Judges shouldn't be members of a men-only Garrick Club

Maybe the Garrick Club, a men-only establishment in London’s West End, really is just a chance for members to meet informally and chat about life and almost certainly cricket.

Maybe the very mention of work is immediately shut down and business is not discussed in the club, as it is claimed.

Maybe there is no professional advantage to sitting round the communal dining table opposite a judge who will be sat opposite you in court next week (although it’s difficult to see how it would hurt).

All these are possible – and without being inside we cannot know for sure – but it seems unlikely. And even if such prohibitions on work talk are upheld, just the fact that judges are members of an exclusionary club is a problem in itself in terms of perception.

This week the Guardian reported details of the Garrick’s membership, which includes leading figures from the worlds of entertainment, politics and the City. The list also includes five appeal court judges, eight High Court judges and dozens of serving and retired judges, as well as 150 barristers and ‘numerous’ senior solicitors.

To be clear, if members of the legal profession want to join a men-only club then that is their prerogative. 

But judges are a different matter. As with recusal applications, where judges must satisfy litigants not only that there is no bias but also there is no perception of bias, what matters with the Garrick issue is not just that judges are members but what perception this creates.

Despite endless attempts to improve gender equality in the senior judiciary, there remains a significant disparity in senior positions.

About a third (35%) of court judges are women and this proportion drops to 30% for High Court and above. Just two of the 12 justices of the Supreme Court are women.

In a profession where women constitute 39% of barristers and 53% of solicitors, those figures are not good enough.

It may be that more women could apply to the judiciary (although the JAC reported in 2021/22 that women accounted for 49% of applications), but with the lingering perception that the law remains an old boy’s club, would you blame anyone for not wanting to bother?

As former Supreme Court president Lady Hale put it in an interview from 2017, judges ‘wouldn’t dream of being members of a club that excluded people from ethnic minorities, they wouldn’t dream of being members of a club that excluded gays, but for some reason they seem to think it’s okay to be members of a club that excludes women’.

The whataboutery-brigade will be out in force, pointing out that there are women-only networking clubs as well as men-only. But that is to deliberately miss the point that such networks are only needed because of clubs and societies which give men an unfair advantage. Men-only clubs preserve the status quo; women-only clubs exist to challenge it. There is a world of difference.

The Judicial Office gives a rather mealy-mouthed response to the issue, saying only that it does not get involved in judges' private lives. That may be so, but this is a point of principle that should require some comment.

Members of the Garrick will vote in June whether to change the constitution. Perhaps the majority of judge members will elect to allow women into the establishment. But if the club continues to exclude people on the grounds of gender, members of the judiciary can’t be seen to belong.

This article is now closed for comment.