Richard Aston

Sir Richard Aston (1717 – 1 March 1778) was an English judge who served as King's Counsel and Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas in Ireland.

[2] The date Aston began practicising as a barrister is unclear but his name appears in the first volume of Sir James Burrow's Reports of Cases in the King's Bench (1756–1758).

In 1765, after Sir Thomas Denison, a judge of the King's Bench in England, resigned, Aston gave up his post in Ireland to return to the English court.

[2] In 1768, Aston was a member of Lord Mansfield's court and was among those who judged the conviction of John Wilkes for the publication of two seditious libels in Essay on Woman and in issue 45 of The North Briton.

Aston worked to reform legal practice after learning that grand juries regularly made decisions about bills of indictment after viewing only the deposition and not speaking with witnesses.