THE UK Supreme Court could be facing a vacuum in knowledge and practice of Northern Ireland law after it emerged Lord Chief Justice Declan Morgan will not be appointed in line with tradition.
Lord Kerr of Tonaghmore who will retire in September, is the only justice on the highest court in the UK with specialist knowledge of the north.
The former lord chief justice of Northern Ireland became one of the inaugural justices of the new court – which replaced the Law Lords in October 2009. At 61 years old, he was the youngest judge on the new court.
His successor Sir Declan will not follow him immediately onto that bench because he has been named as a member of the selection commission for the vacancy.
However, the court’s official launch of the recruitment process for Lord Kerr’s successor specifically invites candidates with experience of Northern Ireland law to apply for the post before May 21 for appointment in October.
The panel is seeking applications “from the widest range of candidates eligible to apply... particularly those who will increase the diversity of the court”, including those who are not full-time judges.
It is not known whether any of the new roster of ‘temporary high court judges’, which includes Attorney General John Larkin QC, will apply for the role, Lord Kerr (72) was appointed lord chief justice of Northern Ireland in 2004, which led to his later appointment as the north’s ‘Lord of Appeal in Ordinary’ when Lord Carswell retired in 2009 – a long-standing tradition. However, his was the last ‘Law Lords’ appointment and he is the last of that cohort still serving on the Supreme Court, which has diverged from its predecessor in the way it fills vacancies.
The modernisation of the judiciary has brought in a number of changes in recruitment, with a new report into the Northern Ireland ‘recruitment crisis’ for High Court judges including a quote from one lamenting the ‘tap on the shoulder’ of the past that had carried with it “a sense that it was your duty to do it... to put something back into the profession... and that seems to have gone now... it is a job”.
