William Norman Birkett, 1st Baron Birkett

(William) Norman Birkett, 1st Baron Birkett, PC (September 6, 1883 - February 10, 1962) was a noted British Barrister and judge who served as the alternate British Judge during the Nuremberg trials after World War II.

Norman Birkett KC MP in 1930

Norman Birkett was a native of Ulverston near Barrow-in-Furness, Lancashire. He was educated at Barrow-in-Furness Grammar School and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge where he became President of the Cambridge Union Society in 1910. He was called to the Bar in 1913 and joined the chambers of the celebrated defence lawyer Edward Marshall Hall. Like Hall, Birkett specialised in criminal defence cases, and in 1934 secured the acquittal of Tony Mancini (alias Jack Notyre) in the celebrated Brighton Trunk Crime No. 2. Mancini had faced overwhelming evidence and many years later admitted his guilt.

Norman Birkett married Ruth Nilsson on August 25 1920. They had two children Hon. Linnea Nilsson Birkett (27 Jun 1923) and Michael Birkett, 2nd Baron Birkett (22 Oct 1929)

Birkett was a Liberal in politics and served briefly in Parliament for Nottingham East (which ensured a rapid rise to King's Counsel) from 1923 to 1924. He regained his seat in 1929 and harboured an ambition to serve as Attorney-General but was thwarted by his defeat in the 1931 general election. In 1939 he was picked to head an Advisory Committee to oversee the internment of British citizens under Defence Regulation 18B and in 1941 he was made a Judge of the King's Bench Division. During this period he donned the Black Cap to sentence to death Duncan Scott-Ford, a 21-year old British seaman convicted of passing convoy movements to German agents in Lisbon. Later, Birkett said he felt no emotion during or after this judicial task.

His experience in 18B cases and other wartime trials led him to be selected over more experienced colleagues to be the British Judge at the Nuremberg Trials. Because of his junior status the initial plan for him to be the leading Judge was revised and he became the deputy to Geoffrey Lawrence. Birkett resented the fact that Lawrence received a peerage after the end of the trials where he did not, although he was appointed to the Privy Council in 1947.

In 1950 Birkett was made a Lord Justice of Appeal. He was also made Chairman of the Court of the University of London from 1946. He retired as a Judge in 1957 as soon as he had served long enough to qualify for a judicial pension, and the next year was given a Peerage as 1st Baron Birkett. During his retirement he was interviewed by John Freeman on Face to Face. Pressed strongly by Freeman on how a defence counsel can bring himself to argue eloquently and forcefully on behalf of a client whom he may know to be guilty of a heinous crime, Birkett gave a brilliant defence of a counsel's role: to act as the prisoner's 'mouthpiece'; to say what the prisoner would say, had he but the counsel's legal knowledge and ability. On February 8 1962 in the House of Lords he successfully moved to reject a Bill to allow the lake of Ullswater, near his birthplace, to be abstracted for drinking water in Lancashire. He died two days later.

The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations quoted Birkett in 1992:
"I do not object to people looking at their watches when I am speaking. But I strongly object when they start shaking them to make certain they are still going."

- Observer, 30 Oct 1960,[ODMQ 1992]