Brenda Hale, Baroness Hale of Richmond

Brenda Marjorie Hale, Baroness Hale of Richmond DBE PC FBA (born 31 January 1945) is a British judge who served as President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom from 2017 until her retirement in 2020, and serves as a member of the House of Lords as a Lord Temporal.[1]

The Right Honourable The Baroness Hale of Richmond DBE PC QC FBA
President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
In office 5 September 2017 – 11 January 2020
Nominated by	David Lidington
Appointed by	Elizabeth II
Deputy	Lord Mance Lord Reed
Preceded by	Lord Neuberger
Succeeded by	Lord Reed
Deputy President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
In office 28 June 2013 – 4 September 2017
Nominated by	Chris Grayling
President	Lord Neuberger
Preceded by	Lord Hope
Succeeded by	Lord Mance
Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
In office 1 October 2009 – 28 June 2013
Nominated by	Jack Straw
Preceded by	Position created
Succeeded by	Nicholas Hamblen, Lord Hamblen
Lord of Appeal in Ordinary
In office 12 January 2004 – 30 September 2009
Preceded by	Lord Millett
Succeeded by	Position abolished
Lady Justice of Appeal
In office 1999–2003
High Court Judge
In office 1994–1999
Appointed by	Elizabeth II
Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal
Incumbent
Assumed office 12 January 2004
Non-Permanent Judge of the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong
Incumbent
Assumed office 30 July 2018
Personal details
Born	Brenda Marjorie Hale 31 January 1945 Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire, England
Spouse(s)	Anthony Hoggett ​ ​ (m. 1968; div. 1992)​ Julian Farrand ​ ​ (m. 1992; died 2020)​
Children	1
Alma mater	Girton College, Cambridge

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 that position. She served as a Law Lord until 2009 when she, along with the other Law Lords, transferred to the new Supreme Court as a result of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. She served as Deputy President of the Supreme Court from 2013 to 2017.

On 5 September 2017, Hale was appointed under the Premiership of Theresa May to serve as President of the Supreme Court, and was sworn in on 2 October 2017. She is the third person and first woman to serve in the role. Hale is one of three women to have been appointed to the Supreme Court (alongside Lady Black and Lady Arden).

Since 30 July 2018, Hale has been a non-permanent judge of the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong. Hale has also been Honorary President of the Cambridge University Law Society since 2015.[2]

On 11 January 2020, Lady Hale was succeeded by Lord Reed as President of the Supreme Court.[3]

Early life

Brenda Marjorie Hale[4] was born on 31 January 1945 in Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire. Both her parents were headteachers. She has two sisters. Hale lived in Redcar until the age of three when she moved with her parents to Richmond, North Yorkshire. She was educated at the Richmond High School for Girls (now part of Richmond School), where she and her two sisters were all head girls.[5] She later studied at Girton College, Cambridge (the first from her school to attend Cambridge), where she read law. Hale was one of six women in her class, which had 110 men, and graduated with a starred first and top of her class in 1966.[6][7]

After becoming an assistant law lecturer at the Victoria University of Manchester (now the University of Manchester) in 1966 and lecturer in 1968, she was called to the Bar by Gray's Inn in 1969, topping the list in the bar finals for that year.[6][7][8]

Working part-time as a barrister, Hale spent 18 years mostly in academia, becoming Reader in 1981 and Professor of Law at Manchester in 1986.[8] Two years earlier, she became the first woman and youngest person to be appointed to the Law Commission, overseeing a number of important reforms[9] in family law during her nine years with the Commission. In 1989, she was appointed Queen's Counsel.[6]

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).[6] 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.[10]

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.[11][12]

In June 2013, she was appointed Deputy President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom to succeed Lord Hope of Craighead.[12] In July 2017, she was appointed to be the next President of the Supreme Court, succeeding Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury.[13] She took office in September 2017.[14]

