Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales


The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales is the Head of the Judiciary of England and Wales and the President of the Courts of England and Wales.
The officeholder until 2005 could be viewed as the second-highest judge of the Courts of England and Wales, as surpassed by the Lord Chancellor who normally sat in the higher court. The holder is without doubt the top judge outside of the ordinary twelve of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom since the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, which disempowered the Lord Chancellor judicially and altered the duties of the Lord Chief Justice. The Lord Chief Justice ordinarily serves as President of the Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal and Head of Criminal Justice, meaning its technical processes within the legal domain, but under the 2005 Act can appoint another judge to these positions.
The equivalent in Scotland is the Lord President of the Court of Session, who also holds the post of Lord Justice-General in the High Court of Justiciary. The equivalent in Northern Ireland is the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, successor to the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland of the pre-Partition era.
As to a range of jurisdictions including England and Wales to which a further appeal can be sought, is the senior figure of President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, in a court that determines cases from the relevant Court of Appeal using the relevant jurisdiction's laws and contributes to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and hears fewer cases than the Court of Appeal.
The current Lord Chief Justice is Lord Burnett of Maldon, who assumed the role on 2 October 2017.

History

Originally, each of the three high common law courts, the King's Bench, the Court of Common Pleas, and the Court of the Exchequer, had its own chief justice: the Lord Chief Justice, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and Chief Baron of the Exchequer. The Court of the King's Bench had existed since 1234. In 1268 its foremost judge was given the title of chief justice before when one of the justices would be considered the senior judge, and fulfil an analogous role. The three courts became divisions of the High Court in 1875, and following the deaths of the Lord Chief Justice and Lord Chief Baron in 1880, the three were merged into a single division creating a single Lord Chief Justice of England.
The suffix "and Wales", now found in statutes and elsewhere, was unilaterally appended by holder Lord Bingham of Cornhill between 1996 and 2000.

Constitutional Reform Act 2005

The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 made the Lord Chief Justice the president of the Courts of England and Wales, vesting the office with many of the powers formerly held by the Lord Chancellor. While the Lord Chief Justice retains the role of President of the Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal, the CRA separated the role of President of the Queen's Bench Division; the changed chief justice role was first held by Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers. The CRA provides that he or she is chosen by a specially appointed committee convened by the Judicial Appointments Commission.

Lord Chief Justices of England, King's (Queen's) Bench, to 1875

Lord Chief Justices of England (later England and Wales) 1875–present