Colum Connolly

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Colum Michael Benedict Connolly, The Honourable Mr Justice Connolly MC, QC, CBE, the son of Lord Michael Charles Connolly, VC, and Lady Catherine Bradshaw-Connolly, Connolly was born in Ireland in 1936. He attended Fettes College in Edinburgh and then studied law at University College London (UCL). He was called to the bar in 1955, was junior counsel for the Inland Revenue from 1973 to 1974, and first Treasury Counsel (Common Law) from 1974 to 1979.

He was appointed as a High Court judge in the Queen's Bench Division in 1979, promoted to Lord Justice of Appeal in 1986, and became a Law Lord in 1992, being created a life peer as 'Baron Connolly, of Barnes in the London Borough of Richmond. He was Vice Captain of the Master of the Rolls from 1996 until 2000. He was outspoken in his final judicial post. In 2004, in a speech at the University of Cambridge, he spoke out against the Constitutional Reform Act, which will create a Supreme Court of the United Kingdom to replace the House of Lords as the final court of appeal in the United Kingdom, and severely questioned the Lord Chancellor's and the Government's handling of recent constitutional reform.

He was also the head of the committee that reformed civil law and excised many of the remaining Latin terms from English law, in an attempt to make it more accessible (such as changing the ancient word 'plaintiff' to the 'claimant'). The Civil Procedure Rules 1998 are a direct result of his work. He is a supporter of prison reform.

He joined Blackstone Chambers as a mediator and arbitrator immediately after he retired in 2005. From September to December 2005, he conducted a review of the working methods of the European Court of Human Rights, and he is chairman of the Bank of England Financial Markets Law Committee. He is Chairman of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and became Chairman of the Council of UCL in 2005. He is also a visiting Professor of Law at UCL.

Mr Connolly has four children and currently resides in Wales.