British life peer and retired barrister and judge (born 1933)
Harry Kenneth Woolf, Baron Woolf
,
CH
,
PC
,
FBA
,
FMedSci
(born 2 May 1933) is a British
life peer
and retired
barrister
and
judge
. He was
Master of the Rolls
from 1996 until 2000 and
Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales
from 2000 until 2005. The
Constitutional Reform Act 2005
made him the first Lord Chief Justice to be President of the
Courts of England and Wales
. He was a Non-Permanent Judge of the
Court of Final Appeal
of Hong Kong from 2003 to 2012. He sits in the
House of Lords
as a
crossbencher
.
Early life
[
edit
]
Woolf was born in
Newcastle upon Tyne
, on 2 May 1933, to Alexander Susman Woolf and his wife Leah (
nee
Cussins
). His grandfather Harry was a
naturalised
Briton of
Polish
and
Russian Jewish
origins. His father had been a fine art dealer, but was persuaded to run his own building business instead by his wife. They had four children, but their first child died, and his mother was protective of the three surviving children. Woolf lived in Newcastle-upon-Tyne until he was about five years old, when his family moved to
Glasgow
,
Scotland
, where he attended Glasgow Academy going on to
Fettes College
, an
Edinburgh
public school, where he mostly enjoyed his time and had supportive friends.
Woolf formed much of his sense of justice and fairness from his experiences at Fettes College. On one occasion while combing his hair, Woolf leaned into a neighbouring dormitory cubicle to use the mirror. A prefect reported this as the school had strict rules about being in other pupils' cubicles, but Woolf felt that he had not broken the rules because he did not have his feet inside the cubicle at the time. He appealed for fairness, but his
housemaster
, who had been in the army, increased Woolf's punishment from six strokes of the cane to eight.
[1]
Woolf had read books about lawyers and wanted to be a
barrister
. His housemaster told him that this was not a suitable career-choice for him because he had a
stutter
, but this only made Woolf more determined in his vocation. His
A level
results gained him a place at the
University of Cambridge
; however, he studied law at
University College London
(UCL) instead, as a consequence of his parents' move to London at about that time.
[1]
Legal career
[
edit
]
Woolf chose to be a
barrister
in 1955 and began practising on the
Oxford circuit
. He became Junior Counsel to the
Inland Revenue
(Common Law) from 1973 to 1974, and was promoted to
First Junior Treasury Counsel (Common Law)
from 1974 to 1979.
A significant part of his practice as the "Treasury Devil" was in the development of the nascent Administrative Law from four ancient Prerogative Writs. Before the Administrative Court was established, almost all judicial reviews were heard before the Lord Chief Justice sitting in a Divisional Court of the Queen's Bench Division, with Woolf commonly appearing for the Crown.
When he
took silk
he was almost immediately appointed as a
High Court
judge
[1]
in that Division in 1979, aged 45, and received the customary accolade of knighthood.
He was promoted to
Lord Justice of Appeal
and automatically made a member of
Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council
(PC) in 1986.
Woolf Inquiry
[
edit
]
Lord Justice Woolf was appointed to hold a five-month public inquiry with
Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons
, Judge
Stephen Tumim
, into the
disturbances at Strangeways prison
, Manchester and other prisons between 11 June on 31 October 1990. His inquiry sent letters to every prisoner and prison officer in the country. The Woolf Report, quoting many of the 1700 replies, was published on 25 February 1991, and blamed the loss of control of the
Strangeways prison
on the prison officers abandoning the gates outside the chapel, which "effectively handed the prison to the prisoners".
More fundamentally, however, Woolf blamed the "intolerable" conditions inside Strangeways in the months leading up to the riots and a "combination of errors" by the prison staff and
Prison Service
management as a central contributing factor. Finally, he blamed the failure of successive governments to "provide the resources to the Prison Service which were needed to enable the Service to provide for an increased prison population in a humane manner". Woolf recommended major reform of the Prison Service, and made 12 key recommendations with 204 accompanying proposals. He subsequently became patron of the
Rehabilitation for Addicted Prisoners Trust
and an Ambassador for the
Prison Advice and Care Trust
.
Master of the Rolls and Lord Chief Justice
[
edit
]
Woolf LJ was appointed a
Law Lord
on 1 October 1992, being created a
life peer
as
Baron Woolf
, of Barnes in the
London Borough of Richmond
.
[2]
Woolf gave few judgments on the Appellate Committee, being promoted
Master of the Rolls
on 4 June 1996.,
[3]
a role in which he presided over the Chancery law in the Court of Appeal.
In 1998 Woolf was also the head of the committee that modernised civil procedure, and incidentally excised most
Latin
terms from
English law
in an effort to make it more accessible (such as changing the word "plaintiff" to "claimant"). The
Civil Procedure Rules 1998
are a direct result of this work.
On 6 June 2000 he finally succeeded
Lord Bingham of Cornhill
as Lord Chief Justice.
[4]
In this most senior judicial post, Woolf spoke out at the
University of Cambridge
in 2004 against the
Constitutional Reform Bill
that would create a
Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
to replace the
House of Lords
as the final court of appeal in the United Kingdom; and he severely questioned the
Lord Chancellor
's and the Government's handling of recent constitutional reforms. He delayed his retirement as Lord Chief Justice until these issues had been resolved.
In 2003, he was appointed a Non-Permanent Judge of the
Court of Final Appeal
of
Hong Kong
, which position he held until 2012.
