Succeeded by Position eliminated | Preceded by The Lord Millett Preceded by Position created Name Brenda Baroness | |
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Preceded by The Lord Hope of Craighead Role Former Lords of Appeal in Ordinary Spouse Julian Farrand (m. 1992), Anthony Hoggett (m. 1968) Books The Family, Law and Society: Cases and Materials Similar People David Hope - Baron Ho, Robert Walker - Baron Wa, Richard Scott - Baron Sc, Harry Woolf - Baron Wo, Susan Atkins | ||
Brenda Marjorie Hale, Baroness Hale of Richmond (born 31 January 1945) is an English judge and the current President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.
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In 2004, she joined the House of Lords as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. She is the only woman to have been appointed to this position. She served as a Law Lord until 2009 when she, along with the other Law Lords, transferred to the new Supreme Court. She served as Deputy President of the Supreme Court from 2013 to 2017.
It was announced on 21 July 2017 that Hale is to become the first female President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. She was officially appointed by the Queen on 5 September and will be sworn in on 2 October. It was also announced that Jill Black was to become the second female Justice of the Supreme Court at the same time.
Early life
Born in West Yorkshire, England in 1945, Baroness Hale is the second of three sisters. Both her parents became headteachers. She was educated in Richmond in North Yorkshire at the Richmond High School for Girls (now part of Richmond School), and later studied at Girton College, Cambridge, where she read law and graduated with a starred first and top of her class. After becoming assistant lecturer in Law at the University of Manchester, she was called to the Bar by Gray's Inn in 1969, topping the list in the bar finals for that year.
Working part-time as a barrister, Hale spent 18 years mostly in academia, becoming Professor of Law at Manchester in 1986. Two years earlier, she became the first woman and youngest person to be appointed to the Law Commission, overseeing a number of important reforms in family law during her nine years with the Commission. In 1989, she was appointed Queen's Counsel.
Judicial career
Hale was appointed a Recorder (a part-time circuit judge) in 1989, and in 1994 became a judge in the Family Division of the High Court of Justice (styled The Honourable Mrs Justice Hale). Upon her appointment, as is convention, she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE). In 1999, Hale followed Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss to become only the second woman to be appointed to the Court of Appeal (styled The Right Honourable Lady Justice Hale), entering the Privy Council at the same time.
On 12 January 2004, she was appointed the first female Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and was created a life peer as Baroness Hale of Richmond, of Easby in the County of North Yorkshire, under the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876.
In June 2013, she was appointed as Deputy President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom to succeed Lord Hope of Craighead.
In September 2017, she was appointed as President of the Supreme Court to succeed Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury.
Personal life
In 1968, Hale married Anthony Hoggett, a fellow law lecturer at Manchester, with whom she had one daughter. The marriage was dissolved in 1992, in which year she married Julian Farrand, former Professor of Law at Manchester, Pensions Ombudsman and colleague of Hale's on the Law Commission.
Other
Hale is Visitor to Girton College, Cambridge, to which position she was appointed in 2004. She is a member of the Athenaeum Club, London. From 2004 to the end of 2016 she was Chancellor of the University of Bristol. Hale was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Salford, where the main Law building is named after her. In 2008, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Reading.
In 2011 Hale was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Glasgow.
On 10 September 2015, she delivered the Caldwell Public Lecture at the University of Melbourne, Australia, on the topic "Protecting Human Rights in the UK Courts: What are we doing wrong?".