Judicial panels hearing cases before the new UK Supreme Court should be picked at random rather than by the opaque procedure used by the House of Lords, a leading silk suggested this week. Lord David Pannick QC criticised the current system under which even Law Lords themselves do not know why they are picked, and said whatever procedure the new court adopts has to be open and transparent to command public confidence and respect.

The current Law Lords will be the first justices of the 12-member court, but how many of them will sit on each case has yet to be determined.

The conference, held at the Law Society, followed a series of seminars held under the Chatham House rule in which members of the judiciary, academics and legal practitioners discussed the working of the new court.

Lord Phillips, Senior Law Lord, who will become president of the court when it opens in October 2009, suggested the retirement age for Supreme Court judges should not be 70 but 75, to ensure some of the most able and experienced judges are able to be appointed to the Supreme Court.

The new court, on the site of the former Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court, will be the final court of appeal in the UK, hearing cases from Northern Ireland and the Court of Session in Scotland as well as from England and Wales. The rules for permission to appeal will remain largely unchanged, leaving the court free to pick cases with a ‘wider element of public interest’ that currently go to the Lords.

Its official emblem, unveiled this week, combines four heraldic elements reflecting the three jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. Lord Hope of Craighead, chairman of the Law Lords sub-committee for the Supreme Court, said the emblem reflects the importance of the place that the Supreme Court will occupy in the constitution of the UK.

‘All four nations are equally represented in the design, and it is embraced by a symbol, which is both Libra, symbolising the scales of justice, and omega, symbolising finality,’ he said.