Simon Brown, Baron Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood


Simon Denis Brown, Baron Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, PC is a British lawyer and former Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.

Early life

The son of Denis Baer Brown and Edna Elizabeth Brown, Brown was born on 9 April 1937. He was educated at Stowe School, an independent school in Stowe, Buckinghamshire.
He undertook National Service in the Royal Artillery from 1955 to 1957. He was commissioned on 24 March 1956 as a second lieutenant. He was transferred to the Regular Army Reserves of Officers on 29 July 1957, thereby ending his active service. He was promoted to lieutenant on 7 January 1961.
He graduated from Worcester College, Oxford.

Legal career

Brown was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1961, having been Harmsworth Scholar. From 1979 to 1984, he was a Recorder and First Junior Treasury Counsel. In 1980, he served as Master of the Bench at the Middle Temple.

Judicial career

Brown was appointed a High Court Judge in 1984 and assigned to the Queen's Bench Division, receiving a knighthood on his appointment. He became a Lord Justice of Appeal, a judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, in 1992 and was made a Privy Counsellor in the same year. He was Vice-President of the Civil Division from 2001 to 2003. On 13 January 2004, he was appointed a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, and therefore became a life peer with the title Baron Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, of Eaton-under-Heywood in the County of Shropshire, sitting as a crossbencher. He and nine other Lords of Appeal in Ordinary became Justices of the Supreme Court upon that body's inauguration on 1 October 2009.
In 2011, Brown gave a concurring judgment in R v Gnango in which he stated that "he general public would be astonished and appalled if in those circumstances the law attached liability for the death only to the gunman who actually fired the fatal shot." The decision of the Supreme Court and Brown's judgment in particular were criticised by former Lord Justice of Appeal the Sir Richard Buxton and Dr Jonathan Rogers, Senior Lecturer in Laws at University College London, for tenuous reasoning in an attempt to mollify public opinion.

Personal life

He has been married to Jennifer Buddicom since 31 May 1963; they have two sons and one daughter.