Lord Etherton, Master of the Rolls and former Olympic fencer who clashed with the government over Brexit

Yahoo

07-05-2025

Lord Etherton, who has died aged 73, was Master of the Rolls, the second most senior judge in England and Wales, from 2016 to 2021, and the first openly gay man to hold such a senior judicial post.
Previously one of the most sought-after Silks at the Chancery Bar, Terence Etherton had long been drawn to the idea of serving on the bench, but always assumed that he would be barred on account of his sexuality.
Lord Hailsham, who was Lord Chancellor for much of the 1970s and 1980s, had a supposedly secret (but widely known) policy of not appointing gay men to the bench on the outdated grounds that they were at risk of blackmail – even though the Sexual Offences Act had legalised homosexual acts in 1967.
This policy was eventually revoked in the late 1980s by Hailsham's successor Lord Mackay, although the change was never publicised and Etherton did not know when he applied to become a High Court judge – such applications having been encouraged after the election of the Blair government in 1997 and the arrival of Lord Irvine as Lord Chancellor.
Thinking, 'I'll jolly well show them up,' Etherton was very surprised to be accepted, and he subsequently took his long-term partner (later husband) Andrew Stone along with him to the official reception to meet the Lord Chancellor. As Etherton recalled, Irvine shook both their hands warmly 'and afterwards would always ask how Andrew was'.
By nature a private person, Etherton did not regard himself as a trailblazer or campaigner, but he felt a responsibility to act as a role model and help to normalise the idea of gay senior judges and same-sex couples within the legal profession. He therefore resolved that in future he 'would not budge a centimetre from being open about myself'.
Terence Michael Elkan Barnet Etherton was born in Essex on June 21 1951 into a Jewish family whose ancestors had emigrated from Russia in the late 19th century and settled in the East End of London, where his paternal grandfather, Solle Borrenstein, was born in 1891.
To counter the prevailing anti-Semitism, the family changed their name to Etherton in 1910, and Solle became Stanley. His brother Schliama had a more striking make-over, becoming Seddon Llewellyn Delroy Etherton.
Etherton, right, as Master of the Rolls with David Gauke (Lord Chancellor), left, and Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (Lord Chief Justice) - Eddie Mulholland
Terence's family were less assiduous than their cousins in shedding their Jewish trappings, and although no Yiddish was spoken at home, Terence grew up with a deep-seated Jewish faith and powerful sense of Jewish history – albeit later acknowledging that his sexuality and not always strictly kosher lifestyle made him an 'enforced outsider to orthodoxy even though my spiritual inclination is traditional'.
Aged eight he was sent to Holmewood House, a prep school near Tunbridge Wells, his arrival coinciding with that of a 24-year-old new headmaster called Robert Bairamian, a flamboyant character whose later charges included the BBC's Jeremy Vine, the former president of Ghana Nana Akufo-Addo, and the lead singer of the Pogues, Shane MacGowan.
Terence continued his education as a scholar at St Paul's, where he won the public schoolboys' foil championship (previously won by Winston Churchill when at Harrow) and then as an exhibitioner at Corpus Christi, Cambridge, where he read history and law and captained the university fencing team.
He later competed for Great Britain at three world championships, and won a gold medal as part of the Sabre team at the Commonwealth fencing championships in 1978. He was selected for the Moscow Olympics in 1980 but missed the games as part of the international boycott following the invasion of Afghanistan.
Called to the Bar at Gray's Inn in 1974, Etherton joined what eventually became Wilberforce Chambers and began specialising in landlord and tenant and property law, quickly establishing an outstanding reputation. He took Silk in 1990, and by 1998 he was numbered by Chambers' Guide to the Legal Profession among the 15 QCs said to be earning more than £1 million a year at the Bar.
At the same time he threw himself into a variety of voluntary positions, many of them in the field of mental health, serving as a director of the Riverside Mental Health NHS Trust and chairman of Broadmoor Hospital Authority and of the West London Mental Health NHS Trust.
After his appointment as a Judge of the Chancery Division of the High Court in 2001, he helped bring clarity to the case law across a range of subjects from proprietary estoppel to pensions; his written judgments invariably repaid rereading.
He was promoted to the Court of Appeal in 2008, and succeeded Lord Dyson as Master of the Rolls in 2016, at what proved to be a tumultuous time.
Etherton: keen to ensure that the law was as fair, modern, accessible and cost-effective as possible - Gary Lee/Photoshot
That autumn Etherton presided at the first of the high-profile Gina Miller cases concerning Brexit, ruling with his two fellow divisional court judges that the British government could not use the royal prerogative to trigger Article 50 to leave the European Union but instead needed the consent of Parliament.
The government's more vehement supporters included the Daily Mail, which ran front-page mugshots of the three judges beneath the headline: 'Enemies of the People'. Etherton was described as an 'openly gay ex-Olympic fencer', to which J K Rowling tweeted: 'If the worst they can say about you is you're an OPENLY GAY EX-OLYMPIC FENCER TOP JUDGE, you've basically won life'.
Etherton reflected that this 'baptism of fire' highlighted the need for greater transparency in the judicial system, for the public to see that 'we haven't got an independent private or political agenda'. With this in mind, as head of the civil justice system he set about introducing the live-streaming of Court of Appeal cases on YouTube, so that anyone who wanted to could watch online.
In the second Miller case in 2019, Etherton and two other judges decided in favour of the government that the prorogation of Parliament was not justiciable in English courts, although this judgment was soon overturned by the Supreme Court. In January 2021 he was succeeded as Master of the Rolls by Sir Geoffrey Vos.
Etherton's other posts included a stint (2006-09) as chairman of the Law Commission, the independent law reform watchdog charged with keeping the laws of England and Wales under review, where he set up a web forum allowing the public to put their views on laws on the website and respond to the views of others.
In seeking to ensure that the law was as fair, modern, accessible and cost-effective as possible, he criticised civil servants for 'regularly disregarding' the need to respond quickly to proposals for law reform.
Always interested in education, he was a visiting professor at Birkbeck, University of London, and an honorary professor at Kent University.
He was knighted in 2001, created a life peer in 2020 and appointed GBE in 2024 for services to LGBT veterans.
Terence Etherton entered a civil partnership with Andrew Stone in 2006, and in 2014, as soon as it became legal to do so, they were married in a Jewish wedding ceremony at West London Synagogue, with many senior judges and lawyers in attendance.
Lord Etherton, born June 21 1951, died May 6 2025
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