Brenda Hale, Baroness Hale of Richmond

The Right Honourable The Baroness Hale of Richmond DBE PC FBA
President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
Incumbent
Assumed office 5 September 2017
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Deputy	The Lord Mance Lord Reed
Preceded by	The Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury
Deputy President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
In office 28 June 2013 – 4 September 2017
President	The Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury
Preceded by	The Lord Hope of Craighead
Succeeded by	The Lord Mance
Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
Incumbent
Assumed office 1 October 2009
Preceded by	Position created
Lord of Appeal in Ordinary
In office 12 January 2004 – 30 September 2009
Preceded by	The Lord Millett
Succeeded by	Position eliminated
Lady Justice of Appeal
In office 1999–2003
High Court Judge Family Division
In office 1994–1999
Appointed by	Elizabeth II
Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal
Incumbent
Assumed office 12 January 2004 Life Peerage
Personal details
Born	Brenda Marjorie Hale (1945-01-31) 31 January 1945 Yorkshire, England
Nationality	United Kingdom
Political party	Crossbencher (independent)
Spouse(s)	Anthony Hoggett (m. 1968; div. 1992) Julian Farrand (m. 1992)
Alma mater	Girton College, Cambridge
Profession	Barrister

Brenda Marjorie Hale, Baroness Hale of Richmond, DBE, PC, FBA (Chinese: 何熙怡女男爵, born 31 January 1945)^[1] is a British judge and the current President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.

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.

On 5 September 2017, Hale was appointed as President of the Supreme Court, and was sworn in on 2 October 2017. She is the third person and first woman to serve the role, which was established in 2009. Hale is one of three women to have been appointed to the Supreme Court (alongside Lady Black and Lady Arden).

Hale is Honorary President of the Cambridge University Law Society.^[2]

Early life

Born in West Yorkshire, England in 1945,^[3] 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,^[4] 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.^[5]

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.^[6] The appointment was gazetted by the Chief Executive of Hong Kong Carrie Lam and took effect July 30, 2018 for a 3 years term.^[7]

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.

In April 2018, Hale featured as a celebrity judge on BBC cooking show MasterChef.^[8]

Other

Hale's armorial achievement. ^[9]

Hale is Visitor to Girton College, Cambridge, a position to which 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.^[10]

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 2006, She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Laws (LLD) by the University of Hull.

In 2011 Hale was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Kent.

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?".^[11]

Selected cases

• The Public Prosecution Service v William Elliott and Robert McKee [2013] UKSC 32
• Secretary of State for the Home Department v MB and AF [2007] UKHL 46
• Secretary of State for the Home Department v AF and others [2009] UKHL 28

References

External links

• Profile from The Guardian, 9 January 2004