Baroness Hale of Richmond, the Deputy President of The Supreme Court and the most senior female judge in the UK, will speak about human rights and social justice in a talk to be delivered on Kent’s Canterbury campus on Thursday 6 October.
The talk, open to all, will explore the scope for protection of socio-economic rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.
Earlier in the day, Lady Hale will also open the Wigoder Law Building together with alumnus and major supporter The Hon Charles Wigoder. The £5 million building is the new home for Kent Law Clinic, a partnership between students, academics and local solicitors and barristers providing legal advice and representation to people in the local community who couldn’t otherwise afford to pay for it. The new building provides expanded facilities for Law Clinic staff, students and clients on the ground floor together with new facilities for Kent Law School’s active mooting programme on the first floor, including judges’ chambers, a robing room and a replica courtroom.
Lady Hale became the UK’s first woman Lord of Appeal in Ordinary in 2004 and the first woman Justice of The Supreme Court in 2009. She was appointed Deputy President of The Supreme Court in June 2013 and was assessed as the 4th most powerful woman in the UK by BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.
After graduating from Cambridge in 1966, Lady Hale taught law at Manchester University from 1966 to 1984, also qualifying as a barrister and practising for a while at the Manchester Bar. She specialised in Family and Social Welfare law, was founding editor of the Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, and authored a pioneering case book on The Family, Law and Society.
In 1984 she was the first woman to be appointed to the Law Commission, a statutory body which promotes the reform of the law. Important legislation resulting from the work of her team at the Commission includes the Children Act 1989, the Family Law Act 1996, and the Mental Capacity Act 2005. She also began sitting as an assistant recorder.
In 1994 she became a High Court judge, the first to have made her career as an academic and public servant rather than a practising barrister. In 1999 she was the second woman to be promoted to the Court of Appeal, before becoming the first woman Law Lord.
Lady Hale’s talk will be held in Woolf Lecture Theatre at 6pm (and not at 5pm as first advertised).