Lawyer expected to become UK's 12th Supreme Court judge

Sumption, the report notes, is a working barrister and not, as is the norm, a judge in the Court of Appeal, the pool from which Law Lords were almost always chosen. If he gets it, he will be only the eighth member of the highest court to have been appointed straight from the Bar, without any experience as a professional judge, but the first since 1949 and only the third from England. Four of the others were Scottish advocates and one was a barrister from pre-independence Ireland. But Sumption would be unique among the eight in having had no experience whatever in any governmental or parliamentary capacity, says the report. Full report in The Guardian