IF SIR Arthur Quiller-Couch were compiling a contemporary anthology of great writings in the English language he would assuredly have included a judgment or two from the pen of Lord Simon of Glaisdale. But Jack Simon was not just one of the elite of legal literati; he was foremost a lawyer who, by dint of sheer intellectual application, scaled the heights of the judicial ladder. He had been a prominent participant in Conservative politics, was a junior minister in various government departments, including Financial Secretary to the Treasury and Solicitor-General in the Macmillan administrations and earlier a leading practitioner in family law.

His period as a Law Lord was too short for him to have achieved the prominence his abilities would have indicated. His retirement at the age of 66 — judges can carry on sitting until 75 — was due to an impairment of his sight and hearing. Shortly after he succeeded Lord Merriman as President of the Divorce Division in 1962, he suffered from headaches. A surgical operation to relieve the pressure severed the nerves behind the eye and left him partially paralysed on one side of his body. That he managed for the next decade or more to perform his judicial duties, without any impairment of his mental processes was remarkable. But the physical handicap took its toll, although he continued to attend the House of Lords in its deliberative and legislative role, to which he contributed on many socio-legal problems, mostly to do with the family.

Jocelyn Edward Salis Simon was born in 1911, the son of Frank Cecil Simon. He was educated at Gresham’s School, Holt, Norfolk, and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he was an Exhibitioner. He was called to the Bar by the Middle Temple in 1934 — with the distinction of Blackstone Prizeman.

From the Inns of Court Regiment he was commissioned in 1939 in the Royal Tank Regiment and served throughout the war. He commanded the squadron of the Royal Armoured Corps in Madagascar in 1942. He later took part in the Burma campaign against the Japanese, serving with the 36th Division, and was mentioned in dispatches. By 1945 he had attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel and held a staff appointment.

In 1946 Simon resumed his practice at the Bar and took silk seven years later. In the 1951 general election he became Conservative MP for West Middlesbrough, winning the seat from Labour. He was soon appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Attorney-General, Sir Lionel Heald, and in this capacity for three years he had a useful introduction to the responsibilities that were to come to him later as Solicitor-General. He was also appointed a member of the Royal Commission on the Law Relating to Mental Illness and Mental Deficiency that led up to the Mental Health Act (1959). He was a good constituency MP and at the 1955 general election increased his majority. He was an active backbencher, despite a busy practice at the Bar and introduced as a private member the Public Bodies (Admission of the Press to Meetings) Bill, which was the forerunner of a similar measure sponsored by Margaret Thatcher in 1960.

In 1957 he was appointed Joint Parliamentary UnderSecretary of State at the Home Office. He was well suited to his department, but after only a year was promoted to Financial Secretary at the Treasury, usually a stepping stone to high office. He succeeded Enoch Powell, who had resigned with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Peter Thorneycroft, and the Economic Secretary, Nigel Birch, after a Cabinet disagreement about the pruning of the estimates of government expenditure. With the skill of an all-rounder, Simon applied himself diligently to the austerities of the Treasury mystique and he took an active part in steering the 1959 Finance Bill through the Commons.

In October 1959 he became Solicitor-General, in succession to Sir Harry Hylton-Foster, who had been elected Speaker. He held the office of Solicitor-General, with acknowledged success, until his appointment as President of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court in 1962, which on Simon’s elevation in 1971 to the House of Lords, became the Family Division of the High Court.

With enormous responsibilities for administering the law as it stood — stretching to divorce registers all over the country as well as the High Court — his main concern had been to reform the matrimonial law. In speech after speech he made clear his radical approach to this matter, and no one was in a better position to judge.

Yet as a judge he applied the law with scrupulous care. He never tried to reform it by twisting it; in fact, no judge took more care to give judgments which were legally accurate and to revise them incessantly before final publication in the official law report. But he was manifestly much more suited to being an appellate judge over the whole range of the common law than as a decider of fact in matrimonial proceedings and custody suits which needed rather different talents.

In his six and a half years on the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords, he made notable contributions to the jurisprudence in a wide range of subjects. His judgments (strictly called speeches, because they are delivered in the chamber of the House) were always carefully constructed, often containing historical and literary allusions. If they also tended to prolixity, the reader’s interest never flagged. Frequently he would deploy his literary talents to a case; and he was quick to dismiss the sloppy arguments and forensic flourishes.

In The Sunday Times contempt case over the thalidomide publicity, he wrote: “Rhetoric tends to cancel itself out. Shylock’s proposed cruelty is countered by the cruelty of his utter ruin and forced apostasy.” He not infrequently found himself on the losing side, but his dissenting judgments often carried greater conviction than the majority’s.

His recondite treatment of the law of duress in a case arising out of an IRA bombing is a classical exposition of a thorny moral and legal problem. His forte was the skilful employment of the canons of statutory construction, to which he brought to bear his experience and expertise as a former parliamentarian, and his love of the English language. This combination led him to give high priority to the philology of Acts of Parliament.

Although a conservative politically, Simon had an inclination to liberalism in his evaluation of moral standards. He was also a reformer.

In his presidency of the divorce courts he showed his deep feeling for the misfortunes of those who would have to come before him for the dissolution of a relationship “which is capable of bringing the heights of felicity”. He lived up to his words. To all his work, whether political or legal, he brought an infectious sense of humour. He was a charming companion and a loyal colleague.

He is survived by his wife, Fay, and three sons.

Lord Simon of Glaisdale, a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, 1971-77, was born on January 15, 1911. He died on May 7, 2006, aged 95.