New appointments to the Supreme Court

As of 1 October, following the retirement of Lord Mance in June of this year, three new appointments have been announced.

Lady Justice Arden was Judge in Charge, currently Head of International Judicial Relations for England and Wales. She became a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague in 2011 and is an ad hoc UK judge of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Lord Justice Kitchin was appointed as a Lord Justice of Appeal in 2011. He was the Lord Justice responsible for the supervision of intellectual property appeals. He is the Chair of the Advisory Council of the Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary University.

Lord Justice Sales will take up the appointment on 11 January 2019. He was formerly First Treasury Council Common Law until his appointment as a high court judge in the Chancery Division. He was a member of the Competition Appeal Tribunal and Vice President of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. He has also served as Deputy Chair of the Boundary Commission for England.

The appointment of Lady Justice Arden, this brings the total of female justices in the Supreme Court to three. Indeed, last month, three out of the five justices sitting in the Supreme Court were female. Lady Hale is the President.