Lord Jonathan Mance > Chambers of Gavin Kealey KC > London, England > Barrister Profile

Lord Jonathan Mance

+44 (0)20 7910 8300 seniorclerks@7kbw.co.uk

Position

Lord Mance was Deputy President of the Supreme Court. He sat from 1993 to 1999 as a Commercial Judge, was appointed to the Court of Appeal in 1999, and to the House of Lords in 2005 where he spent four years as a Law Lord before becoming a Justice of the Supreme Court on its formation in 2009 and its Deputy President in 2017-2018.

Since joining 7 King’s Bench Walk, Lord Mance has been appointed in a wide range of arbitrations (in a majority of cases as sole arbitrator or chair, but also as a wing arbitrator) under ICC, LCIA, UNCITRAL and ICSID Rules and ad hoc in fields including insurance/reinsurance, energy, construction, international trade, joint venture and shareholder agreements and investment.

He has wide-reaching experience of international, commercial and European law, having written many judgments in all these areas as both first instance and appellate levels.

Lord Mance was until the end of 2022 Chair of the International Law Association as well as Chair of the Conduct Committee of the House of Lords. He is co-chair of the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Private International Law, and a member of the Judicial Integrity Group (responsible for the Bangalore Principles on Judicial Conduct). He also sits as an appellate judge of the Singapore International Commercial Court and is Chief Justice of the Astana International Financial Centre Court.

At the Bar he specialised in commercial law including insurance and reinsurance, professional negligence (particularly of accountants, auditors, brokers and lawyers), banking and international trade. He was a founder director of the Bar Mutual Indemnity Insurance Fund Ltd and chaired various Banking Appeals Tribunals. He also sat as an arbitrator.

While on the bench, he sat on the Council of Europe’s Consultative Council of European Judges, becoming its first elected chair from 2000 to 2003. In the House of Lords, he chaired a sub-committee of the European Union Select Committee, scrutinising proposals concerning European law and institutions, and contributing to the Committee’s report on the Treaty of Lisbon 2009. He also led a group working on domestic enforcement of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, and a delegation reporting on the problem of impunity in relation to violence against women in the Congo.

From 2010 to 2018 he served on the seven-person panel established by article 255 TFEU to report on candidates’ suitability to serve as Judge or Advocate-General in the European Court of Justice.

Lord Mance has good German and reasonable French, having worked in both, and reads (but speaks limited) Spanish.