Profile of the Chancellor
The Chancellor of the University of the West of England is the Rt Hon Baroness Butler-Sloss, GBE.
Elizabeth Havers, the daughter of a High Court judge, decided at the age of 12 that she too would become a barrister. After attending Wycombe Abbey School, she was called to the Bar in 1955. At the age of 25 she married Joseph Butler-Sloss, also a barrister and later a High Court judge in Kenya. They have three children and six grandchildren.
At the Bar, Elizabeth Butler-Sloss specialised in family law before her appointment to the Principal Registry of the Family Division of the High Court in 1970. In 1979 she became a High Court judge and was created a Dame of the British Empire in the same year. In 1987-88 she chaired the Cleveland Sex Abuse Inquiry, the outcome of which has had a significant effect on social work practice. Later that year, she became a Privy Councillor and was appointed to the Court of Appeal, the first woman judge to sit in that court and initially known by the masculine title Lord Justice Butler-Sloss but later invited by the Lord Chancellor to be called 'Lady Justice'. She was President of the Family Division of the High Court from 1999 to April 2005.
She was Chairman of the Security Commission until 2005 and in 2002 chaired the Commission for the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
She became Dame Grand Cross of the British Empire in 2005 and was appointed to the House of Lords as a non-political peer in 2006.
