In memory of Lord Brown

The death of Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood means that Britain has lost a great jurist – but also, unusually in this era, a formidable parliamentarian as well. He was a modest, unassuming man (few non-lawyers will know his name), yet he made a remarkable contribution to the law and government of this country, embodying the best of the common law constitutional tradition, which requires judges to be independent, not only from the executive, but also from one another. 

Simon Brown was appointed to the High Court in 1984, becoming a Lord Justice of Appeal in 1992 and then a Law Lord in 2004. He was one of the last of the old Law Lords, moving across to the new Supreme Court in 2009 and serving there until 2012. For the next eleven years he continued to serve as a crossbench peer, contributing incisively to Parliament’s deliberations, only retiring from the House of Lords on 19 June this year due to ill health. 

Brown was a specialist in the law of judicial review, but understood how government worked and was not automatically disposed to decide against it. Like