Michael Briggs (judge)

Sir Michael Townley Featherstone Briggs, PC (born 1954) is a judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales.

He was educated at Charterhouse School and Magdalen College, Oxford.

He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1978 and was the Junior Counsel to Crown Chancery from 1990-94. He became a Queen's Counsel in 1994. He was made a Bencher of Lincoln's Inn in 2001, and was appointed Attorney General of the Duchy of Lancaster on 24 July of that year. Briggs held that post until shortly after his appointment on 3 July 2006 as a Justice of the High Court, where he was assigned to the Chancery Division. From 2012 to 2013, Briggs was Vice-Chancellor of the County Palatine of Lancaster, a Chancery judge appointed by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in consultation with the Lord Chancellor to supervise Chancery business and hear cases in the North and North East. On 9 April 2013, he was an appointed Lord Justice of Appeal and consequently appointed to the Privy Council.

Judgments authored by Lord Justice Briggs are notable for his Lordship having authored them and the consequent quality of reasoning that ordinarily follows from that being so (more so than from the real-world implications of those decisions). This includes, among others:

Briggs drew a good deal of attention in late July 2012 with a decision invalidating the exit consent clauses in bonds issued by the Anglo-Irish Bank.

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