Lord Sumption was one of the starring guests on last night’s launch of GB News. The former judge, who stepped down from the Supreme Court in 2018, has enjoyed a varied career as one of Britain’s best paid barristers, a medieval historian and even as Keith Joseph’s onetime adviser but has emerged in recent months as a leading critic of the government’s lockdown policy.
Sumption’s frequent and pointed interventions have sparked some controversy among the legal profession which has been traditionally wary of intervening in politics. So it caused something of a stir this afternoon when it was discovered that Sumption has been removed from the online list of members of the court’s supplementary panel. Membership is restricted to former justices of the Supreme Court, provided they are under the age of 75 and not five years beyond retirement.
The discovery naturally sparked a frenzy among the (admittedly niche) world of legal eagles with commentator Joshua Rozenberg QC confessing he did not know the answer. Given he was listed online as a member as late as November 2020, had Sumption since been unceremoniously purged? Was there some change to the panel’s rules unbeknownst to the general public? Thankfully the former justice was on hand to explain to Steerpike his reasons for leaving the panel this afternoon:
In September 2019 I asked not to be listed to hear appeals until further notice, so that I should be free to comment on public affairs (at that time mainly constitutional issues over Brexit). Late last year I concluded that the continuing controversy over Covid made it inappropriate that I should sit for the foreseeable future. So I asked the President of the Court to remove me from the supplementary list.
Given Sumption’s vociferous interventions on lockdowns since then, Steerpike suspects there will be many out there glad that the former judge has recovered the freedom to speak on such issues.
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