When Hercules Met the Happy Prince: Re-Imagining the Judge

Although often dismissed as a myth, the image of the judge as a Herculean superhero whose mission is to apply the law in a straightforward way retains a tenacious grip on our understandings of the judge and judging. The relationship between Oscar Wilde\u27s Happy Prince and Hercules is one of uncomfortable similarity and difference. Like the Happy Prince, the Herculean judge who inhabits the legal imagination stands alone high upon Mount Olympus invisibly clothed with the appearance of neutrality and objectivity, our infatuation with this aesthetic image securing his position and role, his imposed beauty mirroring the golden facade of the Happy Prince. Yet, increasingly this image of the Herculean judge, like that of the Happy Prince toward the end of his story, is perceived to be somewhat shabby and in need of renovation. However, unlike Hercules, stripped of his aesthetic facade, the Happy Prince retains his appeal. Although this is not traditionally part of the Herculean myth, can we not look for it nevertheless? At the very least, we might seize the opportunity presented by Hercules\u27s apparent need for renovation to envisage a judge with an appeal not dissimilar to Wilde\u27s statue, to consider the importance of empathy and connection in judgment and, in so doing, begin to reimagine the judge

Book Review by Zoran Lapov Women, Judging and the Judiciary From difference to diversity

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A Conversation with Lady Hale about Feminism, Law and Citizenship

This is the video and transcript of a conversation between Erika Rackley and Rosemary Hunter and Lady Hale, which formed one of the plenary sessions at the conference on ‘Feminism, Law and Citizenship’ held in Paris in July 2022. The conference was organised by Rosemary Auchmuty and Alexandrine Guyard-Nedelec

Decisões Judiciais na Suprema Corte do Reino Unido

Motivado por duas das premissas dos projetos de reescrita de decisões judiciais em perspectivas feministas (a de que essas decisões são relativamente raras no “mundo real” e a de que elas constituem valiosa contribuição à ciência do direito e à qualidade da justiça), este artigo aborda a produção de decisões feministas por ministros e ministras da Suprema Corte do Reino Unido. Com base em informações extraídas de um banco de dados com mais de 570 casos, o artigo investiga i) quem profere votos feministas na Suprema Corte do Reino Unido; ii) que tipo de decisões feministas escrevem e iii) o que essas decisões acrescentam ao entendimento da Corte e à qualidade da justiça por ela administrada. Conclui que, entre ministros e ministras que adotaram o raciocínio feminista, Lady Hale foi de longe a mais ativa, embora não tenha sido a única, pois os Lordes Kerr e Wilson também proferiram diversos votos feministas. Uma variedade desses raciocínios foi empregada, e as decisões feministas em geral se revelaram, de fato, melhores decisões, embora seu impacto tendesse a permanecer mais no âmbito discursivo do que no substantivo. O artigo se encerra com uma consideração das implicações dessas conclusões tanto para os debates feministas, quanto para a Suprema Corte do Reino Unido e as partes litigantes envolvidas em casos sob sua análise. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Decisões judiciais feministas; Suprema Corte do Reino Unido; raciocínio feminista; questões substantivas

Feminist Judgments on the UK Supreme Court

Prompted by two of the premises of feminist judgment-writing projects – that feminist judgments are relatively rare in the ‘real world’, and that they make a valuable contribution to jurisprudence and to the quality of justice – this article explores feminist judgment writing on the UK Supreme Court. Drawing on a database of over 570 cases, the article investigates who writes feminist judgments on the UK Supreme Court, what kind of feminist judgments they write, and what the feminist judgments add to the Court’s jurisprudence and the quality of justice it dispenses. It finds that among judges employing feminist reasoning, Lady Hale was by far the most active, but she was not alone, with Lords Kerr and Wilson also writing several feminist judgments. A range of different type of feminist reasoning was deployed and feminist judgments generally did constitute better judging, although their impact tended to be more discursive than substantive. The article concludes by considering the implications of these findings for both feminist debates and for the UK Supreme Court and the litigants appearing before it

Shattering lives and myths : a report on image-based sexual abuse

Image-based sexual abuse is a pervasive and pernicious form of sexual abuse. We use the term ‘image-based sexual abuse’ to refer to a broad range of abusive behaviours including the taking and/or distribution of nude or sexual images without consent, including threats to do so, which includes so-called ‘revenge porn’, ‘upskirting’, fakeporn, sexual extortion and videos of sexual assaults and rapes. This report draws on interviews with 25 victim-survivors of image-based sexual abuse and over 25 stakeholders, including police, policy-makers, lawyers and survivor organisations conducted over a six-month period in 2018

The Power of Feminist Judgments?

Recent years have seen the advent of two feminist judgment-writing projects, the Women’s Court of Canada, and the Feminist Judgments Project in England. This article analyses these projects in light of Carol Smart’s feminist critique of law and legal reform and her proposed feminist strategies in Feminism and the Power of Law (1989). At the same time, it reflects on Smart’s arguments 20 years after their first publication and considers the extent to which feminist judgment-writing projects may reinforce or trouble her conclusions. It argues that both of these results are discernible—that while some of Smart’s contentions have proved to be unsustainable, others remain salient and have both inspired and hold important cautions for feminist judgment-writing projects

Judicial leadership on the UK Supreme Court

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