Rabinder Singh QC (pictured) is about to become the first Sikh High Court judge, but he finds the media’s fixation with his ethnicity tiresome. Catherine Baksi found out what motivates this modest yet steely advocate, and how he has achieved so much so young

On 10 October Rabinder Singh QC will be sworn in as a judge in the Queen’s Bench division of the High Court. The ceremony will mark the end of an illustrious 22-year career at the bar.

In a rare media interview, Singh reflected on a journey that has taken him from a working-class background in Bristol to become one of the country’s most eminent public law and human rights barristers. He has appeared in more than 35 cases in the House of Lords and Supreme Court.

Singh’s story is marked by hard work and determination, and he hopes it will inspire others to fulfil their potential.

Born in 1964, Rabinder Singh is the son of Indian immigrants who came to the UK with nothing. Fortunately, his ability was recognised early in life when he was awarded a local authority scholarship to Bristol Grammar School. It was during his time there that he decided to become a barrister.

Watching barristers on television and in films, Singh thought it looked like an exciting career. ‘Like many people I suspect, I didn’t really know anything about it or what it would be like in reality, but I suppose I had a vague sense that one could use the law to help other people,’ he says.

He also recalls being moved by Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird, in which Atticus Finch defends a black man accused of raping a white woman in the American south during the Depression.

‘Atticus Finch talks about the law as the great equaliser. It’s clear he is a lawyer who regards himself as having a vocation. He will do his duty, even if he knows he’s going to lose the case, because it’s the right and just thing to do.’

Singh studied law at Trinity College, Cambridge, and followed that with an LLM at the University of California, Berkeley. But his path to the bar was not straightforward.

Returning from the US, he could not afford to study for the bar exams, so took a job as a law lecturer at the University of Nottingham for two years, before winning a scholarship from the Inns of Court.

He was called to the bar in 1989 and completed his 12-month pupilage at London’s 4-5 Gray’s Inn Square, where he remained as a tenant for 10 years before leaving to become one of the founding members of Matrix Chambers in 2000.

Though best known for his work in public and human rights law, Singh’s career has been broad and varied. As a junior he worked as a generalist, covering work from landlord and tenant to consumer credit, and he has continued to do employment law cases.

The softly spoken rising star of the bar was appointed to one of the panels of junior counsel to the Crown, rising to be on the ‘A’ panel, and was also additional junior counsel to the Inland Revenue. In 2002, at 38, he became one of the youngest people to be awarded silk.

The cases he has been involved over the last decade include: representing CND, when in 2002 he unsuccessfully sought a declaration that it would be unlawful for the UK to go to war in Iraq without a fresh resolution from the United Nations Security Council; and the 2004 Belmarsh case, where he was part of the team which successfully represented Liberty in the House of Lords over the indefinite detention without charge or trial of non-UK nationals suspected of terrorist activities.

Many cases he has worked on have resulted in changes to the law or contributed to its development, which appears to have given this modest man great satisfaction.

The 2004 House of Lords case of Ghaidan, and the 2009 Privy Council matter of Rodriguez, both concerned gay rights, and resulted in earlier decisions being overturned in favour of recognition that there had to be equality of treatment for same sex partners.

Cases concerning human rights concepts, especially since the Human Rights Act 1998, have contributed significantly to Singh’s workload, with particular focus on the question of its reach. At what is perhaps the pinnacle of his career so far, Singh appeared in the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, representing the applicants in two cases arising from the British occupation of Iraq and concerning human rights abuses by British forces.

The landmark decisions in the cases of Al-Skeini and Al-Jedda established the extra-territorial impact of the Human Rights Act.

Earlier, similar cases in the House of Lords led to the establishment of the public inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa, led by Sir William Gage. The latter’s report, published earlier this month, found British troops had used unlawful interrogation techniques and criticised ‘corporate failure’ at the Ministry of Defence.

Singh led the team acting for Mousa’s father and other Iraqi victims of human rights abuses at the hands of British forces in 2003.

The anti-establishment credentials that some might attach to Singh due to his work on high-profile cases against the British government are not wholly justified. In fact, some of his most notable cases have seen him act for the government.

He cites the prisoner voting case of Hirst and the case of S & Marper, regarding the retention of DNA profiles of acquitted people. He won both cases in the domestic courts before losing in Strasbourg.

