A believer that ‘women are equal to everything’

In 2004, Brenda Hale became a baroness and Britain’s first female law lord, as the country’s most senior judges were then known. On her appointment, she chose a coat of arms with the Latin motto “Omnia Feminae Aequissimae”: “Women are equal to everything.”

In 2018, she appeared on an episode of the British reality TV show “MasterChef” — the theme was female suffrage — and she is one of the most visible members of the 12-member Supreme Court, including on the court’s Instagram page. In the September article in British Vogue, she was called “a heroine for our times.”

Known as an advocate of diversity, she said this year during a speech to commemorate the centenary of women’s entry into the legal profession that more of Britain’s judiciary should be women. Just 29 percent of court judges in the country are women, according to the Ministry of Justice.

“We should be half of judges at least,” Lady Hale said. She has denied, however, claims that she is a “judicial activist.”

She has also been vocal about the wigs that many advocates are required to wear in court. “I have this specific objection that everyone has to wear these men’s wigs,” she said in an interview with Prospect Magazine. “I had a fantasy once that on my last day of having to wear a wig in court I would go and hire a madame de pompadour women’s wig and powder that up.”

More recently, she criticized the fact that when she had been the only woman on the Supreme Court, all her fellow judges there belonged to an all-male private member’s club. She said she found it unacceptable for them to have a professional space to socialize and interact that excluded her and other women.