2 - On the Bench with Brenda

Summary

I had nearly eight happy years on the bench with Brenda Hale – just under three in the appellate House of Lords and subsequently five in the Supreme Court. And this is a good opportunity to share some of my recollections of working with her as a judicial colleague in the UK’s top court.

Although we had of course come across each other before, our first exchange as (prospective) colleagues on the bench occurred immediately after it was announced that I was to go to the House of Lords. She very kindly rang me and congratulated me on being the youngest appointee for more than fifty years. I was able to point out that, when she had been appointed three years earlier, she had been nineteen days younger than I was now. It was somehow typical of her modesty, which was sometimes masked by a (fully justified) intellectual self-confidence, that she was unaware of this until I told her.