The next President of the Family Division has been announced.
Sir Andrew Ewart McFarlane will succeed Sir James Munby on 28 July. The current President, the outspoken and high profile Sir James Munby, will retire on 27 July, his 70th birthday.
Lord Justice McFarlane will also complete precisely seven years as an Appeal Court Judge on that date, a month after his 64th birthday. Like most senior judges, he is a former barrister who became a QC – ‘took silk’ – in 1998. After progression up the judicial ranks, he was appointed a High Court Judge in the Family Division in 2005.
In 1991 he co-authored the now standard legal textbook Children Law and Practice, and has also lectured and delivered talks on different aspects of the law concerning children. He is a former Chair of the Family Law Bar Association and was the only legal practitioner to participate in the Family Justice Review conducted by David Norgrove for the government in 2011.
Sir Andrew read law at Durham University.
Congratulations. He has a lot of work ahead of him. I hope he will be challenging the existing system at least as much as Munby did, and not just on the eve of retirement.