Judges have traditionally been seen as ‘old, white, male geezers sitting passively in court’ but the demographic is changing, Dame Anne Rafferty QC has told scientists.
In an address to a conference by the Royal Society last week on achieving diverse leadership in a research environment, Dame Anne quoted Lord Hoffmann’s memorable description of the judiciary. However, she added that ‘any disgruntled geezer rump will find there’s only one way this line on the graph is going’.
She highlighted that, in 2017–18, across all judicial appointments, 62% went to a state school and 56% were the first in the family to go to university, half of all judges under 50 is female, and 8% of judges identify as black and minority ethnic.
Dame Anne, also known as Lady Justice Rafferty, a Court of Appeal judge and former crime silk, described ‘a feature of the big success stories in judicial leadership: show it, see it, and promote it’.
Leadership sometimes involved sticking to difficult decisions, she said. ‘If leadership simply involved taking the obvious decision at the obvious time for the obvious reasons everyone could do it. What it requires is the ability to see that a decision is going to be controversial, unpopular, treading new ground, a reversal of what has gone before, and to resolve to justify it and have the guts to say “We’ve analysed it, together, and I’ve listened. And this is what we're going to do.”’
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