Brenda Hale, Baroness Hale of Richmond

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]

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]

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]

• 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

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

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]

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

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]

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

Memberships and Fellowships

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

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

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]

• 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

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