Face calls to cancel membership
A host of top judges and lawyers are reportedly members of The Garrick Club, an exclusive male-only establishment in London.
The Guardian newspaper reports that the clubs membership includes five appellate court judges, eight High Court judges, a number of retired judges, senior solicitors, and around 150 leading barristers.
Supreme Court judge David Richards is said be a member, according to the report, as is Julian Flaux (head of the chancery division), Keith Lindblom (senior president of the tribunals), Andrew Moylan, Peter Coulson, and Charles Haddon-Cave (chair of the independent inquiry on Afghanistan).
Perhaps best known are former Supreme Court heavyweights Jonathan Sumption, and former president, David Neuberger.
In light of the news, a group of some 65 legal professionals, including 13 KCs, has urged judges members to resign from the club with “immediate effect”. The open letter argues that the Garrick Club “embodies a social and gendered ideology that starkly contrasts with the reality of the modern courtroom”.
It has additionally been reported this week that an opinion produced by Blackstone Chambers super silk David Pannick KC has said that the club does not, by its language used, exclude the admission of women.
In a document commissioned by club members who are seeking to admit women into the establishment, the top silk and his legal team shed some light on the phraseology and wording of the clubs historic documents.
“In our view, the language of the rules is clear. There is no prohibition on the admission of female members”, the opinion reportedly states. “There is nothing in the language of the rules which excludes the admission of women as members. Indeed… there is no restriction of the proposal of candidates for membership to men.”
Discussing the frequent use of “he” throughout the relevant rules, Pannick’s team argue that, “although the language … is phrased by reference to the masculine (‘No candidate shall be eligible unless he be proposed’), it is entirely within the ordinary use of English language that a reference to the masculine denotes the feminine unless the context otherwise requires.”
Law students will be familiar with cases, statutes, and commentators using a single gendered pronoun to describe hypothetical circumstances which could apply to a person of any gender.
And, Pannick adds, whilst there is one example of the use of “he/she” when referring to the club secretary, there is no apparent reason for this, the addition potentially coming at a time when a female secretary was contemplated or in post, or to ensure compliance with employment law. However, “that would not in itself suggest that there is any objective doubt over whether a member can be female by the absence of alternative pronouns”.
This opinion is not the first of its kind commissioned by members. There have been two previous legal opinions, both produced by fellow leading Blackstone barrister Michael Beloff KC. Whilst the first of these in 2011 suggested that the club did exclude women, a more recent opinion in 2022 is reported to have found the opposite.
Readers may recognise Lord Pannick from a host of constitutional and administrative law cases, or as the barrister who was rumoured to be making as much as £5,000 an hour when representing Manchester City last year, with fans displaying a large banner in honour of his work.