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Judicial leadership on the UK Supreme Court

Hunter, Rosemary, Rackley, Erika (2018) Judicial leadership on the UK Supreme Court. Legal Studies, 38 (2). pp. 191-220. ISSN 0261-3875. E-ISSN 1748-121X. (doi:10.1017/lst.2017.19) (KAR id:76536)

Abstract

This paper examines judicial leadership on the UK Supreme Court. It does not confine itself to the formal roles of the President and Deputy President. Rather, building on existing categories of judicial leadership, including administrative, jurisprudential and community leadership, it considers the contributions of all 12 Justices. In so doing, it provides a significant compilation of quantitative data on the activities of the Justices of the Supreme Court both on and off the bench from the the Court's inception in 2009 to the end of the 2014-2015 legal year. From this, we suggest that while a number of the Justices engaged in one or two broad forms of leadership-with Lady Hale in particular demonstrating a substantial degree of leadership across all three dimensions- A t the other end of the spectrum, at least on the measures used in this paper, a significant minority did not. In the light of this, and the significant number of recent and forthcoming retirements from the Court, the paper concludes by considering the implications of our findings for the future of the Court. We argue that these retirements will result in gaps in both formal and informal judicial leadership, and it is vital that these gaps are filled by appointees who are capable of, and prepared to step up to, diverse and varied forms of judicial leadership.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1017/lst.2017.19
Uncontrolled keywords: UK Supreme Court, Judicial Leadership, Lady Hale, Quantitative Research
Subjects: K Law
Divisions: Divisions > Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice > Kent Law School
Depositing User: Erika Rackley
Date Deposited: 18 Sep 2019 14:56 UTC
Last Modified: 04 Mar 2024 18:12 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/76536 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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