Past historic 7: Sir Arthur Kekewich -- was he really the worst judge?

Sir Arthur Kekewich, as
portrayed in Vanity Fair,
January 1895

The seventh item in the little bundle of photocopied articles on IP history which this Kat researched and wrote back in the 1980s, when he was still a full-time academic, deals with the case of Sir Arthur Kekewich, a Chancery Division judge for England and Wales who shouldered the burden of hearing a large number of intellectual property disputes over a period of more than two decades, during which he was execrated for the poor quality of his judicial rulings. As the old joke went:

"This is a decision of Mr Justice Kekewich,  my Lord, but there are other grounds of appeal".

Is it true that there is no smoke without fire, and that this unfortunate judge was foundering, out of his depth and beyond his capabilities, in a sea of intellectual property law which he was unable to navigate? Did he owe his position to the fact that he married Marianne, the daughter of a successful solicitor whose name resounds through the Courts of Justice even today, James William Freshfield? Or was he a reliable and efficient judge who was maligned, misunderstood and misrepresented, a sad victim of another's humour or hostility?

This week's article, "Sir Arthur Kekewich: a Study in Intellectual Property Litigation 1886-1907", was first published in [1983] 12 European Intellectual Property Review 335 to 340. You can read it in full here.