Visit to Cayman Islands of Lord Jonathan Mance, Justice of the UK Supreme Court

Lord Jonathan Mance, a Justice of the United Kingdom’s most senior court, the Supreme Court, and a member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the final court of appeal for many Commonwealth countries and overseas territories, including the Cayman Islands, recently visited the Cayman Islands as a guest of the Caymanian Bar Association and Cayman Islands Law Society.

He visited the law school on March 31st giving an informal lecture to a group of Truman Bodden Law School students.

Lord Mance spoke of his experiences as a judge in the UK and discussed a number of the leading cases that he has been involved in over the years, many of them landmark legal decisions.   The more recent of these decisions include (in the field of Criminal Law) the much publicized right to die case of R (Application of Nicklinson) v Min of Justice decided in 2014.

Very recently, Lord Mance was a member of the Supreme Court in another decision which has grabbed the headlines: R (Application of Evans) v AG (March 26, 2015) concerning a Freedom of Information Act request for the release of correspondence between Prince Charles and numerous Government Ministers. Setting aside the certification of the Attorney General in Judicial Review proceedings, Lord Mance and the majority of the Supreme Court ruled that the letters were subject to disclosure under the legislation.

The Law School’s Director of Legal Studies, Mitchell Davies, noted that following his lecture to the students: “Lord Mance took a large number of questions from his captivated audience who were plainly aware of the privileged opportunity the lecture from such an eminent member of the UK judiciary presented to them.”

Lord Mance was schooled at Charterhouse and read law at University College, Oxford. After his studies he spent some time working in a Hamburg law firm before being called to the Bar (Middle Temple) in 1965. Lord Mance sat as a Recorder until 1993 and subsequently as a High Court Judge (Queen’s Bench Division) until 1999. He was a Lord Justice of Appeal from 1999 to 2005 and was then appointed to the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords. Since 2009, Lord Mance has been a member of the UK’s Supreme Court.

Lord Mance is married to Dame Mary Arden who is herself a senior member of the judiciary, currently holding the position of Lord Justice of Appeal in the Court of Appeal. Lord Mance and Dame Arden are the only married couple to have served currently in the Court of Appeal.

Photo caption: Lord Jonathan with some law school students

See also iNews Cayman related story published April 7 2015 “Highest-ranking UK judge ever to visit Cayman Islands is keynote speaker” at: http://www.ieyenews.com/wordpress/highest-ranking-uk-judge-ever-to-visit-cayman-islands-is-keynote-speaker/