Jonathan Sumption

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The Right Honourable
 Lord Sumption
OBE
Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
Incumbent
Assumed office
11 January 2012
Monarch Elizabeth II
Preceded by The Lord Collins of Mapesbury
Personal details
Born 9 December 1948 (1948-12-09) (age 63)
Nationality British
Alma mater Eton College
Magdalen College, Oxford

Jonathan Philip Chadwick Sumption, Lord Sumption, OBE (born 9 December 1948), is a British judge and medieval historian. He was sworn in as a Justice of the Supreme Court on 11 January 2012, succeeding Lord Collins of Mapesbury.[1] Unusually, he was raised to the Supreme Court directly from the practising Bar, rather than from prior service as a full-time judge.

Sumption is known for his appearance as a barrister in many cases. They include appearances in the Hutton Inquiry on the UK government's behalf,[2], in the Three Rivers case,[3], his representation of former Cabinet minister Stephen Byers and the UK Department for Transport in the Railtrack private shareholders' action against the British Government in 2005,[4] and for defending the government in an appeal hearing brought by Binyam Mohamed.[5]

As a historian his works include a substantial narrative history of the Hundred Years' War, so far in three volumes.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Sumption's parents were Anthony Sumption, a decorated Royal Naval officer and barrister, and Hilda Hedigan; their marriage was dissolved in 1979.[6]

Sumption was educated at Eton College and Magdalen College, Oxford. He graduated from Oxford University in 1970, receiving a B.A. degree in History with first class honours.[7] He worked in History as a Fellow of Magdalen College, before leaving to pursue law. He was called to the bar at Inner Temple in 1975 and subsequently pursued a successful legal practice in commercial law. In the late 1970s Sumption wrote regularly for the Sunday Telegraph.

[edit] Legal career

He became a Queen's Counsel in 1986, and a Bencher at Inner Temple in 1991. He has served as a deputy High Court judge in the Chancery Division, and a judge of the Court of Appeal of Jersey[8] and the Guernsey Court of Appeal.

He has been a member of the Judicial Appointments Commission. He has also been a Governor of the Royal Academy of Music. Until his appointment to the Supreme Court, he was joint head of Brick Court Chambers.[4]

On 30 November 2007, he successfully represented himself before Lord Justice Collins in a judicial review application in the Administrative Court concerning development near his home in Greenwich.[9]

[edit] Supreme Court

On 4 May 2011 it was announced that Sumption would take a seat on the Supreme Court at a later date.[10] Upon his subsequent swearing-in on 11 January 2012,[1] he was styled as a Lord for life.[11] Sumption had been appointed to the Privy Council on 14 December 2011 in anticipation of his joining the Court, whose justices double as the Privy Council's Judicial Committee.[12]

Sumption is the first individual appointed to the Supreme Court without previously serving as a full-time judge since its inception in 2009. There were only five such appointments to the court's predecessor, the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords. Two were Scots lawyers: Lord Macmillan in 1930 and Lord Reid in 1948; the others were Lord Macnaghten (1887), Lord Carson (1921) and Lord Radcliffe (1949).

[edit] Earnings as a barrister

The Guardian once described him as being a member of the "million-a-year club", the elite group of barristers earning over a million pounds a year.[13] In a letter to the Guardian in 2001, he compared his "puny £1.6 million a year" to the vastly larger amounts that comparable individuals in business, sports and entertainment are paid.[13]

For a four week trial (and all the preparatory work) in the UK in 2005 he charged £800,000 plus VAT to represent the UK government in the largest class action in the UK, brought by 49,500 private shareholders of the collapsed national railway infrastructure company Railtrack.[14] The government had money and reputation at stake. The case examined some of the actions of the government, especially of former transport secretary Stephen Byers MP. Byers became the only former Cabinet Minister to be cross-examined in the High Court in relation to his actions in modern times. The UK Government won the case.

[edit] Historian

Sumption's narrative history of The Hundred Years War between England and France (so far three volumes, 1991–2009) has been widely praised as 'earning a place alongside Sir Steven Runciman's A History of the Crusades according to Frederic Raphael, and as a work that 'deploys an enormous variety of documentary material ... and interprets it with imaginative and intelligent sympathy' and is 'elegantly written' (Rosamond McKitterick, Evening Standard); for Allan Massie it is 'An enterprise on a truly Victorian scale ... What is most impressive about this work, apart from the author's mastery of his material and his deployment of it, is his political intelligence'.[15] There are planned to be five volumes altogether, with Volume IV (covering the years from 1399 to 1422), expected to appear in 2015, the 600th anniversary of the battle of Agincourt.

[edit] Publications

[edit] Articles

Sumption, Jonathan (4 October 2008). "The pragmatic approach". The Spectator 308 (9397): 38. http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/books/2188496/the-pragmatic-approach.thtml. Retrieved 23 December 2008.  Review of Patten, Chris (2008). What next? Surviving the Twenty-First Century. Allen Lane. ISBN 9780713998566. 

[edit] Notable cases

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b "Jonathan Sumption QC to be sworn in as Supreme Court Justice". Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. 10 January 2012. http://www.supremecourt.gov.uk/docs/pr_1201.pdf. Retrieved 10 January 2012. 
  2. ^ Dodd (2003).
  3. ^ Law Lords Department (2000).
  4. ^ a b Irvine (2011).
  5. ^ Leigh (2010).
  6. ^ Daily Telegraph (2008).
  7. ^ Brick Court Chambers website: Jonathan Sumption QC’s Full CV Retrieved: 16 October 2011
  8. ^ "Judiciary". Jersey Law. http://www.jerseylaw.je/Courts/Judiciary/judges.aspx. Retrieved February 2011. 
  9. ^ East Hants Council (2007).
  10. ^ "Press Release:Senior Judicial Appointments". Number 10. 4 May 2011. http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/senior-judicial-appointments/. 
  11. ^ London Gazette (2011).
  12. ^ "Orders approved at Privy Council 14 December 2011". Privy Council Office. http://privycouncil.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Orders-approved-at-Privy-Council-14-December-2011.pdf. Retrieved 13 January 2012. 
  13. ^ a b Dyer (2003).
  14. ^ Daily Telegraph (2005).
  15. ^ Quotations from the selection of reviews displayed on the back of The Hundred Years War III: Divided Houses.

[edit] Sources

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