Brenda Marjorie Hale, Baroness Hale of Richmond, (born 31 January 1945) is a British judge who served as President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom from 2017 until her retirement in 2020, and serves as a member of the House of Lords as a Lord Temporal. In 2004, she joined the House of Lords as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. She is the only woman to have been appointed to that position. She served as a Law Lord until 2009 when she, along with the other Law Lords, transferred to the new Supreme Court as a result of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. She served as Deputy President of the Supreme Court from 2013 to 2017. On 5 September 2017, Hale was appointed under the premiership of Theresa May to serve as President of the Supreme Court, and was sworn in on 2 October 2017. She was the third person and first woman to serve in the role. Hale is one of four women to have been appointed to the Supreme Court (alongside Lady Black, Lady Arden and Lady Rose). Since 30 July 2018, Hale has been a non-permanent judge of the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong. In June 2021, she announced her decision not to seek reappointment on the Hong Kong court after the end of her term in July while mentioning the impact of the controversial Hong Kong national security law. She will be the first senior British judge to withdraw from Hong Kong's top court after the enactment of the security law in June 2020. In 2019, Hale was appointed an Honorary Professor of Law at University College London. Hale has also been Honorary President of the Cambridge University Law Society since 2015. On 11 January 2020, Lady Hale was succeeded by Lord Reed as President of the Supreme Court. Early life Brenda Marjorie Hale was born on 31 January 1945 in Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire. Both her parents were headteachers. She has two sisters. Hale lived in Redcar until the age of three when she moved with her parents to Richmond, North Yorkshire. She was educated at the Richmond High School for Girls (now part of Richmond School), where she and her two sisters were all head girls. She later studied at Girton College, Cambridge (the first from her school to attend Cambridge), where she read law. Hale was one