[5]
On his retirement as Lord Chief Justice on 1 October 2005, Woolf joined
Blackstone Chambers
as a mediator and arbitrator. From September to December 2005 he conducted a review of the working methods of the
European Court of Human Rights
, and he is chairman of the
Bank of England
Financial Markets Law Committee.
Other appointments
[
edit
]
Among other work, Woolf has been serving as Chancellor of the
Open University of Israel
since 2004.
[6]
He is Chairman of the
Institute of Advanced Legal Studies
, Chairman of the Council of
University College, London
and a visiting Professor of Law.
He is a member of the
House of Lords Constitution Committee
.
In 2006 he was chairman of the Judging Panel of the FIRST Responsible Capitalism Awards.
[7]
On 25 February 2007, Woolf was inaugurated as the first President of the
Qatar Financial Centre
Civil and Commercial Court, in Doha, Qatar.
On 15 June 2007, he took the chair of an Ethics Committee set up by
BAE Systems
, the UK's largest arms company, in response to allegations of multimillion-pound bribery in
arms deals with Saudi Arabia
. This Woolf Committee reported in May 2008, and clearly influenced the Law Commission report proposing anti-corruption and bribery law reforms on 20 November 2008 and the Government's consequent Bribery Bill published on 25 March 2009, which was ultimately enacted as the
Bribery Act
.
In 2007 he was named as co-chair, with Professor Kaufmann-Kohler, of the Commission on Settlement in International Arbitration, for the
Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution
for which he also consults.
From 29?31 May 2009, Woolf served with
Sir William Blair
, a High Court Judge, as the Co-Convener of the inaugural
Qatar Law Forum of Global Leaders in Law
, held in
Doha
, Qatar.
In 2018, Woolf was appointed the Head Justice of the
Astana International Financial Centre
Court in
Astana
,
Kazakhstan
.
[8]
Selected judgments
[
edit
]
- On 26 July 1983, Woolf's judgment in the high court,
Gillick
v West Norfolk & Wisbech AHA & DHSS [1983] 3 WLR (QBD), clarified the law under which doctors could prescribe contraception to
minors
.
[9]
[10]
- On 6 February 1997, three judges, led by Woolf, Master of the Rolls, said that the
Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority
(HFEA) had failed to exercise discretion when it denied Diane Blood the right to have her dead husband's child in March 1995.
[11]
The decision allowed Blood to have a child using her former husband's
sperm
, which was obtained shortly before he died.
- Pearce v United Bristol Healthcare NHS Trust
[1999] PIQR 53.
- In October 2000, Woolf reduced the minimum sentence of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson for the
murder of James Bulger
by two years in recognition of their good behaviour and remorse shown while in detention, effectively restoring the original trial judge's eight-year recommended minimum sentence.
[12]
- In July 2002, Woolf, together with Mr Justice Curtis and Mr Justice Henriques, refused
Barry George
's first appeal against his conviction for the murder of
Jill Dando
.
[13]
However, in November 2007, the next Lord Chief Justice,
Lord Phillips
, in the light of further expert opinions of the forensic evidence, declared George's conviction "unsafe" and also ordered a retrial.
[14]
George was held in custody pending retrial and following an eight-week hearing he was acquitted on 1 August 2008.
[15]
Other judgments include:
Personal life
[
edit
]
Woolf, an
Ashkenazi Jew
, first met his wife Marguerite Sassoon, a
Sephardi Jew
, at a social event which was organised by a mutual friend at the
National Liberal Club
. They married early in 1961
[16]
and have three sons who have all entered the
legal profession
, as well as seven grandchildren.
[1]
Woolf was a member of the
American Philosophical Society
(1977)
[17]
and the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
(1983).
[17]
[18]
He was elected an Honorary
Fellow of the British Academy
(FBA) in 2000
[19]
and an Honorary
Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences
(FMedSci) in 2002.
[20]
In the 2015
Queen's Birthday Honours
, he was appointed a
Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour
(CH).
[21]
In the same year, he was awarded the
Gold Bauhinia Star
by the
Chief Executive of Hong Kong
.
[22]
Arms
[
edit
]
Coat of arms of Harry Woolf, Baron Woolf
- Adopted
- 2007
- Coronet
- Coronet of a Baron
- Crest
- Upon a Helm with a Wreath Argent and Sable a Wolf sejant erect Sable gorged with a plain Collar attached thereto a Chain reflexed over the back Or and grasping in the dexter forepaw a Sword erect Argent hilt pommel and quillons Or
- Escutcheon
- Per pale Sable and Argent per fess indented of two points downwards counter¬changed three Harps the pillar of each terminating in the head neck and wings of a Pegasus in the Sable Or in the Argent Sable
- Supporters
- On the dexter a Wolf Or gorged with a plain Collar attached thereto a Chain reflexed over the back Sable and grasping in the interior forepaw a Sword bendwise Argent hilt pommel and quillons Sable on the sinister a Wolf Sable gorged with a plain collar attached thereto a Chain reflexed over the back Or and grasping in the interior forepaw a Sword bendwise sinister Argent hilt pommel and quillons Or
- Motto
- FOR FAMILY AND JUSTICE
- Badge
- A Harp the pillar terminating in the head neck and wings of a Pegasus Or
- Symbolism
- The per fess formation suggests the initial W. The wolves are clearly a
punning allusion
(wolves and Woolfes) and the swords refer to the Law. The Harp in the Arms and Badge is taken from the
attributed arms
of
King David
and is combined with the Pegasus of the
Inner Temple
.
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Sources
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External links
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