UK appoints Lord Briggs as next Supreme Court president

Lord Briggs of Westbourne has been appointed the next president of the United Kingdom Supreme Court and will take over from Lord Reed when Reed retires in January 2027.

His appointment received the King’s approval on the advice of the prime minister and lord chancellor, following a recommendation from an independent selection commission, the Prime Minister’s Office said. Briggs will become the court’s fifth president since it was established in 2009.

Briggs, whose full name is Michael Townley Featherstone Briggs, has served as a Supreme Court justice since October 2017. The court’s biography says he grew up around Portsmouth and Plymouth before spending his later childhood in West Sussex. He attended Charterhouse and Magdalen College, Oxford, and became the first lawyer in his family.

He worked in commercial and chancery law before joining the High Court in 2006. From 2009 to 2013, he was the judge responsible for the extensive Lehman insolvency litigation. He later served on the Court of Appeal and took part in major reforms to the civil justice system in England and Wales.

Briggs became a Lord Justice of Appeal in 2013. He led the Chancery Modernisation Review that year and the Civil Courts Structure Review from 2015 to 2016. The latter recommended creating an online civil court. In January 2016, he became deputy head of civil justice and served as the de facto head of the Civil Procedure Rules Committee.

Since joining the Supreme Court, Briggs has handled a wide range of judicial work, including cases concerning equity and fiduciary duty in common law. Since 2022, he has also held delegated responsibility for the practice and procedure of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.