The Life of a Lady Law Lord: Baroness Brenda Hale

Lady Hale gave a lecture on Friday 8 February 2019 at Middlesex University London to deliver the Inaugural “Professor Brenda Barrett Lecture”, which she entitled “The Life of a Lady Law Lord”.
Professor Barrett in whose honour the lecture is given, is an Emeritus Professor of Law at Middlesex University. She was one of the first female Professors of Law in the UK and Ireland and former Head of School at Middlesex University. Prof Barrett is to this day, a leading authority on Health & Safety Law. Prof Barrett epitomises Middlesex University, as she joined its predecessor Hendon College, which went on to become Middlesex Polytechnic, before ultimately becoming Middlesex University.
Biography:
RT HON THE BARONESS HALE OF RICHMOND DBE PC LLD FBA
Lady Hale is the United Kingdom’s most senior judge. She became the first, and sadly the only, woman ‘Lord of Appeal in Ordinary’ in 2004, after a varied career as an academic lawyer, law reformer and judge. She was born in Leeds, educated at Richmond High School for Girls in North Yorkshire and Girton College, Cambridge (where she is now Visitor) and was called to the Bar by Gray’s Inn in 1969. She taught Law at Manchester University for 18 years, specialising in family and social welfare law, and also practised for a while at the Manchester Bar.
In 1984 she became the first woman to serve on the Law Commission, a statutory body which promotes the reform of the law. There she led the work of the family law team, resulting (among others) in the Children Act 1989 and the Mental Capacity Act 2005. She was also a founder member of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and chair of its Code of Practice Committee from 1990 to 1994, when she was appointed a Judge of the Family Division of the High Court. She was promoted to the Court of Appeal of England and Wales in 1999 and in 2004 to the House of Lords. This was the top court for the whole United Kingdom, until the ‘Law Lords’ became the Justices of the newly established Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in 2009. She became Deputy President of the Court in 2013 and its President in 2017.
While at Manchester University she was joint founding editor of the Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law. She is author and co-author of a number of books, including Women and the Law (1984, to be reissued this year), The Family, Law and Society: Cases and Materials (6th edition 2009) and Mental Health Law (6th edition, 2017). She was a Trustee of the Nuffield Foundation from 1987 to 2002 and Chancellor of the University of Bristol from 2004 to 2016 (in which capacity she conferred degrees on thousands of students). She was Treasurer of Gray’s Inn in 2017 (where she called hundreds of students to the Bar). She also helped to establish the United Kingdom Association of Women Judges in 2004 and from 2010 to 2012 served as President of the International Association of Women Judges, a world-wide body of both men and women judges committed to equality and human rights for all.
In her home town of Richmond, North Yorkshire, she is a Freeman of the Company of Fellmongers and was its Master from 2017 to 2018; a Patron of the Richmondshire Landscape Trust, of the Richmondshire Museum and of the Richmond and the Dales branch of Soroptimists International; in January 2018, she was given the Freedom of Richmond by the Town Council.