Spider Woman: A Life – by the former President of the Supreme Court

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In 2021 "Lady Hale Gate", a passage leading from Chancery Lane into Gray's Inn was named in her honour. Ordinarily, the dress in question would have been adorned with a certain jet and diamanté spider brooch, but when she took it out of the wardrobe, this bit of bling was unaccountably missing. It is a sad indictment of our society, that when confronted with a highly intelligent, powerful woman, making a very important pronouncement that could have major ramifications for the future of our country – we first notice what she is wearing, then wonder where we could get a brooch like that, then wonder if it had any specific hidden meaning pro/anti Boris (it didn’t! Not since Princess Michael of Kent went to meet Meghan Markle, as she was then, wearing a trinket many saw as racist has an adornment come under such scrutiny.

Spider Woman by Brenda Hale - Penguin Books New Zealand Spider Woman by Brenda Hale - Penguin Books New Zealand

I can’t remember barristers having withdrawn their services before, but I do remember a time when they protested outside the Houses of Parliament holding up banners that proclaimed: RECTIFY THE ANOMALY.In the mind of the public, that now-famous brooch, a present from her husband, surely did good work in underlining the fact that, yes, it is indeed possible for a woman to rise through the ranks to one of the most important judicial roles in the land (she was then the supreme court’s president). The east end of its magnificent chapel faces the street: one of the most glorious church buildings in the country. Unlike in the USA, our Supreme Court justices are not household names, and are not political appointments. Other people said she came from an ordinary background, but it should be noted that her family were very well educated with Oxbridge graduates. President of Supreme Court to Consider Moral Courage in the Law in Worcester Lecture - University Of Worcester" .

Spider Woman by Lady Hale review – a tangled web she weaves

In 2009, when the Supreme Court was created, she became Deputy President and then, in 2017, the President which gave her, and her brooch, a date with destiny as Boris Johnson tried to send MPs off on holiday as the Brexit departure date was approaching. Hale deals with her divorce in just one Pollyanna-ish sentence, and with the death of her second husband, Julian Farrand, in July 2020 (just months into her retirement), in only a very few more – an approach that had me swinging between gobsmacked admiration and utter bewilderment. It began with my husband giving me brooches to liven up the dark suits and dresses that I had to wear in the Family division, and they are almost all creatures of one sort of another: a bee, dragonflies, frogs, I’ve got a fox and some sheep. In 1968, Hale married John Hoggett, a fellow law lecturer at Manchester, with whom she had one daughter. She was the first woman to serve on the newly created Supreme Court, was appointed Deputy President in 2013, and its President from 2017 to 2020.The book made me aware of how ignorant I am about the workings of the judiciary in this country – and how much I really should make an effort to learn. It sounds like a lifelong ambition for Hale: to be there on the battlefield, when authoritarianism came knocking for decency, and lawyers were the last line of defence. I did not know the political affiliations of my colleagues on the supreme court and I think that’s a very, very good thing.

Spider Woman: A Life by Brenda Hale | Goodreads

Hale was firmly in favour of abolishing blasphemy laws, and took a majority of the Law Commission with her. Does she think she is perhaps more competitive than her overarching narrative of public service will allow? If imposter syndrome did ever trouble her, it doesn’t seem to have got in the way of a career of great and varied success.On 5 September 2017, Hale was appointed under the premiership of Theresa May to serve as President of the Supreme Court, and was sworn in on 2 October 2017. I would highly recommend this book to anyone – British or from other countries – who wants to know more about the British legal system, or more importantly, anyone who wants to find out about this amazing woman, and how British society has evolved over the last 75 years. She went to Bolton-on-Swale primary school and then Richmond High School for Girls, but at 13, her father died suddenly. Photograph: Sophia Spring/The Guardian ‘She is in possession of an under-rated superpower: patience’: Lady Hale. Lady Hale takes us from her early/school years in a North Yorkshire Village to the presidency of the Supreme Court.

Spider Woman: A Life (Audio Download): Lady Hale, Lady Hale Spider Woman: A Life (Audio Download): Lady Hale, Lady Hale

Hale’s memoir is the first in a two-book deal; the second is a layperson’s guide to the law, out next year. both an orthodox application of basic principles of our constitutional law and a remarkable assertion of judicial independence to protect our constitution from an unprecedented – at least in modern times – abuse of prime ministerial power. I remember reading Lady Hale's judgments as an undergraduate and finding them refreshingly readable, even when I didn't agree with them, and this book retains that accessibility. Regular viewers know that I often wear a brooch – usually a creature – to liven up our normally quite sober dress but that it has no obvious connection to the matter in hand. I am indebted to Gillian Morris, Honorary Professor at University College London for this reference.You may want to read Twitter’s cookie policy , external and privacy policy , external before accepting. A much starker self-reflection comes in her description of her time as a high court judge in the family division. The first woman to be a law lord, the first woman to be Britain’s most senior judge when she became president of the Supreme Court (which replaced the law lords), she became Britain’s most vilified judge when the the Justices quashed Boris Johnson’s attempt to prorogue parliament in 2019. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer Brenda Hale: ‘Our job was to stand up for the rights of parliament. Her accounts of her more groundbreaking cases are fascinating, and thanks to her feminism – not to mention the antediluvian attitudes of the men around her – I was always on her side (at the family division, she spent too much of her time, she felt, “oppressing women”).