Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, Baroness Butler-Sloss

Ann Elizabeth Oldfield Butler-Sloss, Baroness Butler-Sloss GBE PC (née Havers; born 10 August 1933), is an English judge. She was the first female Lord Justice of Appeal and, until 2004, was the highest-ranking female judge in the United Kingdom.

She was made a dame (DBE) on appointment to the High Court in 1979, and was sworn in to the Privy Council in 1988 when she became the first woman to be appointed to the Court of Appeal. When she retired as a judge in 2005, she was awarded Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE). In 2006, the government announced that she would be awarded a life peerage as Baroness Butler-Sloss. She sits as an independent peer in the House of Lords.

Until June 2007, she chaired the inquests into the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales, and Dodi Fayed.

References

Other websites
No-nonsense approach of the right-to-die judge – Profile of Butler-Sloss at Guardian Unlimited, 22 March 2002
Announcement of her introduction at the House of Lords, House of Lords minutes of proceedings, 25 July 2006
Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life 

Category:1933 births
Category:Living people
Category:English judges
Category:United Kingdom Life Peers
Category:People from Buckinghamshire