Sir Robert Megarry 1910-2006
Sir Robert Megarry, chairman of the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting from 1972 to 1986, died on 11 October, aged 96. He read law at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. In 1935 he was admitted as a solicitor and thereafter taught for the Bar and solicitors’ examinations. During the Second World War he worked for the Ministry of Supply. He was called to the Bar by Lincoln’s Inn in 1944, and after the war he pursued a career at the Chancery Bar as well as lecturing at Cambridge, teaching aspiring barristers and solicitors, and editing the Law Quarterly Review. The building then occupied by Stevens, the publishers of the LQR, was 119 Chancery Lane, now owned by the ICLR and named Megarry House in honour of Sir Robert. He took silk in 1956 and was appointed a High Court judge (assigned to the Chancery Division) in 1967. He became Vice-Chancellor in 1976 (in 1982 the office changed as a result of the Supreme Court Act 1981 to Vice-Chancellor of the Supreme Court and carried with it ex officio membership of the Court of Appeal). He was the co-author, with Professor William Wade, of The Law of Real Property, a standard textbook for generations of law students; he also wrote or edited countless other books and articles, including Arabinesque-at-Law and Miscellany-at-Law with its two successors. As chairman of the ICLR he was far from remote or unaware of the process and problems of producing law reports. He always took a keen interest in both the content of the Weekly Law Reports and in matters of style, on which he had strong, but invariably sound, views. His assistance in the publication of his judgment in the Ocean Islands case, Tito v Waddell (No 2) [1977] Ch 106; [1977] 2 WLR 496, noted both for its length and for the fact that the court flew to Banaba to view the island round which the dispute was centred, was invaluable. He was a witty speaker and a superb lecturer, and maintained a keen interest in, and contact with, the ICLR until his death. |
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| Memorial Service - Lincoln's Inn Chapel - 12th March 2007 |
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“His contribution to the law was simply immeasurable.” So said Sir Martin Nourse, giving the address to a packed congregation at the Service of Remembrance and Thanksgiving held for Sir Robert Megarry in Lincoln’s Inn Chapel on Monday, 12 March 2007. Sir Martin went on to praise the outstanding contributions in various different areas which Sir Robert, known to his friends as “Ted”, had made in the course of a long life devoted to the law — as a student at Cambridge, as a solicitor who subsequently became a barrister, as a judge of the Chancery Division who eventually became Vice Chancellor of the Supreme Court, but also as a writer and teacher, and as a bencher and treasurer of Lincoln’s Inn, where he was also chairman of its wine society. (Not forgetting, one might add, his mentor-like chairmanship of the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting from 1972 to 1986.)
As a writer, both of textbooks such as Megarry and Wade, The Law of Real Property and Megarry on the Rent Acts, and of such diversions into the lighter side of the law as his three volumes of Miscellany-at-Law, he was praised for his unique combination of erudition, wit and clarity. Among the other tributes, Professor Bryan A Garner (once described as “the world’s leading legal lexicographer”) gave a description of how, even at the end of his life, “Ted” continued to work on his final volume of his Miscellany-at-Law, his attention to the curious and sometimes absurd details of the law as keen as ever, and his sense of humour as lively: something amply bourne out by the extract which Professor Garner then read out.
Jacquetta Megarry, one of Sir Robert’s three daughters, also gave a reading, from a poem entitled “Success”, by Bessie Stanley, which contains the lines: “That man is a success / who has lived well, / laughed often and loved much; / Who has gained the respect of intelligent men / and the love of children; / Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; / Who leaves the world better than he found it...”
The service was conducted by The Preacher, the Very Revd Derek Watson. Reciting the bidding, he summed up the varied tributes to Sir Robert’s long and fruitful life in the law: “He was a fine judge with a commitment to justice and its clear exposition; a great legal scholar and the distinguished author of legal textbooks which clarified complex areas of law; and a gifted teacher, known for his courtesy and kindness, who was always willing to help those who wished to learn.” |
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