Cockburn, Alexander James Edmund (1802–1880)

English lawyer. His opening speech in the prosecution of Palmer in the celebrated Rugeley murder case in 1856 is famous as a forensic model of its kind. In 1843 he successfully defended M'Naughten, who shot Robert Peel's secretary, Drummond, on the grounds of insanity. He was presiding judge in the Tichborne case, in which a false claim was made against the Tichborne family, and was an arbitrator in the Alabama dispute of 1871.

Cockburn was educated at Cambridge, became a barrister in 1829, was recorder of Southampton 1840–46, Queen's Counsel in 1841, member of Parliament for Southampton 1847–56, and solicitor general in 1850. In 1851 he was made attorney general; he was recorder of Bristol 1854–56 and became the chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas in 1856, of the Court of Queen's Bench in 1859, and Lord Chief Justice of England in 1859. He was knighted in 1850.