On 21 March 2018, the Hong Kong judiciary announced her nomination as a non-permanent judge from other common law jurisdictions of the Court of Final Appeal. Her appointment was accompanied by the appointments of Andrew Cheung and Beverley McLachlin.[15] The appointment was gazetted by the Chief Executive of Hong Kong Carrie Lam and took effect 30 July 2018 for a three-year term.[16]

In December 2018, during an interview to mark the centenary of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919, Lady Hale argued that the judiciary needed to become more diverse so that the public have greater confidence in judges. Hale called for a more balanced gender representation on the UK's highest court and swifter progress promoting those from minority ethnic backgrounds and with “less privileged lives”. However, Hale objected to the idea of positive discrimination because “no one wants to feel they have got the job in any way other than on their own merits”.[17]

In September 2019, as President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, Lady Hale declared the prime minister Boris Johnson's suspension of parliament unlawful.[18] A ruling which Hale described as "a source of, not pride, but satisfaction."[19] In 2020, Hale reaching the mandatory retirement age, retired from the court.[20]

Significant lectures

On 10 September 2015, Hale 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?".[21]

On 2 November 2018, Hale delivered an SLS Centenary Lecture at the University of Essex, United Kingdom, on the topic of "All Human Beings? Reflection on the 70th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights"

On 7 March 2019, Hale delivered the University of Cambridge Freshfields law lecture, which she entitled "Principle and Pragmatism in Developing Private Law".[22]

In a 2019 Girton College lecture entitled "100 Years of Women in Law",[23][24] Hale described the "Brenda Agenda" (a neologism coined by her Supreme Court colleague Lord Hope) as "quite simply, the belief that women are equal to men and should enjoy the same rights and freedoms that they do; but that women’s lives are necessarily sometimes different from men’s and the experience of leading those lives is just as valid and important in shaping the law as is the experience of men’s lives."[25]

Honours

• She was appointed as a Queen's Counsel (QC) in 1989.
• She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the Civil Division in 1994. upon her appointment as a High Court Justice
• She was sworn in as a Member of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council in 1999, giving her the honorific title "The Right Honourable" for life.
• On 12 January 2004 She was given a Life Peerage upon being appointed as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. She took the title Baroness Hale of Richmond, of Easby in the County of North Yorkshire. She sat in the House of Lords as a Crossbencher.
• The Law Building at the University of Salford was named after her in 2008.[26]

Commonwealth honours

Commonwealth honours

Country	Date	Appointment	Post-nominal letters
United Kingdom	1989 – Present	Queen's Counsel	QC
United Kingdom	1994 – Present	Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire	DBE
United Kingdom	1999 – Present	Member of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council	PC

Scholastic

University degrees

Location	Date	School	Degree
England	1966	Girton College, Cambridge	Starred First Bachelor of Arts
England	1969	Gray's Inn	Called to the bar[6][7]

Chancellor, visitor, governor, rector and fellowships

Location	Date	School	Position
England	2004–present	Girton College, Cambridge	Visitor
England	2004 – 2016	University of Bristol	Chancellor
England	2015 – present	Law Society of the University of Cambridge	Honorary President[2]
England	July 2017 – present	University of Bristol	Honorary Fellowship[27]
England	17 December 2019 – present	University College London	Honorary Law Professor[28]
England	2020 – present	Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford	Visiting Fellow[29]

Honorary degrees

Location	Date	School	Degree
England	2005	University of Cambridge	Doctorate[30]
England	2006	University of Hull	Doctor of Laws (LLD)[31]
England	July 2007	University of Reading	Doctor of Laws (LLD)[32]
England	27 February 2009	University of the West of England	Doctor of Laws (LLD)[33]
England	July 2010	University of Salford	Doctorate[26]
England	July 2011	University of Kent	Doctor of Laws (LLD)[34][35]
England	2016	University of Worcester	Doctorate[36]
England	2018	York St John University	Doctor of Laws (LLD)[37]
England	26 July 2019	Edge Hill University	Doctor of Laws (LLD)[38]
England	2019	University of Bradford	Doctor of Laws (LLD)[39][40]
England		London School of Economics	Doctor of Laws (LLD)[41]

Memberships and Fellowships

Location	Date	Organisation	Position
United Kingdom	2004 – Present	British Academy	Fellow (FBA)[42]
United Kingdom	2017	Gray's Inn	Treasurer[43]

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 the same year, she married Julian Farrand, former dean of the law faculty at Manchester,[6][44] and subsequently Pensions Ombudsman.

