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08 January 2020 / David Burrows
Issue: 7869 / Categories: Features , Family
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Lady Hale: a judge & her law

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David Burrows shares his reflections on some of the many outstanding cases & achievements of ‘Judge Brenda’*
  • A look through a small selection of Lady Hale’s cases shows the breadth of her development of UK jurisprudence.
  • Children law from an author of the Children Act 1989 is important; but so too is a range of her other achievements across—especially— administrative law and welfare benefits.

None of my cases before Lady Hale had much to do with children, but that is the area where her deep understanding of the law will be most felt when she steps down as president of the Supreme Court this month. However, after her involvement with R (on the application of Miller) v The Prime Minister [2019] UKSC 41 (24 September 2019) I was truly astonished at the breadth of her scholarship and decision-making; so here, for the record, are my notes of an idiosyncratic best bunch of Lady Hale’s House of Lords/Supreme Court cases.

In R (Kehoe) v Secretary of State for

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