Education
Spens was educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford, and was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1910.
Spens was educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford, and was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1910.
He served as Chief Justice of India from 1943 to 1947. Spens was the eldest of the six children of Nathaniel Spens, a chartered accountant and managing director of state liquidation, born in Glasgow and of Frimley, Surrey, and Emily Jessie Connal. He served in the First World War as an adjutant in the 5th battalion of the Queen"s Royal Regiment.
After the war Spens started practising as a lawyer and became a King"s Counsel (KC) in 1925.
He unsuccessfully contested Street Pancras South West in the 1929 general election, but was elected for Ashford in 1933. In 1943 Spens was unexpectedly appointed Chief Justice of India.
He retained this post until 1947. He served from 1947 to 1948 as chairman of the tribunal set up to arbitrate between Indian judges disagreeing over the concept and substance of the Partition of India which had been announced by Lord Mountbatten and was being detailed by Sir Cyril Radcliffe"s two boundary commission (one for Bengal, one for present-day Pakistan).
He stood down from Parliament in its recall for the 1959 general election.
Spens was knighted in 1943, appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, becoming Sir William, in 1948 and admitted to the Privy Council in 1953. After his retirement from the House of Commons in 1959 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Spens, of Blairsanquhar in the County of Fife. Spens married firstly Hilda Mary, daughter of Wentworth Grenville Bowyer, in 1913.
They had two sons.
Lord Spens died in November 1973, aged 88. He was succeeded in the barony by his eldest and only surviving son, William.
36th United Kingdom Parliament. 37th United Kingdom Parliament. 39th United Kingdom Parliament.
40th United Kingdom Parliament.
41st United Kingdom Parliament]
Spens returned to Britain in 1949, and the following year he was elected as Member of Parliament (Member of Parliament) for Kensington South.