Sir Alexander James Edmund Cocrburn, an English jurist, born in 1802. His father, Alexander Cockburn, was British minister in Colombia; his mother was a daughter of Viscount do Yiguier of Santo Domingo; and he succeeded to the baronetcy on the death of his uncle, Sir William Cockburn, dean of York, in 1858. He graduated at Cambridge, was called to the bar in 1829, and went the western circuit. He was made a queen's counsel in 1841, and obtained a large share of the parliamentary practice that grew out of the railway mania of 1846. In 1847 he was returned to the house of commons from Southampton, and distinguished himself especially in 1850, when ho made his celebrated defence of Lord Paliner-ston's foreign policy. In August, 1850, he was appointed solicitor general and knighted, and in March, 1851, attorney general, which office he held (with an interval from February to December, 1852) till November, 1856. In 1854 he was made recorder of Bristol, having previously been recorder of Southampton. He was a member of parliament for Southampton till November, 1856, when, on the death of Chief Justice Jervis, he was created chief justice of the court of common pleas, and in 1859 became chief justice of the court of queen's bench, succeeding Lord Campbell, who was made lord chancellor.

His charge to the grand jury, April 10, 1867, in the case of Gen. Nelson and Lieut. Brand, prosecuted by the Jamaica defence committee, contains an elaborate exposition of martial law, and of its application in various periods of English history. In September, 1871, he was appointed the British arbitrator under the treaty of Washington for the settlement of the Alabama claims. Differing with his colleagues at the Geneva conference, he refused to sign the award that was finally made in favor of the United States, and prepared an elaborate dissenting opinion. His course at the conference has been the subject of much criticism, especially on the part of the Hon. Caleb Cushing in his "Treaty of Washington" (1873). This work analyzes his character and manners with great severity, but does not refer to his domestic relations, which have been often commerited upon in England, particularly at the time when, relying upon his official distinction and influence, he insisted upon introducing his daughter, one of his numerous illegitimate children, into society in London. At the conclusion of the arbitration of Geneva it was proposed that he should be raised to the rank of baron; but the queen refused on account of his irregular domestic life, and he received only the grand cross of the order of the bath (1873).