President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
the head of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
The president of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom is the highest-ranking judge in the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. It is equivalent to the now-defunct position of senior lord of appeal in ordinary, also known as the senior law lord, who was the highest ranking among the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary (the judges who exercised the judicial functions of the House of Lords). The current President is Robert Reed, since 13 January 2020.
History
From 1900 to 1969, when the lord chancellor was not present, a former lord chancellor would preside at judicial sittings of the House of Lords. If no former lord chancellor was present, the most senior lord of appeal in ordinary present would preside, seniority being determined by rank in the peerage. In the years following World War II, it became less common for lord chancellors to have time to gain judicial experience in office, making it anomalous for former holders of the office to take precedence. As a result, on 22 May 1969, the rules were changed such that if the lord chancellor was not present (as was normally the case), the most senior law lord, by appointment as a lord of appeal in ordinary rather than peerage, would preside.
In 1984, the system was amended to provide that judges be appointed as senior and second senior lords of appeal in ordinary, rather than taking the roles by seniority. The purpose of the change was to allow an ailing Lord Diplock to step aside from presiding, yet remain a law lord.
On 1 October 2009, the judicial functions of the House of Lords were transferred to the new Supreme Court under the provisions of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7241377. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2020, 1900, 1969 and 1984.
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This entry incorporates text from “President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.