Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Wednesday, October 04, 2017

Lady Hale, president of the UK's supreme court

The gender imbalance in government is extreme almost everywhere. The exceptions make big news.

Brenda Hale sworn in as first female president of UK's supreme court

Lady Hale

The first female president of the supreme court and the youngest lord chief justice in 50 years have been sworn in.

Brenda Hale’s appointment to the leading role at the UK’s highest court was announced by Downing Street in July. A longstanding champion of diversity in the judiciary, she became the first female justice of the court in October 2009 and was appointed deputy president in June 2013…

Lady Hale, 72, who was born in Yorkshire and succeeds Lord Neuberger in the role, has had a varied career as an academic lawyer, law reformer and judge…

And from last July when the appointment was announced.

'Women are equal to everything': Lady Hale lives up to her motto

Brenda Hale’s elevation to president of the supreme court represents a resounding victory in the long campaign for gender equality among the senior judiciary.

Her appointment is also the zenith of an extraordinary, successful legal career in which she has become one of the most forthright and liberalising influences on the court…

As deputy president of the court for the past four years, she was firm favourite to succeed Lord Neuberger… Since being sworn in as a law lord in 2004, Hale – a self-declared feminist – has been the only woman on the UK’s highest court. It is a singularity she has regularly deplored…

Her ascent of the judicial ladder did not follow the conventional practice route. She spent 18 years as an academic, teaching law at Manchester University, becoming a professor and qualifying as a barrister. In the 1980s she was appointed to the Law Commission, which revises outdated legislation, began sitting as a part-time judge and was made a QC…

Her rise was rapid: she went up to the court of appeal in 1999 and the law lords in 2004, transferring across to the supreme court when it was established in 2009. On appointment to the Lords, she created a coat of arms bearing the motto Omnia Feminae Aequissimae, meaning “women are equal to everything”…

Hale’s speeches and writing reflect a consistently feminist and egalitarian approach. Her 1984 co-authored Women and the Law, the first comprehensive survey of women’s rights at work, in the family and in the state concluded: “Deep-rooted problems of inequality persist and the law continues to reflect the economic, social and political dominance of men.”…

A feisty presence, Lady Hale invariably gives the impression of being up for a robust exchange of views. Her enthusiasm for educating has sometimes led her into political crossfire…