Sir Roger Fray Greenwood Ormrod (20 October 1911 — 6 January 1992) was a Privy Councillor and Lord Justice of Appeal

Lord Justice of Appeal

A Lord Justice of Appeal is an ordinary judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, the court that hears appeals from the High Court of Justice, and represents the second highest level of judge in the courts of England and Wales-Appointment:...

 (1974–1982); he was also a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians

Royal College of Physicians

The Royal College of Physicians of London was founded in 1518 as the College of Physicians by royal charter of King Henry VIII in 1518 - the first medical institution in England to receive a royal charter...

.

Ormrod was educated at Shrewsbury School

Shrewsbury School

Shrewsbury School is a co-educational independent school for pupils aged 13 to 18, founded by Royal Charter in 1552. The present campus to which the school moved in 1882 is located on the banks of the River Severn in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England...

 and The Queen's College, Oxford

The Queen's College, Oxford

The Queen's College, founded 1341, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Queen's is centrally situated on the High Street, and is renowned for its 18th-century architecture...

. Although he had studied the law at university, his father insisted that he train as a doctor.

After serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps

Royal Army Medical Corps

The Royal Army Medical Corps is a specialist corps in the British Army which provides medical services to all British Army personnel and their families in war and in peace...

 during the Second World War, he returned to legal practice, specializing in divorce cases and becoming Queen's Counsel

Queen's Counsel

Queen's Counsel , known as King's Counsel during the reign of a male sovereign, are lawyers appointed by letters patent to be one of Her [or His] Majesty's Counsel learned in the law...

 in 1958. In 1961 he was appointed a judge of the Probate, divorce and admiralty division, and in 1974 a Lord Justice of Appeal.

He was a significant figure in the development of the jurisprudence of no-fault divorce

No-fault divorce

No-fault divorce is a divorce in which the dissolution of a marriage requires neither a showing of wrong-doing of either party nor any evidentiary proceedings at all...

 in the English courts.

His best known finding, in the case Corbett v Corbett

Corbett v Corbett

The case of Corbett v Corbett, heard in February 1970 with a 1971 decision, is a divorce case which set a legal precedent regarding the status of transsexuals in the United Kingdom...

(1971), was that the male-to-female transsexual partner to a marriage, while a woman for many legal purposes, did not qualify as a woman for purposes of marriage:

sex is clearly an essential determinant of the relationship called marriage because it is and always has been recognized as the union of man and woman. It is the institution on which the family is built, and in which the capacity for natural heterosexual intercourse is an essential element. [...] Having regard to the essentially heterosexual character of the relationship which is called marriage, the criteria must, in my judgement, be biological [...]. My conclusion therefore is that the respondent is not a woman for the purposes of marriage, but is a biological male and has been so since birth. It follows that the so-called marriage of 10 September 1963 is void.