Deputy president of the Supreme Court Lord Hodge has announced his retirement - to spend more time with his wife.

Lord Hodge will retire from the Supreme Court and Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on 31 December 2025.

Hodge, who has worked as a judge in Scotland, Jersey and Guernsey, has served as a justice of the Supreme Court and the JCPC since October 2013. He was appointed deputy president in January 2020.

He said: ‘It is and has been a great honour to serve the United Kingdom in the Supreme Court. I will greatly miss the company of my friends and colleagues in the court but owe it to my wife to step back at this stage of our lives.’

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Lord Hodge

Source: Supreme Court

Appointed a Queen’s Counsel in 1996, from 1997-2003 Lord Hodge was a part-time commissioner at the Scottish Law Commission.

In the early 2000s, he was a judge of the Courts of Appeal in Jersey and Guernsey and procurator to the general assembly of the Church of Scotland. As a senator of the College of Justice from 2005-2013, he was a commercial judge and the Scottish judge in exchequer causes, as well as serving as one of the Scottish IP judges and as a judge in the lands valuation appeal court.

An independent selection commission, which must have at least five members, will be convened to fill Lord Hodge’s vacancy.

The Supreme Court states all justices appointed to the court ‘are selected on merit and are people of exceptional intellectual and legal ability, with sound judgement and significant legal experience’.