In April 2018, Hale featured as a celebrity judge on BBC cooking show MasterChef.[45]

Bibliography

• Parents and Children (1977, 2nd ed. 1981, Sweet and Maxwell) ISBN 9780421279100
• Women and the Law (as Brenda Hoggett, with Susan Atkins, 1984, republished 2018, Institute of Advanced Legal studies, University of London) ISBN 9781911507109
• The Family, Law & Society (with David Pearl, Elizabeth Cooke, Daniel Monk, 2009, Oxford University Press) ISBN 9780199204243
• Mental Health Law (2017, with Penelope Gorman, Rachel Barrett and Jessica Jones, Sweet & Maxwell, ISBN 9780414051201

References

1. Senior Judiciary List Archived 18 June 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Ministry of Justice.
2. "CULS Lecture: Lady Hale – 'The Life of A Lady Law Lord'". Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge. 3 February 2016. Archived from the original on 10 January 2018. Retrieved 10 January 2018.
3. "Lord Reed sworn in as new Supreme Court president". Legal Cheek. 13 January 2020. Archived from the original on 13 January 2020. Retrieved 13 January 2020.
4. "Biographies of the Justices". Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. Archived from the original on 22 May 2019. Retrieved 24 September 2019.
5. Amos, Mike (5 April 2018). "Judge not lest thou be judged, but the column's still much impressed by Lady Hale". Bolton News. Archived from the original on 27 December 2019. Retrieved 27 December 2019.
6. Dyer, Clare (9 January 2004). "The Guardian profile: Lady Brenda Hale". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2 December 2016. Retrieved 24 September 2019.
7. Stokel-Walker, Chris (24 September 2019). "Lady Hale, the gently determined president of the Supreme Court that overruled Boris Johnson". New Statesman. Retrieved 24 September 2019.
8. "Hale of Richmond, Baroness, (Brenda Marjorie Hale) (born 31 Jan. 1945)". WHO'S WHO & WHO WAS WHO. 2007. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.u18586. Archived from the original on 1 October 2020. Retrieved 22 September 2020.
9. Yonette Joseph; Ceylan Yeginsu (24 September 2019). "Lady Hale, U.K. Supreme Court Judge, Speaks Calmly and Brings Down the Hammer". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 25 September 2019. Retrieved 24 September 2019.
10. Slawson, Nicola (21 July 2017). "Brenda Hale to become first female president of supreme court – reports". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 30 December 2018. Retrieved 24 September 2019.
11. "No. 57179". The London Gazette. 15 January 2004. p. 503.
12. "Lady Hale to be next Deputy President of Supreme Court". Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. 24 June 2013. Archived from the original on 5 February 2014. Retrieved 24 September 2019.
13. Siddique, Haroon (21 July 2017). "Brenda Hale appointed as UK supreme court's first female president". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 11 May 2020. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
14. "No. 62054". The London Gazette. 19 September 2017. p. 17466.
15. "Top court gets new judges". The Standard. Archived from the original on 21 March 2018. Retrieved 21 March 2018.
16. "Hong Kong Gazette Notice GN5815/2018" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 4 September 2018. Retrieved 3 September 2018.
17. Bowcott, Owen (1 January 2019). "White and male UK judiciary 'from another planet', says Lady Hale". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on 1 January 2019. Retrieved 1 January 2019.
18. correspondent, Owen Bowcott Legal affairs; Quinn, Ben; Carrell, Severin (24 September 2019). "Boris Johnson's suspension of parliament unlawful, supreme court rules". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on 20 October 2019. Retrieved 25 November 2019.
19. Hattenstone, Simon (11 January 2020). "Lady Hale: 'My Desert Island Judgments? Number one would probably be the prorogation case'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on 13 January 2020. Retrieved 13 January 2020.
