Chief Justice

Chief Justice Lord Woolf CH is the Head of the Judiciary of the AIFC Court. He is one of the most influential judges in recent British legal history and a global figure on the common law, courts and dispute resolution, and legal education.

He was called to the Bar of England and Wales (Inner Temple) in 1955. He was appointed as a Judge of the High Court of England and Wales in 1979, and held the two most senior judicial appointments in England and Wales as Master of the Rolls and Lord Chief Justice. He was the first Lord Chief Justice to be President of the Courts of England and Wales. He was a Non-Permanent Judge of the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong and the first President of the Qatar Financial Centre Civil and Commercial Court.

He is Patron of the Woolf Institute on Interfaith Relations at Cambridge University. He has held honorary fellowships at numerous academic institutions, and has been Chairman of the Council and a Visiting Law Professor at University College London, Chairman of the Open University of Israel, and Chairman of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies.

He has authored or co-authored leading law publications including De Smith’s Judicial Review (2016, Sweet and Maxwell) and The Pursuit of Justice (2008, OUP). He has been awarded numerous honours, including in 2015 appointment as a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and the Gold Bauhinia Star by the Chief Executive of Hong Kong.

He was educated at University College London, where he graduated with an LLB in Law in 1954, and there he became a Fellow in 1981. He has received academic honours from 21 universities including Oxford, Cambridge, and University College London.