The Right Hon Lady Arden of Heswall DBE
Former Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
Lady Arden of Heswall read law at Girton College, Cambridge, and at Harvard Law School, where she was a Kennedy Scholar. She practised as a barrister for 22 years, and was appointed a Queen’s Counsel in 1986. In 1993 she was appointed a Justice of the High Court of Justice, Chancery Division, of England and Wales.. She was the Chair of the Law Commission of England and Wales from 1996 to 1999. In 2000 she was appointed to the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. Between 2005 and September 2018, Lady Arden was Judge in Charge and later Head of International Judicial Relations for England and Wales. She organised bilateral exchanges between the senior Judiciary of the UK and the judiciaries of leading national and supranational courts overseas. She became a Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in 2011, and has sat as an ad hoc UK judge of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. In 2018, Lady Arden was appointed a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. She retired in 2022. She is now a member of the UK’s Committee on Standards in Public Life. She is also an Honorary Professor of King’s College, London and a Yorke Distinguished Visiting Fellow of the Faculty of Law of the University of Cambridge.