Wilfred Arthur Greene, 1st Baron Greene Military Cross, Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, KC, Personal Computer was a British lawyer and judge, noted for creating two crucial principles of administrative law, the Wednesbury doctrine and the Carltona doctrine.
Education
Greene was educated at Westminster College London, England. He graduated from Christ Church, Oxford in 1906 with a Bachelor. He had the reputation of being "a formidable scholar".
He graduated from Christ Church, Oxford in 1912 with an Oxbridge Master of Arts. He gained the rank of Captain in the service of the 2/1st Battalion,Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.
Career
He was admitted to Inner Temple in 1908 entitled to practice as a Barrister-at-Law. He fought in the First World War between 1914 and 1918. He was decorated with the award of the Military Cross in 1918.
He was decorated with the award of Croix de guerre.
He was invested with an Greene was a Lord Justice of Appeal from 1935 to 1937. He served as Master of the Rolls between 1937 and 1949, and subsequently became a Law Lord.
On 16 July 1941 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Greene, of Holmbury Street Mary in the County of Surrey. The title became extinct on his death in April 1952, aged 68.
Greene in his time was the acknowledged master of administrative law – indeed it is impossible to exaggerate his contribution to the development of this field of law.
Despite some refinements, the Wednesbury doctrine of reasonableness remains the benchmark by which courts review decisions of public bodies. Of even greater significance was his enunciation of the Carltona doctrine in Carltona Limited. v. Commissioners of Public Works 2 All East.R. 560 that "the duties imposed upon Ministers and the powers given to Ministers are normally exercised under the authority of the Minister by responsible officials of the Department".
lieutenant may fairly be said that the Carltona doctrine is the legal underpinning for the operation of the civil service in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
In 1941 he chaired a Board of Inquiry into pay in the mining industry, prompted by a series of strikes, and at the urging of Harold Wilson (the future Prime Minister, then serving as a wartime civil servant), who served as secretary to the inquiry, recommended both a pay rise and the establishment of a minimum wage for the industry. Greene, who was not normally thought of as a "political" judge, is said to have remarked cheerfully that his report was the first step towards nationalisation of the coal mines.
Greene acquired, a country house in Holmbury Street Mary designed by Arts and Crafts architect Philip Webb, but demolished it in 1930. He commissioned Oliver Hill to design a new in modernist style, completed in 1932.
He also commissioned a house to a design by the modernist Tecton Group, which was built in the grounds of in 1939.
Associated Provincial Picture Houses v Wednesbury Corporation 1 KB 223 Re Smith & Fawcett Church 304 Carltona v Commissioners of Public Works 2 All.