Given such an exceptional career, it is understandable that Singh is unable to single out his most professionally satisfying case.

‘A very wise barrister, who’s now a judge, told me when I was a junior that every case is important because it’s important to the client. And so I’ve always tried to operate on that principle,’ he says.

‘The cases are not there for my interest or curiosity, or to further my career. They arise because there are real people who have real problems, and we as lawyers have a duty to use the law so far as we can to solve their real problems in life.’

It was a desire to meet the needs of those people in a rapidly changing society that led to the foundation of the progressive and innovative Matrix Chambers in 2000.

For Singh, the establishment of the set presented three exciting opportunities. The first was to create a more modern and efficient service, shedding images of the bar’s dickensian premises and practices.

The second, stemming from the broad reach of the Human Rights Act, was to bring civil and criminal practitioners under one roof, enabling cross-fertilisation.

The third innovation was integrating the work of academic lawyers into the heart of the bar. Matrix, located in glass-fronted modern premises at the edge of Gray’s Inn, has 69 members, including seven professors of law whose work spans all disciplines.

The key to success at the bar, says Singh, is no great secret –‘be very good and work very hard’. He sets himself high standards, evaluating his performance after each case, and says he has never given himself full marks however well a case has gone.

However, he observes too that the bar is a fiercely competitive profession that is becoming increasingly difficult to get into or become established in. So his (only slightly tongue in cheek) advice to aspiring barristers is: ‘Don’t do it. It’s a potentially brutal profession with long hours, difficult work and uncertain rewards.

‘All objective reason would lead you away from this profession because there’s no security and changes to funding are going to mean that there’s even less security.’

And yet, he adds: ‘I can’t think of anything else I would have wanted to do in my career. So that must say something about the attractions of the bar.’

To others who also see that attraction, his advice is to read widely. ‘Get away from law books and read proper books,’ he says. This he recommends for two reasons: ‘Words are the tools of our trade. So it is important to immerse yourself in the English language and become well read so that you can master those tools.’

And he adds philosophically: ‘The law is a very interesting phenomenon. Unlike physics, which is all about physical things, the law is all about words and concepts, so it doesn’t actually exist in the physical world. But it has this unique ability to affect the physical world, so it affects people’s lives.’

The second reason to become well read, he asserts, is to gain a greater insight into the lives of others, which helps barristers better understand their clients’ lives and motivations.

As a young barrister, Singh studied great speeches, both from literature and history, observing how they were constructed for maximum effect. ‘If you change the order of words in a speech it will have less impact,’ he notes.

Singh does not have a favourite book, but one author whose work he has enjoyed over the last decade is that of American novelist Anne Patchet. In 2002 she won the Orange Prize for her novel Bel Canto, which he greatly enjoyed.

‘It brings together two of the things that interest me – one is the phenomenon of terrorism and the other is opera,’ he says. ‘It’s about an opera singer taken hostage by a group of terrorists and the relationship that develops between her and her captors.’

The reason behind his choice provides some insight into what motivates this highly intellectual yet totally down-to-earth man.

‘Like all great books, they teach you about humanity. It’s important to be curious about the world and all the people in it. It’s that word "curious" that motivates me.’

Another piece of advice Singh has given his trainees over the years, and which he took to heart himself when embarking on his own career, is: ‘Don’t be afraid sometimes to turn cases down, because you can’t do everything.’

This might seem counterintuitive when one is seeking to establish a practice, he admits. But he warns that there is a real risk of ‘burnout’ - Singh has seen barristers who should have flourished quit the profession, because they have failed to establish a healthy work/life balance.

On his career so far, Singh concludes: ‘I have not had a boring day at the office and I’ve been at the bar for 22 years. It’s an enormously rewarding profession to be in and I count myself very fortunate that I’ve been able to do some of the most interesting cases that any barrister could have hoped to be in.’

So why is he leaving that illustrious career behind and moving full-time to the bench? Becoming a judge, he says, was not part of any plan, but he has enjoyed his experiences on the bench, having been appointed a deputy High Court judge in 2003 and a Crown Court recorder in 2004.

One reason to make the change, he says, is the variety of law that a Queen’s Bench judge has the opportunity to encounter.

The biggest difference between being an advocate and a judge, he adds, is that as a judge you generally have to make a decision. ‘What appeals to me about the judicial function is that opportunity to be the decision-maker in a case rather than just making an argument for one side or the other.’

