He was a
Liberal Member of Parliament for
Leicester from 1913, and, after the constituency was divided in 1918,
Leicester East. An advanced Liberal, he was appointed
Solicitor General in 1916, receiving the customary
knighthood, and was sworn of the
Privy Council in 1918. He was
Attorney General from 10 January 1919 to 6 March 1922. He was given a seat in the
Cabinet in 1921. While in office, he refused offers to become
Chief Secretary for Ireland or
Home Secretary; at the time, the Attorney General had the right of first refusal for the post of Lord Chief Justice, which was Hewart's ambition.
Lord Chief Justice . On the resignation of
the Earl of Reading as
Lord Chief Justice of England in 1921, Hewart asked to succeed him. However,
David Lloyd George was reluctant to lose him, and, as a compromise, the 77-year-old Sir A. T. Lawrence (
Lord Trevethin from August 1921) was appointed instead as a stop-gap; he was required to furnish an undated letter of resignation to Lloyd George, an arrangement which scandalised many:
Lord Birkenhead thought it 'illegal', while judges boycotted the farewell ceremony for Lord Reading. On 3 March 1922, Trevethin 'resigned' (an event which he learned from
The Times), and Hewart was duly appointed
Lord Chief Justice of England on 8 March 1922, and was elevated to the peerage as
Baron Hewart, of
Bury, in the
County of Lancaster on 24 March 1922. In May 1922 Hewart was closely involved in the drafting of the
Constitution of the Irish Free State. He worked closely with his Irish counterpart,
Hugh Kennedy in May 1922 to finalise the text in time for
elections the following month. 1926 In 1929, Hewart published
The New Despotism, in which he asserted that the
rule of law in Britain was being undermined by the executive at the expense of the legislature and the courts. This book was very controversial and led to the appointment of a Committee on Ministers' Powers—chaired by the
Earl of Donoughmore—but its Report rejected Hewart's arguments. He has been described as "one of the most vigorous and vociferous believers in the impeccability of the English jury system of this or any other century". However, in 1931, Hewart made legal history, when (sitting with
Mr Justice Branson and
Mr Justice Hawke) he quashed the conviction for murder of
William Herbert Wallace, on the grounds that the conviction could not be supported by the evidence. In other words, the jury was wrong. Lord Hewart was the originator (paraphrased from the
original) of the aphorism "Not only must Justice be done; it must also be
seen to be done." In 1940, Hewart was asked by telephone by
10 Downing Street to resign; he duly did so on 12 October 1940. On his retirement, he was created
Viscount Hewart, of Bury in the
County Palatine of Lancaster, on 1 November 1940. ==Personal life==