Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet

Sir Alexander James Edmund Cockburn, 12th Baronet (24 December 1802 to 20 November 1880) was a British jurist and politician who served as Attorney General in 1851 to 1852 and 1852 to 1856, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas from 1856 to 1859, and Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench for twenty one years from 1859 until his death in 1880, presiding over many of the most celebrated trials of the nineteenth century. Born in Altona, near Hamburg, and elected Member of Parliament for Southampton from 1847 to 1857, he helped establish the insanity defense in English law through the case of Daniel M'Naghten, developed the Hicklin test used to define obscenity, and presided over the lengthy Tichborne Case, whose civil trial ran for 103 days and whose subsequent perjury trial ran for 188. Queen Victoria refused to approve a peerage for him in 1864 over concerns about his personal conduct, and he never married, though he had two children outside marriage.