Lady Hale: a judge & her law

None of my cases before Lady Hale had much to do with children but that is the area where her deep understanding of the law will be most felt now that she has stepped down as president of the Supreme Court. However after her involvement with R (on the application of Miller) v The Prime Minister [2019] UKSC 41 (24 September 2019) I was truly astonished at the breadth of her scholarship and decision-making; so here for the record are my notes of an idiosyncratic best bunch of Lady Hale’s House of Lords/Supreme Court cases.

In R (Kehoe) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2005] UKHL 48 [2006] 1 AC 42 Lady Hale was in a minority of one (this is the only case here where she was in the minority). The case said—harshly I thought—that a parent could not sue privately for their child’s maintenance. The most she could do was to apply for judicial review if the Child Support Agency dragged its enforcement feet. Lady Hale started her dissent by recalling that maintenance is a child’s not an adult’s right: ‘[49] My Lords this...

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