Feminist who won’t even let you see all of her judgment

BARONESS Hale, who struck three key paragraphs out of yesterday’s judgment, is the most senior woman judge in the country.

A radical feminist, she is a longstanding critic of marriage although she has been married to her second husband for nearly 25 years.

Lady Hale’s redaction of paragraphs 75, 76 and 77 mean that a vital section of a ruling by the country’s most powerful court – which has major constitutional implications – will be kept from the public who must obey it.

Lady Hale said that, until the full High Court hearing, the names of the married couple must be kept secret to protect their children. At that point the court will have to decide whether the children would be harmed by any publicity, adding that at present there was no evidence on the matter.

She rejected the argument that protecting the children means anyone who wants to keep their behaviour quiet need claim only that it would hurt their children if people knew about it.

‘Not only are the children’s interests likely to be affected by a breach of the privacy interests of their parents, but the children have independent privacy interests of their own,’ she said.

‘The least harmful way for these children to learn of these events is from their parents... in an ageappropriate way and at the ageappropriate time.’

She said of the censored section of her judgment: ‘These [paragraphs] unfortunately have to be redacted because it would be comparatively easy to surmise the identity of the children and their parents from them.’

Lady Hale, 71, first came to widespread notice in the 1980s when she was appointed to the Law Commission. She drew up a law making it possible for a woman to get a court order throwing a man out of his own home if she accused him of violence. In 2014, a High Court judge condemned the way the law had been used to evict a father of six from his home after 20 years of marriage.

Lady Hale was also heavily involved in the preparation of the 1989 Children Act, held by opponents to have deprived parents of much of their say over their children’s lives.

She became a High Court family judge in 1994 and the first woman Law Lord a decade later. She has been a Supreme Court judge since 2009.

In 2004, she was one of the judges who backed a complaint by model Naomi Campbell that it was wrong for the Daily Mirror to have published a picture of her at a Narcotics Anonymous clinic.

Lady Hale said it was more important that drug addicts should get treatment than that the public should know about it. The case was the foundation stone on which privacy law has been built.

She has been a prominent critic of the male domination of the judiciary and the wearing of wigs in court. She has joined other Supreme Court judges in suggesting a special court should be set up to decide whether individuals should be given help to commit suicide.

As a legal academic, she once wrote: ‘We should be considering whether the legal institution of marriage continues to serve any useful purpose.’

In another article, she asked: ‘Do we still think it necessary, desirable or even practicable to grant marriage licences to enter into relationships?’