Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, Baroness Butler-Sloss
Anne Elizabeth Oldfield Butler-Sloss, Baroness Butler-Sloss,
Born Anne Elizabeth Oldfield Havers, her father was judge Sir Cecil Havers. She was sister to the late Lord Chancellor the Lord Havers, and is aunt to his son, actor Nigel Havers. She was educated at Wycombe Abbey School after Broomfield House School, Kew.
She was called to the Bar from the Inner Temple in 1955. In 1958, she married Joseph Butler-Sloss. She was appointed a Registrar at the Principal Registry of the Family Division in 1970. In 1979, she became the fourth woman to be appointed as a High Court judge, after Elizabeth Lane, Rose Heilbron, and Margaret Booth. As were all previous female High Court judges, she was assigned to the Family Division.
In 1988, she became the first woman appointed as a Lord Justice of Appeal (judge of the Court of Appeal), having chaired the Cleveland child abuse inquiry in the previous year. In 1999, she became President of the Family Division of the High Court of Justice, the first woman to hold this position and the highest-ranking woman judge in the United Kingdom until Brenda Hale became the first female Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, in January 2004.
She was advanced to the rank of
She is Chairman of the Security Commission. On 3 May 2006, it was announced by the House of Lords Appointments Commission that she would be one of seven new life peers - so-called 'people's peers'. She was gazetted as Baroness Butler-Sloss, of Marsh Green in the County of Devon, on 13 June 2006.
On 7 September 2006 she was appointed as Deputy Coroner of the Queen's Household and Assistant Deputy Coroner for Surrey for the purpose of hearing the inquest into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. On 24 April 2007, she announced she was stepping down in June 2007, saying she lacked the experience required to deal with an inquest with a jury. The role of coroner for the inquests will be transferred to Lord Justice Scott Baker. This had been preceded by the overturning by the High Court of her earlier decision to hold the inquest without a jury.
She became Chancellor of the University of the West of England in 1993 and an Honorary Fellow of St. Hilda's College, Oxford, Peterhouse, Cambridge, King's College London, the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. She sits on the Selection Panel for Queen's Counsel.
Famous judgements
- Re B (Consent to Treatment: Capacity) [2002] EWHC 429
Dame Elizabeth stepped down from the Pricess Diana inquest on 24 April 2007 and Lord Justice Scott Baker took over.
External links
- Biography from the Judicial Communications Office
- No-nonsense approach of the right-to-die judge – a profile of Butler-Sloss at Guardian Unlimited, 22 March 2002
- Announcement of her introduction at the House of Lords, House of Lords minutes of proceedings, 25 July 2006
- Ex-judge tipped for Diana inquest at BBC News Online, 2 September 2006
- Diana inquest to be held in 2007 at BBC News Online, 7 September 2006
- Diana inquest coroner steps down at BBC News Online, 24 April 2007
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