One of the less visible Commercial Court Judges, George Arthur Harwin Branson provided nearly two decades of conscientious service on the High Court Bench, but he has no entry in The National Dictionary of Biography, and the National Portrait Gallery holds only a single image of him.
Branson was born at Great Yarmouth in 1871. His father, James, had practised at the Bar in Calcutta before establishing a niche career in London as a junior in Privy Council appeals. Branson attended grammar school in Bedford, then studied classics at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a good enough oarsman to row for the University in the 1893 Boat Race, but his timing was bad: Oxford dominated the 1890's, winning nine years in succession, and Branson's boat finished more than a length behind.
George Arthur Harwin Branson in 1930.
Branson began his career as a solicitor, and he was approaching his thirties when he switched professions. He was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1899. Like so many others who practised in the Commercial Court in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, Branson decided to start his career in the North of England. He joined the Northern Circuit, which included Liverpool and Manchester. The first city was one of the nation's greatest ports, while the second was a major manufacturing centre, and their Courts dealt with a significant amount of commercial litigation.
Even more importantly for Branson's career, the Northern Circtuit was one of the professional bases of Rufus Isaacs KC, who divided his practice between London and the North. One of the most prominent advocates of the day, Isaacs appeared frequently in the Commercial Court, but he also had a broader common law practice. He had ambitions beyond the law too, and was active in Liberal politics. Branson established a "devilling" relationship with Isaacs similar to that which Sidney Rowlatt had formed with Robert Finlay, producing drafts of Isaac's opinions and helping him to prepare cases for trial.
Just as Finlay had used his political connections to advance Rowlatt's career, Isaacs helped Branson, and government work found its way to Branson after Isaacs became an MP in 1905. By the time Rowlatt was made a King's Bench Judge in 1912, Isaacs, was Attorney-General, and the choice of Rowlatt’s replacement as Junior Counsel to the Treasury was in his gift. He selected Branson. The "Treasury Devil" supported leading counsel in a broad range of government litigation, and Branson appeared in cases involving crime, housing, national insurance and social security, roads, elections, tax, telecommunications, and navigable rivers, among other subjects. During the Great War, he was also involved in Prize litigation and in cases involving emergency powers and government requisition, including Re De Keyser's Royal Hotel [1920] AC 508, a leading decision on the scope of the royal prerogative. (As if to emphasise his low public profile, the law reporters mis-named him "G. A. H. Brandon".) Branson was also part of the prosecution team in the Roger Casement treason trial and appeal. As Treasury Junior, Branson did not have a great many advocacy opportunities. But when he did argue a case, his presentation was sufficiently well-organised and clear to once win an approving comment from Lord Justice J.C. Mathew, who did not readily distribute praise from the Bench. The Times summed Branson up as "essentially a safe man, who could be trusted not to let a public department down".
A period of service as Junior Counsel to the Treasury was traditionally rewarded with a place on the High Court Bench. Branson's time came in April 1921, when he filled the King's Bench vacancy created by A.T. Lawrence's temporary appointment as a sham Lord Chief Justice. The legal press treated Branson's elevation as an inevitability rather than a cause for enthusiasm, but acknowledged that he was "a sound commercial lawyer, if not brilliant".
Branson actually began his judicial career in the Probate, Divorce & Admiralty Division, helping to help clear a large post-War backlog of divorce cases. But within a few months, he was hearing cases about international sale and shipbuilding. Branson sat in the Commercial Court regularly throughout his judicial career, and Commercial Court cases account for the bulk of his reported first-instance judgments, with about 150 entries in the law reports. Among his more prominent cases were Smith, Hogg & Co v Black Sea & Baltic [1940] AC 997 on the relationship between charterparty exceptions and the obligation of seaworthiness (the decision of the House of Lords is still regularly cited: the Lords disagreed with Branson's decision), and Kawasaki Kaisen Kabushiki Kaisya v Belships Co Ltd (1939) 63 Lloyd's Rep 175, in which Branson held that a contractual right to terminate a time charter must be exercised within a reasonable time. When not in the Commercial Court, Branson did more than his fair share of time in the Court of Criminal Appeal. He also tried cases in miscellaneous King's Bench fields including employment, landlord and tenant, local government, motor insurance, tort, and even some planning, and he regularly went Circuit.
Branson discharged his judicial responsibilities with the same unfussy competence which he had demonstrated at the Bar. The Law Times thought that "his was not a judicial career of spectacular highlights". But he avoided spectacular lowlights too. Branson's reported judgments were seldom overturned, and he was considered good enough to be offered promotion to the Court of Appeal. An independent-minded man, Branson declined the opportunity, on the grounds that he preferred to work alone.
Branson succeeded Sidney Rowlatt as “Treasury Devil”. Just as Robert Finlay’s patronage had boosted Rowlatt’s career, so Branson benefited from his links to Rufus Isaacs KC. who became Attorney-General and (as Viscount Reading) Lord Chief Justice.
When Branson quietly retired at the end of 1939, a country which was focussed on the recently-declared Second World War hardly noticed. Even the legal press barely acknowledged his going, although The Law Journal remarked on the "regrettable loss" to the King's Bench Division.
Branson had married Mona Anderson in 1915. They had one son and one daughter. After Branson's retirement, they settled in the village of Bradfield Combust, in Suffolk, although it was at Pirbright in Surrey that Branson died, in April 1951. The memorial plaque in the Church of All Saints at Bradfield recalls "a wise and kind man". Mona, who was nearly twenty years younger than Branson, survived him until 1964. Their son, Edward, came through service in the Middle East and Italy during the Second World War to join his father's Inn of Court and practise in London and the Southeast of England, and was a stipendiary magistrate in London for more than fifteen years. “Ted” and his wife Evette had a son, Richard. An altogether more extrovert character than his grandfather, Richard did not enter the law, choosing instead to open a record shop, and later to set up a transatlantic airline.