No-prorogation justice Lady Hale to publish memoir and law guide

Baroness Hale of Richmond, known as Lady Hale, is a British judge and President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom between 2017 to 2020, and serves as Lord Temporal in the House of Lords. In September 2019 Lady Hale made the decision to rule UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s prorogation of parliament unlawful.

Hale is currently writing her memoirs, showing how “a little girl from a little school in a little village in North Yorkshire became the most senior judge in the United Kingdom”.

The supreme court’s first female president has signed a deal with Penguin Random House imprint the Bodley Head for two books: a memoir, which will be published in 2021 and an exploration of the importance of the law.

Hale said of the memoir, to published in 2021: “Mine is not a rags to riches story – either at the beginning or at the end.” Instead, she said, it was the story of how that little girl from North Yorkshire “found that she could cope. And it shows how other women and people from similarly small beginnings, without any connections or obvious advantages in the law, will find that they can cope too.”

She said her second book would explore how the law was “there for government … no one at all is above the law”.

She added that it would explain how the law “touches all our lives – every time we buy something, take a ride on a train or a bus, go out for a drive or to ride our bikes, go to school or to work, start a business, move in with a partner, get married or have children, go to hospital and eventually die – the law is with us from cradle to grave”.

“It should be there for everyone – and not just for individuals and enterprises,” she said. “We all need to know where we stand and never more so than in extraordinary times like these.”

Another book about Lady Hale was written by Afua Hirsch last year- Equal to Everything: Judge Brenda and The Supreme Court- is an illustrated children’s book about her early life and is available now.

Lady Hale’s autobiography and guide to law will be released from 2021.