Three new Justices to the UK Supreme Court

Three new Justices have been appointed to the UK Supreme Court and therefore will be eligible to sit as Judges in the Privy Council. This follows the retirement of Lord Mance in June, Lord Hughes in August and in anticipation of Lord Sumption’s retirement in December.

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 Counsel 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 on a particular Appeal were female. Lady Hale is the President.

It is anticipated that new Court Forms will be issued shortly, following a slight delay. The most significant change will be the introduction of a separate form to deal with Applications for Permission to Appeal rather than the old Form 1 which had a dual purpose as serving as a Notice of Appeal as well as an Application for Permission to Appeal.

At the same time, the opportunity has been taken to tidy up some of the other rules. More time is to be allowed for the agreeing of the Statement of Facts and Issues, an exercise that can often take longer than the 42 days currently provided for.

The Justices continue to be exasperated by the extensive bundles of Authorities. Parties are to be encouraged to produce a core bundle.

With regard to the Record, frequently few of the documents are actually referred to either in the Cases, or at the hearing. Parties are to be encouraged to produce a core Record dealing with only the relevant documents involved in the appeal.