Stephen Sedley QC

Sir Stephen Sedley (born 9 October 1939), is a British lawyer. He worked as a judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales from 1999 to 2011 and is currently a visiting professor at the University of Oxford.

His father was Bill Sedley (1910–1985), of a Jewish immigrant family, who operated a legal advice service in the East End of London in the 1930s. In the War he served in North Africa and Italy with the Eighth Army. Bill Sedley founded the firm of lawyers of Seifert and Sedley in the 1940s with Sigmund Seifert and was a lifelong Communist.

After graduation from Queens' College, Cambridge, Stephen Sedley was called to the Bar (Inner Temple) in 1964 and practised in Cloisters chambers with John Platts-Mills,David Turner-Samuels and Michael Mansfield.

Sedley had a particular interest in the development of administrative law (the judicial review of governmental and administrative decision making). He was involved in cases which broadened the scope of judicial review and established the modern procedure for judicial review, and in ground-breaking cases in relation to employment rights, sex and race discrimination, prisoners’ rights, coroners’ inquests, immigration and asylum and freedom of speech. He was counsel in many high-profile cases and inquiries, from the death of Blair Peach and the Carl Bridgewater murder appeal to the Helen Smith inquest and the contempt hearing against Kenneth Baker, then Home Secretary.

He became a QC in 1983. He was appointed a High Court judge in 1992, serving in the Queen's Bench Division. In 1999 he was appointed to the Court of Appeal as a Lord Justice of Appeal. He was a Judge ad hoc of the European Court of Human Rights and a Member ad hoc of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. His retirement from the Court of Appeal in 2011 coincided with the publication of a collection of his essays and lectures.

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