In the United Kingdom and some Commonwealth countries, a King's Counsel is a senior trial lawyer appointed by the monarch of the country as a 'Counsel learned in the law'. When the reigning monarch is a woman, the title is called Queen's Counsel (QC).
The Claim of Right is an Act passed by the Convention of the Estates, a sister body to the Parliament of Scotland, in April 1689. It is one of the key documents of United Kingdom constitutional law and Scottish constitutional law.
James Arthur David Hope, Baron Hope of Craighead, is a retired Scottish judge who served as the Lord President of the Court of Session and Lord Justice General, Scotland's most senior judge, and later as first Deputy President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom from 2009 until his retirement in 2013, having previously been the Second Senior Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. He served as Convenor of the Crossbench peers in the House of Lords from 2015 to 2019.
Richard Sanderson Keen, Baron Keen of Elie is a British lawyer and Conservative Party politician. He was Advocate General for Scotland from May 2015 until his resignation on 16 September 2020.
David Philip Pannick, Baron Pannick, is a British barrister and a crossbencher in the House of Lords. He practises mainly in the areas of public law and human rights. He has argued cases before the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords, the European Court of Justice, and the European Court of Human Rights.
Andrew Stephen Burrows, Lord Burrows, is a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. His academic work centres on private law. He is the main editor of the compendium English Private Law and the convenor of the advisory group that produced A Restatement of the English Law of Unjust Enrichment as well as textbooks on English contract law. He was appointed to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom on 2 June 2020. As Professor of the Law of England, University of Oxford and senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford at the time of his appointment, he was the first Supreme Court judge to be appointed directly from academia.
Robert John Reed, Baron Reed of Allermuir, is a Scottish judge who has been President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom since January 2020. He was the principal judge in the Commercial Court in Scotland before being promoted to the Inner House of the Court of Session in 2008. He is an authority on human rights law in Scotland and elsewhere; he served as one of the UK's ad hoc judges at the European Court of Human Rights. He was also a Non-Permanent Judge of the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong.
Sir Rabinder Singh, PC, styled The Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Singh, is a British Court of Appeal judge and President of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, formerly a High Court judge of the Queen's Bench Division, a King's Counsel and barrister, formerly a founding member of Matrix Chambers and a legal academic.
Theodore Huckle is a Welsh barrister. He served as the first and to date only independent professional Counsel General for Wales, the statutory Law Officer to the Welsh Government, during the governmental term of the 4th Assembly/Senedd. Upon nomination by the First Minister, his appointment was approved by the Senedd and formally made by the Queen on 21 July 2011, although he had been acting Counsel General from his birthday on 27 May 2011.
George Andrew Midsomer Leggatt, Lord Leggatt, is a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, the highest court of law in the United Kingdom.
Walter James WolffeFSAScotFRIAS is a Scottish advocate who served as Lord Advocate from 2016 to 2021. He previously served as Dean of the Faculty of Advocates from 2014 to 2016, and Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Advocates from 2013 to 2014.
Sir James Raymond Eadie, KC is a British barrister. Since January 2009, he has served as the First Treasury Counsel or "Treasury Devil", the government's independent barrister on legal issues of national importance. He represented the UK Government in the R v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union case in 2016, and in the R (Miller) v The Prime Minister case in 2019.
Dame Philippa Jane Whipple, is a British judge, former barrister, and former solicitor. Between October 2015 and November 2021, she was a Justice of the High Court assigned to the Queen's Bench Division. Since November 2021 she has been a judge of the Court of Appeal.
Lorna Allison Drummond, is a lawyer, a Senator of the College of Justice in Scotland, and the Justice of Appeal in the Court of Appeal in the Territories of St Helena, Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic. She is a former crown counsel of Ascension Island, in which role, she advised the government on criminal and civil matters.
On 28 August 2019, the Parliament of the United Kingdom was ordered to be prorogued by Queen Elizabeth II on the advice of the Conservative prime minister, Boris Johnson – this advice was later ruled unlawful. The prorogation, or suspension, of Parliament was to be effective from some point between 9 and 12 September 2019 and would last until the State Opening of Parliament on 14 October 2019. As a consequence, Parliament was suspended between 10 September and 24 September 2019. Since Parliament was to be prorogued for five weeks and reconvene just 17 days before the United Kingdom's scheduled departure from the European Union on 31 October 2019, the move was seen by many opposition politicians and political commentators as a controversial and unconstitutional attempt by the prime minister to avoid parliamentary scrutiny of the Government's Brexit plans in the final weeks leading up to Brexit. Johnson and his Government defended the prorogation of Parliament as a routine political process that ordinarily follows the selection of a new prime minister and would allow the Government to refocus on a legislative agenda.
R (Miller) v The Prime Minister and Cherry v Advocate General for Scotland, also known as Miller II and Miller/Cherry, were joint landmark constitutional law cases on the limits of the power of royal prerogative to prorogue the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Argued before the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in September 2019, the case concerned whether the advice given by the prime minister, Boris Johnson, to Queen Elizabeth II that Parliament should be prorogued in the prelude to the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union was lawful.
Sir Michael John Fordham,, styled The Hon. Mr Justice Fordham, is a judge of the High Court of England and Wales assigned to the King's Bench Division. He was appointed as a Justice of the High Court on 13 January 2020.
Sir Martin Daniel Chamberlain is a British High Court judge.
