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So long a man imagines that he cannot do this or that, so long it is impossible to him. Baruch Spinoza |
Nicholas Addison Phillips, Baron Phillips of Worth Matravers, KG PC (born 21 January 1938) is the President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. Before 1 October 2009 his title was Senior Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. He was Master of the Rolls from 2000 to 2005 and Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales from 2005 until 1 October 2008. He was the first Lord Chief Justice to be head of the English judiciary, when that function was transferred from the Lord Chancellor in April 2006. On 11 October 2011, it was announced that Lord Phillips will retire early, effective 30 September 2012.
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Phillips was educated at Bryanston School. He has been a Governor of the school since 1975 and has been Chairman of the Governors since 1981. He undertook his National Service with the Royal Navy and the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, where he was a commissioned officer. After the two years' service he went to King's College, Cambridge, where he read law. In 1962, he was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple, where he was the Harmsworth Scholar. He undertook pupillage at 2 Essex Court chambers (where the QC was the Anglo-American Waldo Porges) but did not obtain tenancy there. He went into practice elsewhere specialising in maritime law. In 1973 he was appointed as Junior Counsel to the Ministry of Defence and to the Treasury in maritime and Admiralty matters. In 1978 he "took silk" and became a Queen's Counsel.
In 1982, Phillips was appointed a Recorder and from 1987 was a full-time High Court Judge on the Queen's Bench Division, with the customary knighthood. He took an interest in legal training, and was Chairman of the Council of Legal Education from 1992 to 1997. He presided over several complex fraud trials including those covering the Robert Maxwell pension fund fraud and Barlow Clowes. In 1995, he became a Lord Justice of Appeal and was appointed to the Privy Council. He was elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Phillips of Worth Matravers, of Belsize Park in the London Borough of Camden, in 1998.
In early 1999, he was made a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and in 2000 succeeded Lord Woolf as Master of the Rolls. He conducted an inquiry into the outbreak of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy. He was also chosen Vice-President of the British Maritime Law Association and of the UCD Law Society. He served as Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales from 2005 to 2008, when he was reappointed as a Law Lord. Since 2008, Lord Phillips was the Senior Lord of Appeal in Ordinary until he became the first President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom on 1 October 2009. Queen Elizabeth II created him a Knight Companion of the Order of the Garter on 23 April 2011.
Phillips is married to Christylle Marie-Thérèse Rouffiac, with whom he has two daughters, and a stepson and stepdaughter, and lives in Hampstead, London. He regularly wakes at 5am and begins work at home before attending the Court. He is a member of Brooks's and the Garrick Club. He is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Drapers and of the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights, and an honorary fellow of the Society of Advanced Legal Studies and University College London.
He has received honorary degrees of Doctor of Laws (LL.D) from the Universities of Exeter (1998), Birmingham (2003) and London (2004) and the International Institute of Maritime Law, and of Doctor of Civil Law (D.CL) from City University, London (2003). He is also the current Chancellor at Bournemouth University
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