Joseph Walton (judge)

Joseph Walton was born in Liverpool in a Roman Catholic family, the eldest son of Joseph Walton of Fazakerley, Lancashire, by his wife Winifred Cowley. After being educated at St. Francis Xavier's College, Salisbury Street, and the Jesuit Stonyhurst College, he passed to London University, and graduated in 1865 with first-class honours in mental and moral science. In the same year he entered Lincoln's Inn, where he was called to the bar on 17 November 1868, and was made a bencher in 1896.

Walton, who joined the Northern Circuit, entered the chambers of his fellow Catholic Charles Russell (later Lord Russell of Killowen), then one of the leading juniors, and practised for several years as a 'local' at Liverpool. His chief work was in commercial and shipping cases, but his name is also associated with other important actions. A Roman Catholic as well as a distinguished advocate, Walton was retained in the actions brought successfully in the interest of Catholic children against Thomas John Barnardo. Walton took a leading part in two cases which attracted considerable public interest. Having succeeded Sir Charles Russell as leading counsel to the Jockey Club, he appeared in Powell v. Kempton Park Racecourse Company [1899] AC 143, which defined a "place" within the meaning of the Betting Act, 1853, and in the copyright case of Walter v. Lane [1900] AC 539, arising out of the republication of reports from The Times of speeches by Lord Rosebery which decided that there is copyright in the report of a speech.

Walton's advancement in the profession was slow. He took silk in 1892, and became Recorder of Wigan in 1895; but the general esteem in which he was held was shown by his election in 1899 to be chairman of the General Council of the Bar. At the same time, he became the dominant lawyer in the new Commercial Court, which had been established within the Queen's Bench Division in 1895. In the first volume of Commercial Court law reports, Walton recorded thirty-five appearances; his nearest rival and Liverpool contemporary, John Bigham, recorded only sixteen. In 1897, Bigham was promoted to the High Court bench, cementing Walton's dominance of the Commercial Court.^[1]

Upon the appointment in 1901 of Sir James Mathew to be a Lord Justice of Appeal, Walton succeeded him as a judge of the King's Bench Division of the High Court, and was knighted. Lord Salisbury, who objected to Mathew's conduct on the Evicted Tenants Commission of 1892, considered "making Walton Lord Justice at once over Mathew's head", but in acceded to Lord Halsbury's original proposal.

Walton's wide experience of commercial matters was of service to the Commercial Court, but on the whole his work as a judge did not fulfil expectation, though in judicial demeanour he was above criticism. He was interested in the work of the Medico-Legal Society, of which he became second president in 1905. He died suddenly at his country residence at Shingle Street, near Woodbridge, on 12 August 1910, having taken, in the previous week, an active part in the proceedings of the International Law Association in London. He was buried in the Roman Catholic cemetery, Kensal Green.