Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Stirling, James
STIRLING, Sir JAMES (1836–1916), judge, was born at Aberdeen 3 May 1836, the eldest son of the Rev. James Stirling, minister of the George Street United Presbyterian church, Aberdeen, by his wife, Sarah Irvine. He was sent to the grammar school and to the university of Aberdeen, where he showed marked ability as a mathematician. Proceeding to Trinity College, Cambridge, he was senior wrangler and first Smith's prizeman in 1860. The fact that he was not a member of the Church of England prevented his election to a fellowship. Having read in the chambers of Charles Turner Simpson, a well-known conveyancer, he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1862.
After serving on the staff of the New Reports, Stirling joined that of the newly-founded Law Reports in 1865, and reported chancery cases in the Rolls court under two masters of the Rolls, Lord Romilly and Sir George Jessel. He did not give up this occupation till 1876. Meanwhile, unlike most reporters, he acquired a considerable practice at the bar. Learned and industrious, he was at the same time diffident and distrustful of his powers. It was said of him that his opinion was the best in Lincoln's Inn if one could only get it. In 1881 (Sir) John Rigby, the attorney-general's ‘devil’, became a Q.C., and Sir Henry James (afterwards Lord James of Hereford) selected Stirling as his successor. For the Treasury work which now fell to him he was well suited. In 1886 Sir John Pearson died, and Lord Herschell appointed Stirling to the vacant chancery judgeship. As a judge, he was careful and painstaking to a fault, and the slowness of his methods was a subject of criticism; but his judgments were seldom reversed. With the bar he was exceedingly popular. In 1900 Lord Alverstone became lord chief justice of England, Sir Archibald Levin Smith succeeded him as master of the Rolls, and Stirling was promoted to the court of Appeal. As a lord justice, he was inclined to defer unduly to his colleagues, whose opinion was not always as good as his own. In one well-known instance (the case of Farquharson v. King, 1902) the House of Lords preferred Stirling's dissenting judgment to those of the majority in the Court of Appeal. From time to time he found himself sitting with two other senior wranglers, Lords Justices Romer and Moulton.
Stirling retired from the bench in 1906. Thereafter he spent most of his time at his country house, Finchcocks, at Goudhurst, Kent, taking no further part in legal affairs. Knighted on his appointment to the bench, he was sworn of the Privy Council when he became a lord justice. He died 27 June 1916 at Goudhurst.
Stirling married in 1868 Aby, daughter of John Thomson Renton, of Bradstone Brook, Shalford, Surrey, who survived him. They had one son and two daughters.
An oil-portrait by Sir William Orpen is in the possession of the family, and there is a caricature by ‘Spy’ in Vanity Fair.
[The Times, 28 June 1916; Law Journal, 1 July 1916; personal knowledge.]