Unassuming though he is, Singh is rightly proud of how far he has come. When he was a law student, he recalls that he was advised not to try and become a barrister because there was no way ‘somebody like you’ was going to succeed.

Singh’s response to that advice tells of the determined and optimistic spirit that shines through his composed, lawyerly manner. He says: ‘I didn’t let it put me off or regard it as dispiriting. Far from it; it only made me more determined.’

And here, he stresses, he is not talking about his ethnic origin as much as his socio-economic background. At that time, the bar was regarded as a preserve of the middle-class.

Singh is baffled and angered by the focus that has been put on his ethnicity since his appointment to the High Court bench. He has been hailed as the first Sikh to be so appointed and held up as a role model in the national and legal media.

‘I am a barrister who happens to be a Sikh,’ he says with indignation. ‘I have always tried to be a role model, by the work I do. I haven’t said, "I’m a Sikh barrister, look at what I do." I’ve just said, "look at what I do". Everyone can see what I am.’

His sense of disappointment is palpable as he says: ‘I just do not understand this fixation of identifying people with reference to their religious or ethnic identity.’

Pointing to his CV - not to boast but to illustrate his point - he says: ‘Show me a 47-year-old white guy who’s had more than 35 cases in the House of Lords and Supreme Court, and not just that number of cases, but the quality of cases – there won’t be many.

‘If any other barrister had those cases on their CV, I think people would be talking about their work, not about their ethnic origins.’

He continues: ‘Take Shami Chakrabarti. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say she’s an Asian woman who happens to be director of Liberty. People respect her and admire her work, because she’s an eloquent and charismatic spokesperson for Liberty.’

That, he says, is a sign of progress. In contrast, the fact that some people are unable to get past his turban reflects outdated attitudes.

Part of the problem, he says, is a phenomenon identified by retired South African judge Kate O’Regan as ‘identity determinism’, which assumes the very thing that anti-racism is trying to combat – that is, that an individual is not to be seen as an individual, but as a member of a group by reference to their ethnic origin.

‘So when people identify me as a Sikh barrister, they are imposing on me certain expectations. They don’t want me to be just a judge; they want me to be a Sikh judge, whatever that may mean,’ he says.

Singh, along with many others, has worked to improve diversity in the profession and says that much progress has been made. But there has not been enough: ‘I’m the first person from any ethnic minority to be appointed to the High Court bench by the Judicial Appointments Commission,’ he notes.

This is not a criticism of the JAC, which he says has made serious efforts to improve diversity: ‘But it’s a sad reflection on our society that that’s where we are in the first part of the 21st century.’

Fiercely opposed to the idea of a quota system, Singh says that what people from every background want is a fair opportunity.

‘I know lots of white men who have benefited from the reforms in the last decade, both for QC applications and for judicial appointments, because the systems that no longer depend on secret soundings or a "tap on the shoulder" are fairer.’

But Singh also alludes to a perverse belief that has arisen since the appointment processes were made more transparent: ‘Many people actually think it is white men who are discriminated against now.’

He observes ‘a constant sense of grievance’ held by those who feel the system is loaded in favour of ethnic minorities and women, even though that it not supported by the statistics.

Looking back over his life, Singh reflects that his late parents would have been very moved to know that, 50 years after they came to this country from India without a penny to their name, their son could become a High Court judge.

‘I think that’s an extremely positive story and a very positive story about our country,’ he says.

That is the story he wants to tell and the story he wants people to dwell on, instead of a story that chooses his ethnicity as its core. ‘I wish that people would share in that and take pride in that because that’s not something to be ashamed of or disappointed by. I think it’s a remarkable story.’

He adds: ‘I wouldn’t in any way seek to compare myself to someone like President Obama, but thinking about my parents, it did remind me of something he said in his inaugural speech in 2008. He said something to the people of his country about the fact that 50 years ago his father couldn’t have eaten lunch at a lunch counter in Washington DC, and today he stands before them as their president.

‘I thought that was a very positive statement. What he was doing was not criticising America, but praising it. And that’s the message that I’d like to convey - look how far we’ve come in 50 years, which is a short period of time in a country’s history.’

And he concludes with unwavering optimism: ‘That’s only the beginning I hope.’