Women’s History Month: the Right Honourable Brenda Hale
March 1, 2018
World Book kicks off March’s Women’s History Month with a profile of Brenda Hale, a British judge who is the president of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. Hale has served on the Supreme Court since 2009. She became the first woman president of the court in October 2017.
Brenda Hale became president of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in October 2017. Credit: Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
The Supreme Court is the final court of appeal for civil cases in the United Kingdom, and for criminal cases in England, Northern Ireland, and Wales. The court has a president, a deputy president, and 10 permanent judges. The British monarch appoints Supreme Court judges with the recommendation of the prime minister and the Judicial Appointments Commission.
Women’s History Month is celebrated each March. This year’s theme, selected by the National Women’s History Project, is “Nevertheless she persisted: honoring all women who fight forms of discrimination against women.” Credit: © National Women’s History Project
Hale was born on Jan. 31, 1945, in Richmond, North Yorkshire, in northern England. She graduated from the Richmond High School for Girls before studying law at Girton College, Cambridge. Hale joined the University of Manchester law faculty in 1966, and she was called to the bar (qualified as a lawyer) in 1969. Hale taught at Manchester until 1984, when she became the first woman appointed to the Law Commission, a body that reviews laws in England and Wales. In 1994, Hale became a judge of the family division of the High Court of Justice (the United Kingdom’s main civil court). In 1999, she was appointed to the Court of Appeal.
Hale was made a life peer as Baroness Hale of Richmond in 2004 as she became the first woman Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, commonly known as a law lord. At that time, the House of Lords functioned as the highest court of appeal in the United Kingdom, except for criminal cases in Scotland. In 2009, a new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom took over the judicial functions previously held by the House of Lords. The sitting law lords—including Judge Hale—then became the first justices of the Supreme Court. Hale served as deputy president of the Supreme Court from 2013 to 2017.
