Brenda Marjorie Hale, Baroness Hale of Richmond DBE, PC, known as Lady Hale (born 31 January 1945), is a British judge serving as President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom since 2017.^[1]

In 2004, she joined the House of Lords as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. She is the only woman to have been appointed to this position. She served as a Law Lord until 2009 when she, along with the other Law Lords, transferred to the new Supreme Court. She served as Deputy President of the Supreme Court from 2013 to 2017.

On 5 September 2017, Hale was appointed as President of the Supreme Court, and was sworn in on 2 October 2017. She is the third person and first woman to serve in the role, which was established in 2009. Hale is one of three women to have been appointed to the Supreme Court (alongside Lady Black and Lady Arden).

Since 30 July 2018, Hale has been a non-permanent judge of the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong. Alongside Beverley McLachlin, she is the first woman to serve in that court. Hale has also been Honorary President of the Cambridge University Law Society since 2015.^[2]

Brenda Marjorie Hale^[3] 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), and 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.^[4][5]

After becoming an assistant law lecturer at the Victoria University of Manchester (now the University of Manchester), she was called to the Bar by Gray's Inn in 1969, topping the list in the bar finals for that year.^[4][5]

Working part-time as a barrister, Hale spent 18 years mostly in academia, becoming Professor of Law at Manchester in 1986. Two years earlier, she became the first woman and youngest person to be appointed to the Law Commission, overseeing a number of important reforms^[6] in family law during her nine years with the Commission. In 1989, she was appointed Queen's Counsel.^[4]

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).^[4] 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.^[7]

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,^[8] under the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876.^[9]

In June 2013, she was appointed Deputy President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom to succeed Lord Hope of Craighead.^[9] In September 2017, she was appointed President of the Supreme Court to succeed Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury.^[10]

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.^[11] The appointment was gazetted by the Chief Executive of Hong Kong Carrie Lam and took effect 30 July 2018 for a three-year term.^[12]

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”.^[13]

On 10 September 2015, she 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?".^[14]

On 2 November 2018, she 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"

In 2006, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Laws (LLD) by the University of Hull.^[15] The following year, she was awarded a LLD by the University of Reading.^[16]

In 2010, Hale was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Salford. The university's law building is named after her.^[17] In 2011, Hale was awarded a LLD by the University of Kent.^[18][19]

In 2016, she was awarded a LLD by the University of Worcester.^[20] In 2018, she was awarded a LLD by York St John University.^[21]

In 2019, she was awarded a LLD by Edge Hill University.^[22] and a LLD by University of Bradford^[23]

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.^[4][27]

In April 2018, Hale featured as a celebrity judge on BBC cooking show MasterChef.^[28]