Professor Graham Zellick KC on the assertion that there is a ‘Welsh seat’ on the UK Supreme Court
- Despite claims of a so-called ‘Welsh seat’ on the UK Supreme Court, there is no statutory requirement for a Welsh justice: under the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, ‘England and Wales’ are treated as a single legal jurisdiction.
- Although Wales has developed a stronger legal identity in recent years, Welsh cases form only a small proportion of the Supreme Court’s workload and there is currently no distinct Welsh legal system comparable to Scotland or Northern Ireland, so no Welsh seat exists in law or convention.
Enter ‘Jewish seat’ in a search engine and up will pop a number of items describing the so-called ‘Jewish seat’ on the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), a custom which began in 1916 with the appointment of Louis Brandeis. He was followed by a number of other Jewish lawyers, such as Benjamin Cardozo and Felix Frankfurter, who were among the court’s most illustrious members. The custom persisted
