Architects Registration Board - Judicial Precedent

Judicial Precedent

On an appeal to the Divisional Court in 1957 concerning a pure breach of the Code of Professional Conduct under the legislation then in force (the architect was practising an estate agent's business as well as his own), when the registration body was constituted under the name the Architects' Registration Council of the United Kingdom, Mr Justice Devlin ruled: "It is not of itself disgraceful to disagree with a majority view and to act accordingly. It is only if a man has bound himself in honour to accept that view and to act according to the code that a deliberate breach of the code for his own profit can be called disgraceful". In the course of giving judgment in this appeal Lord Chief Justice Goddard had mentioned a letter which had been sent in 1937 by "the president of the council" to the Institute of Chartered Surveyors recognizing the fact that there was nothing in a Bill, which the council was then promoting (and which subsequently became the Architects Registration Act, 1938), to interfere with the activities of registered architects.