Mr Justice Foxton grew up in Somerset, and completed his education in Glasgow and at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied law and was awarded the University’s prestigious Eldon Law Scholarship. He was called to the Bar in 1989, and joined Essex Court Chambers where he specialised in particular in shipping, international trade, banking, oil and gas, international commercial arbitration, and civil fraud. He was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 2006, and became a Recorder in 2009 and a Deputy High Court Judge in 2016. Sir David was appointed as a High Court Judge in 2020, and was.Judge In Charge of the Commercial Court from 2022 to 2024. He has been a Lord Justice of Appeal since 2025.

A devotee of the life and doings of one of his early Commercial Court predecessors, T.E. Scrutton, Sir David is both Scrutton’s biographer (‘The Life of Thomas E. Scrutton’, Cambridge, 2013) and the main editor of the modern version of ‘Scrutton on Charterparties & Bills of Lading’, which was first published under Scrutton’s own authorship in 1886. He is also general editor of ‘Mustill & Boyd On Commercial Arbitration’. He is a student of history, particularly modern legal history. His PhD thesis presented a critical analysis of the work of the English judiciary during the Great War, while ‘Revolutionary Lawyers’ (Four Courts, 2008) explores the relationship between Irish Republicanism and the British legal system in the early part of the 20th Century.