Geoffrey Lane, Baron Lane

Geoffrey Dawson Lane, Baron Lane (17 July 1918 to 22 August 2005) was a British barrister and judge, the son of a bank manager, who was educated at Shrewsbury School and Trinity College, Cambridge, served as a Royal Air Force pilot in the Second World War and received the Air Force Cross, and after being called to the bar in 1946 became a Queen's Counsel in 1962 and a High Court judge in 1969. He served as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary from 1977 to 1980 before becoming Lord Chief Justice of England from 1980 to 1992, a tenure marked by controversy over his 1988 rejection of an appeal by the Birmingham Six, whose convictions were overturned in 1991 after they had already served years in prison. The decision drew calls from 140 members of parliament for his resignation and a hostile editorial in The Times. Despite that controversy, he was described on his death as a very great Lord Chief Justice by common consent of the legal profession.