The Court of Appeal is the highest court within the Senior Courts of England and Wales, and second in the legal system of England and Wales only to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. The Court of Appeal was created in 1875, and today comprises 39 Lord Justices of Appeal and Lady Justices of Appeal.
Forms of address used in the United Kingdom are given below.
The following is the order of precedence in England and Wales as of May 2024. Separate orders exist for men and women.
Justiciar is the English form of the medieval Latin term justiciarius or justitiarius. The Chief Justiciar was the king's chief minister, roughly equivalent to a modern Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Geoffrey Lawrence, 3rd Baron Trevethin, 1st Baron Oaksey, was the main British judge during the Nuremberg trials after Second World War, and President of the Judicial group.
Gordon Hewart, 1st Viscount Hewart, was a politician and judge in the United Kingdom.
There are various levels of judiciary in England and Wales—different types of courts have different styles of judges. They also form a strict hierarchy of importance, in line with the order of the courts in which they sit, so that judges of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales are given more weight than district judges sitting in county courts and magistrates' courts. On 1 April 2020 there were 3,174 judges in post in England and Wales. Some judges with United Kingdom-wide jurisdiction also sit in England and Wales, particularly Justices of the United Kingdom Supreme Court and members of the tribunals judiciary.
Alfred Tristram Lawrence, 1st Baron Trevethin, PC was a British lawyer and judge. He served as Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales from 1921 to 1922. He is best remembered for the questionable manner in which he became Lord Chief Justice, under a plan devised by David Lloyd George.
The Court of Common Pleas, or Common Bench, was a common law court in the English legal system that covered "common pleas"; actions between subject and subject, which did not concern the king. Created in the late 12th to early 13th century after splitting from the Exchequer of Pleas, the Common Pleas served as one of the central English courts for around 600 years. Authorised by Magna Carta to sit in a fixed location, the Common Pleas sat in Westminster Hall for its entire existence, joined by the Exchequer of Pleas and Court of King's Bench.
Dame Victoria Madeleine Sharp,, PC is a British barrister and judge. She has been the President of the King's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice since 2019.
The Judges' Council is a body in England and Wales that, representing the judiciary, advises the Lord Chief Justice on judicial matters. It has its historical roots in the original Council of the Judges of the Supreme Court, created by the Judicature Act 1873 to oversee the new Supreme Court of Judicature. This body initially met regularly, reforming the procedure used by the circuit courts, and the new High Court of Justice but met less regularly as time went on, meeting only twice between 1900 and 1907, with a gap of ten years between meetings in 1940 and 1950 respectively. After relative inactivity, it was eventually wound up through the Supreme Court Act 1981, which contained no provisions for its continued existence, something Denis Dobson attributes to newer bodies which performed the duties the Council had originally been created to do.
The High Court of Justice in London, known properly as His Majesty's High Court of Justice in England, together with the Court of Appeal and the Crown Court, are the Senior Courts of England and Wales. Its name is abbreviated as EWHC for legal citation purposes.
Justices of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom are the judges of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom other than the president and the deputy president of the court. The Supreme Court is the highest court of the United Kingdom for all civil cases, and for criminal cases from the jurisdictions of England and Wales and Northern Ireland. Judges are appointed by the British monarch on the advice of the prime minister, who receives recommendations from a selection commission.
Roger John Laugharne Thomas, Baron Thomas of Cwmgiedd, FLSW is a British judge. He served as Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales from 2013 to 2017.
Sir Gerard Lowther (1589–1660), sometimes referred to as Gerald Lowther, was a member of the well-known Lowther family of Westmoreland. He had a distinguished judicial career in Ireland, becoming Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas, although his enemies claimed his success was due to a complete lack of moral principles.
Sue Lascelles Carr, Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill, is an English judge who has served as Lady Chief Justice of England and Wales since 1 October 2023. She is the first woman to serve as the head of the judiciary of England and Wales since the inception of the office of Lord Chief Justice in the 13th century. Carr previously served as a High Court judge from 2013 to 2020 and a Lady Justice of Appeal from 2020 to 2023.
The King's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice deals with a wide range of common law cases and has supervisory responsibility over certain lower courts.
