Professor Sir William Wade, Q.C., the foremost scholar of administrative law in the United Kingdom died on the 12th March 2004. He was born on the 16th January 1918 and educated at Shrewsbury and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. His long life was primarily that of an academic lawyer. He held chairs at both Oxford (English Law 1961-1976) and Cambridge (Rouse Ball Chair of English law 1978-82) and served as Master of Gonville and Caius College from 1976 to 1988.
He dominated two diverse areas of law, first real property and then administrative law, by writing the textbooks that became a source of first reference to students, scholars, practitioners and judges. His Law of Real Property , written with the Rt Hon. Sir Robert Megarry, is now in its 7th edition (by Dr Charles Harpum) and would by itself be enough to justify his life as a scholar. But his greatest achievement was the writing of Administrative Law, now in its 8th edition (the last two editions written with Dr Christopher Forsyth). Through its successive editions, this book, lucidly and sparely written, established its unique authority as a principled account of the law, acute in criticism and robust in its defence of the rule of law. Here he did not merely expound the law, but through the persuasiveness of his writing, he made the law, as court after court, in England and across the common law world, adopted his views. Along with Lord Denning (who kept Administrative Law by his bedside) and Lord Diplock, Wade was one of the architects of the modern law of judicial review of administrative action which is now an ever present safeguard against the abuse of governmental power.
The measure of this achievement may be seen from the fact that when Wade commenced work in the 1950s an atmosphere of depression and defeatism hung over public law. The great accretion of discretionary power to the state during the War and during Atlee’s reforming government thereafter had left many to conclude that the common law had lost the power to control the executive. Over the next forty years the great reforming judges showed that this was not so. It was said by Lord Diplock that the creation of a comprehensive system of administrative law was ‘the greatest achievement of the English courts in my judicial lifetime’ and Wade was near the heart of that achievement. This was not only through his writings, but he was often privately consulted by counsel in leading cases and sometimes also by the judges, many of whom he counted as his friends. He delighted in inviting law lords, as well as lesser luminaries, to grand dinners in Cambridge at which the law, and public law in particular, would be debated and set right.
Administrative Law has a worldwide influence, selling well in most common law jurisdictions. This success ensured Wade a welcome everywhere he travelled and he lectured in most corners of the world, relishing in particular the vast audiences that came to hear him in India, where he had many friends and admirers. Addressing a crowd of two thousand six hundred who had come to hear him give the Chettyar lecture in Madras in 1974,, comparing the protection of fundamental rights in India and the United Kingdom, he wryly commented on the ‘consternation’ that would result if his lectures in Oxford were so popular!
The success of the book brought him an elevated advisory practice. Governments across the Commonwealth sought his advice on what constitutional arrangements might bring peace to a troubled province or on how they might lawfully extricate themselves from an administrative tangle.
While age inevitably curbed some of his activities, his enthusiasm for administrative law was quite undimmed. An ingenious gadget of his own devising alerted him to the arrival of The Times each morning at his garden gate and he would promptly scour the law reports and accounts of the relevant doings of government over breakfast. Less diligent colleagues would then be embarrassed by their ignorance when pressed to comment on the latest developments. He was the first to tackle the thorny but fundamental question of whether, and if so how, the Human Rights Act 1998 applied to litigation between private parties. His solution – that Human Rights Act 1998 was fully applicable between private parties, since the courts, even in private litigation, were bound to uphold human rights – has not yet commanded universal acceptance. But when the issue arises unambiguously before the House of Lords, his views will doubtless carry their customary weight. Until a few days before the end he was working on the 9th edition of Administrative Law which will be published later this year.
Wade’s career, however, commenced as a temporary civil servant in the Treasury from 1940 to 1946. These early and important labours informed his work on administrative law and ensured that while he wrote as a scholar he also wrote with an understanding of the civil servant’s mind. He had too the civil servant’s commitment to political impartiality and resisted all attempts to characterise his work as favouring one political stance or another. The government whatever its colour had to be allowed to do what it was elected to do, but it had to do so in a fair and reasonable way without unjustifiable infringements of the human rights of those concerned. But, unlike many civil servants, Wade favoured open government and was opposed to all secrecy for the sake of secrecy. In 1985 he gave evidence for the defence in the trial of Clive Ponting for breaches of the Official Secrets Act 1911. Wade argued for a defence to disclosures that appeared to be in breach of the Act but were in fact in the public interest. The jury agreed, acquitting Ponting.
Wade exhibited a strong commitment to public service and any account here of the many committees on which he served or to which he gave evidence would be bound to be incomplete. His founder membership of the Council on Tribunals and his long service on that body 1958-1971 as well as his membership of the 1966 Royal Commission on Tribunals of Inquiry (the Salmon Commission) cannot escape mention. His influence on the development of Tribunals through his work of the Council and earlier through in his evidence to the Franks Committee was profound.
Wade’s distinction and public service brought with it a full measure of honour. In 1964 he was made an Honorary Bencher of Lincoln’s Inn, in 1968 he was appointed to the rank of Queen’s Counsel and in 1969 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. A knighthood for services to administrative law followed in 1985. Surprisingly only Cambridge awarded him an honorary doctorate - in 1998.
Ascetic in appearance, austere in intellect, clear and incisive in speech and writing Bill Wade inspired admiration. His recreations, mountain climbing and gardening, were tokens of his sometimes solitary, serious spirit. A gentleman from a nobler age he had little interest in gossip – as opposed to news about friends. He did not parade his learning and wore his fame lightly. He did not stand on ceremony, but he thought it inappropriate that the Prime Minister, who had attended his lectures at Oxford, should greet him as “Bill”.
He is survived by his two sons from his marriage to Marie Osland-Hill who died in 1980. His second marriage to Marjorie Browne ended with her sudden death in 2001 and he faced the final years of increasing frailness, sad and unexpectedly alone, but stoically with fortitude and dignity.
There will be a memorial service on the 10th July in Great St Mary's Church at 11am.