20. "Lady Hale warns against the UK adopting a US-style Supreme Court". BBC News. 18 December 2019. Archived from the original on 29 October 2020. Retrieved 22 October 2020.
21. "Caldwell Public Lecture Archived 9 October 2015 at the Wayback Machine", Trinity College Events [online], accessed, 25 August 2015.
22. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 30 October 2020. Retrieved 27 October 2020.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
23. "Girton150 The Visitor's Lecture by the Rt Hon Baroness Hale of Richmond". Girton College. 2 May 2019.
24. The Year 2019: The Annual Review of Girton College Cambridge. Cambridge: Girton College. 2019. p. 56.
25. Rozenberg, Joshua (3 February 2020). "An insider's account of the 'Brenda agenda'". Archived from the original on 3 February 2020.
26. "News: Pioneering judge among Salford honorary graduates | News | University of Salford - A Greater Manchester University". 6 January 2011. Archived from the original on 6 January 2011. Retrieved 12 August 2020.
27. "Baroness Hale | Graduation | University of Bristol". Archived from the original on 24 January 2020. Retrieved 12 August 2020.
28. "Baroness Hale appointed Honorary Professor at UCL". UCL News. 17 December 2019. Archived from the original on 15 August 2020. Retrieved 12 August 2020.
29. "Visiting Fellows (2019 - 2022)". Lady Margaret Hall. Archived from the original on 4 August 2020. Retrieved 12 August 2020.
30. "Selected Honorands". University of Cambridge. 22 February 2013. Archived from the original on 5 August 2020. Retrieved 12 August 2020.
31. "Supreme Court President inspires University of Hull students". University of Hull. 5 March 2019. Retrieved 24 September 2019.
32. "Presentation of the Rt Hon the Baroness Hale of Richmond" (PDF). University of Reading. July 2007. p. 2. Archived (PDF) from the original on 15 April 2016. Retrieved 24 September 2019.
33. "Honorary Degree awarded to Baroness Brenda Hale - UWE Bristol: News Releases". info.uwe.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 14 August 2020. Retrieved 12 August 2020.
34. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 19 October 2015. Retrieved 24 September 2019.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
35. "Kent Honorary Graduate sworn in as first female president of the UK's Supreme Court – Inspire, Challenge, Excel". Retrieved 12 August 2020.
36. "President of Supreme Court to Consider Moral Courage in the Law in Worcester Lecture - University Of Worcester". www.worcester.ac.uk. Retrieved 12 August 2020.
37. "2018". York St John University. Archived from the original on 10 November 2020. Retrieved 12 August 2020.
38. "First female President of the UK Supreme Court receives Edge Hill honour". 26 July 2019. Archived from the original on 10 November 2020. Retrieved 12 August 2020.
39. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 24 January 2020. Retrieved 24 January 2020.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
40. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 24 January 2020. Retrieved 24 January 2020.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
41. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 16 July 2019. Retrieved 6 November 2019.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
42. "Rt Hon Baroness Brenda Hale". The British Academy. Archived from the original on 9 August 2020. Retrieved 12 August 2020.
43. "Interview With Lady Hale," Family Affairs issue 79, Winter 2020, p. 57
44. "Hoggett, Anthony John Christopher". UK Who's Who. Archived from the original on 10 November 2020. Retrieved 24 September 2019.
45. Gibb, Frances (30 April 2018). "Baroness Hale to lay down the law on MasterChef". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Archived from the original on 6 April 2018. Retrieved 5 April 2018.

External links

• Media related to Brenda Hale, Baroness Hale of Richmond at Wikimedia Commons
• Profile from The Guardian, 9 January 2004