royal Artillery, was mentioned in dispatches twice, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) in 1918 as a major. He remained in the Territorial Army until 1937.

Returning to the Bar after the war, Lawrence continued taking cases to the Privy Council. His inherited interest in horses led to his appointment as Attorney for the Jockey Club in 1922. Soon after, he became Recorder of Oxford, a part-time judicial role. In 1927 he was made a King’s Counsel and appointed Attorney General to the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII), which also brought membership of the Council of the Duchy of Cornwall. He served in that capacity until 1932, when he was appointed a judge of the King’s Bench Division and received the customary knighthood. Two weeks after Kristallnacht in 1938, he helped Cornelia Oberlander flee Nazi Germany. As a judge, he avoided sensational judgments and public attention. In 1944, he succeeded Lord Goddard as a Lord Justice of Appeal.

Chosen as the experienced lead judge for the British delegation at Nuremberg—not, as some believed, because of his friendship with Prime Minister Attlee—he was elected President of the tribunal largely because he had few enemies. His conduct of the trials was widely praised; he worked to understand the relevance of each piece of evidence and was willing to interrupt long-winded counsel. Though not considered an exceptional legal talent, he delivered a clear judgment (largely written by Norman Birkett) that expressed the court’s moral conclusions. After the trials, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Oaksey, of Oaksey in Wiltshire, on 13 January 1947. He inherited the Barony of Trevethin from his brother on 25 June 1959, but was always known as Lord Oaksey. He served as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary from 1947 and on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council until his retirement in 1957.

Lawrence married Marjorie Frances Alice on 22 December 1921. She served in the ATS during World War II, received the OBE, and later became a magistrate. The couple had a country estate at Oaksey in Wiltshire, where Lawrence bred championship Guernsey cattle. They had three daughters and one son, John, who became a well-known amateur jockey and horse racing journalist, and also used the title Lord Oaksey.

In retirement, Lord Oaksey focused on his farm and judged several county agricultural shows. He died on 28 August 1971 in Oaksey, Wiltshire.