Brenda Hale, Baroness Hale of Richmond
[12] On 12 January 2004, she was appointed the first female Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and was created a life peer as Baroness Hale of Richmond, of Easby in the County of North Yorkshire.[17] In December 2018, during an interview to mark the centenary of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919, Lady Hale argued that the judiciary needed to become more diverse so that the public have greater confidence in judges.Hale called for a more balanced gender representation on the UK's highest court and swifter progress promoting those from minority ethnic backgrounds and with "less privileged lives".[21] On 21 March 2018, the Hong Kong judiciary announced her nomination as a non-permanent judge from other common law jurisdictions of the Court of Final Appeal.[29] In September 2023, Lady Hale was identified by The Guardian as one of eleven peers who had not sworn or affirmed the oath of allegiance to King Charles III and could not sit or vote in the House of Lords until they had done so.[30] She made her maiden speech on 23 November 2023, citing "the disruption caused by Covid and [her] own diffidence about whether [she] could make a useful contribution" for not having participated in parliamentary debates since her retirement as a judge.[31] On 27 June 2011, Lady Hale gave a lecture in memory of Sir Henry Hodge, "Equal Access to Justice in the Big Society" in which she explains the benefits of an inquisitorial Tribunal system over adversarial proceedings.[32] On 10 September 2015, Lady Hale delivered the Caldwell Public Lecture at the University of Melbourne, Australia, on the topic "Protecting Human Rights in the UK Courts: What are we doing wrong?".[33] On 2 November 2018, Lady Hale delivered an SLS Centenary Lecture at the University of Essex, United Kingdom, on the topic of "All Human Beings?This was her first public intervention on the subject since she gave a dissenting opinion in support of the claimant in R (Nicklinson) v Ministry of Justice a decade previously.