Obituary: The Right Honorable Sir Terence Etherton

Born in 1951, Sir Terence's childhood was difficult, since his parents' finances were often rocky, but they made his schooling a priority and he flourished. Sir Terence attended Holmewood House School in Tunbridge Wells, followed by St Paul's School (Barnes).

He attended Corpus Christi, Cambridge, where he studied history and law and was called to the bar in 1974. Within 15 years he'd become a Queen's Counsel. A decade later, he was appointed a High Court judge, assigned to the Chancery Division. This meant that Etherton became Sir Terence. In 2006, he was appointed Chairman of the Law Commission, where his job was to "ensure that the law is as fair, modern, simple and as cost-effective as possible". It was his responsibility to recommend reform of the law. Two years later, he became Lord Justice of Appeal and appointed to the Privy Council. From 2013 to 2016, he was Chancellor of the High Court, the head of the Chancery Division of the High Court of England and Wales. Then, in October 2016, he succeeded Lord Dyson as Master of the Rolls, or the judge who presides over the Court of Appeal (Civil Division). He was responsible for running the Court of Appeal and was head of civil justice from a judicial perspective; he had pastoral responsibility for all 38 judges of the Court of Appeal and operational responsibility for the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal. He also chaired a number of committees, including the Civil Justice Council.

His love of sport found an outlet at school. From 1977 to 1980, he was a member of the British Sabre team and selected to compete at the Olympics in Moscow in the summer of 1980. The UK government supported the Olympics boycott following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but left the final decision about participation to individual athletes and Sir Terence decided he could not morally attend.

Sir Terence spoke eloquently about diversity in the judiciary: the law needed to reflect the diversity in the population. He believed fervently in "certain inherent values in the law: those of certainty, consistency, accountability, efficiency, due process and access to justice". He wrote passionately about "the need for laws which are just, up-to-date, and accessible to all who are affected by them". He was a supporter of modernizing court processes, including the digitisation of systems across jurisdictions and streamlining processes to make the system easier to navigate.

Sir Terence was gay. If the personal was political, the political was also personal. As Sir Terence recalled, there was an unspoken policy in the judiciary that gay men should not be appointed to the bench. The policy was only changed by Lord Mackay of Clashfern, the Conservative lord chancellor, in 1991. Sir Terence's appointment to one of the highest offices of the judiciary showed that "diversity in sexuality is not a bar to preferment".

Sir Terence was a man who sought to make a difference outside of the law as well. He served on the Riverside Mental Health NHS Trust and chaired the West London Mental Health NHS Trust as well as Broadmoor Hospital. He was interested in education, active not only within Royal Holloway College, Corpus Christi College (Cambridge), and Kent University, but also at Birkbeck, where he was a Visiting Professor of Law and a Patron of the Birkbeck Law Review. He was elected a Fellow of Birkbeck in 2019.