John Sankey (26 October 1866 – 6 February 1948) was a barrister, judge and politician.
Born in Gloucestershire, he moved to London where he studied law: he was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1892 and appointed a King's Counsel in 1909.
In 1901 he was elected to the London County Council as a Municipal Reform Party councillor for Tower Hamlets (Stepney). He only served a single three-year term on the council, standing down at the 1913 election, and became a High Court judge in 1914.
Although Sankey had been a councillor for the Conservative-backed Municipal Reform Party, he subsequently moved politically to the left: in 1919 he was a member of a commission investigating the coal mining industry and he advocated nationalisation. In 1929 he was appointed Lord Chancellor in the first Labour Party government and raised to the peerage as Baron Sankey. He held the post until 1935, and in 1932 became Viscount Sankey.
More information on the Wikipedia page [1]
References[]
- Robert J. Sharpe, Patricia I. McMahon (2008). The Persons Case: The Origins and Legacy of the Fight for Legal Personhood. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9781442692343.