Blazing a trail for women who will follow

LADY HALE has been regarded as something of a feminist trailblazer within the legal profession since 1984, when she was the first woman appointed to the Law Commission, which promotes legal reform.

During her time at the commission, she played a significant role in the Children Act 1989, which made a child’s welfare the “paramount” concern in any decision by a court.

She was the first High Court judge upon her appointment in 1994 to have made her career as an academic, having taught law at Manchester University, rather than as a practising barrister. In 1999 she became the second woman to sit in the Court of Appeal, following Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss.

“Women in my generation could often be first because there hadn’t been any before,” she told

The Yorkshire Post last year. “It’s much harder now for women to be the first at anything because we’ve nabbed all the first spots.”

When made the first female Law Lord in 2004, she adopted the Latin motto “omnia feminae aequissimae”, meaning “women are equal to everything”, for her crest.

She said: “I feel a responsibility to be as good as I possibly can be in the job – partly not to let down women in the future, because obviously there is always a risk if the first woman doesn’t do too well they will say, ‘That’s because she’s a woman’.

“So I don’t want to let down women in general.”

Describing herself as a “home maker as well as a judge”, she was closely involved with the work of the artists and architects who redecorated the old Middlesex Guildhall when the Supreme Court moved there.

She has remained in Richmondshire for much of her life and says the Dales surroundings have played a significant role in her career.

“I think there’s something in the air in North Yorkshire,” she said. “I certainly wanted to work hard and wanted to get on.”