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Dame Bobbie Cheema-Grubb

Dame Bobbie Cheema-Grubb

IN THE venerable halls of the British legal system, diversity and representation have long been an aspiration rather than reality. But in recent years, the landscape has slowly begun to shift, thanks in part to trailblazers like Dame Bobbie Cheema-Grubb, the first Asian woman to be appointed a UK high court judge. The Hon Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb, a judge of the King’s Bench Division of the high court, believes in speaking powerful words through her judgments. She was the presiding judge in the Finsbury Park terrorist attack case, and while delivering the judgment, she remarked: “We must respond to evil with good,” highlighting the intervention of the imam who prevented the crowd from attacking the perpetrator, to let justice take its course. “His response should be everyone’s response,” she implored. Her judgments are marked by clarity, wisdom, and a profound understanding of the complex issues at stake, experts conclude. In November last year, she told Joe Metcalfe, who, at the age of 15, planned a murderous assault on the mosque in Keighley, West Yorkshire, that he was at “high risk of posing serious harm to others through sexual behaviour and future acts of terror”, while sentencing him to 10 years for terror offences and rape. “You are stuck in a racist and extremist mindset,” she said, adding: “Although everyone has the potential to change, I am not convinced there is any yet.” And, she didn’t mince words when handing out 36 life sentences in February last year to former policeman David Carrick for a “monstrous” string of 71 sexual offences against 12 women.

She said Carrick, whose crimes included 48 rapes, had “brazenly raped and sexually assaulted” his victims, believing himself to be “untouchable” due to his position which afforded him “exceptional powers to coerce and control”. Some of the most high-profile cases in the recent months have had Justice Cheema Grubb as the presiding judge – including the knife attack on a female American intelligence agent by an ex-British cyber espionage worker. Calling the attack “politically motivated” and driven by “anger and resentment” towards GCHQ and women, she sentenced Joshua Bowles, 29, a former software developer at signals intelligence agency GCHQ, to life in prison in October 2023. Earlier, another high-profile case saw Cheema-Grubb hand down in December 2022 an eight-month suspended prison sentence to Anne Sacoolas, the wife of a US diplomat, for killing a teenager Harry Dunn in a road accident in August 2019. While she may see the elevation in November 2015 as part of a tide lifting many women into the high court judiciary, the barriers Cheema-Grubb broke throughout her career tell a story of determination, formed by lived experiences as a daughter of Indian Sikh Punjabi parents who came to the UK in the 1960s. Growing up in Yorkshire where her father worked in a foundry and mother was a seamstress, she would accompany her parents, who couldn’t speak English well, to meetings with the council or employers to translate. She would later write about the stereotyping she felt at those meetings, the triggers that pushed her towards a life pursuing justice and fairness. While attending the City of Leeds School, her volunteering at a law centre would show her a further practical, flexible and creative way of finding solutions.


“I was sent to a law centre because I spoke Asian languages and I’d been used to translating for my parents from being very young. “They needed somebody who could translate for some of their clients. And I saw how law could solve problems for people, real problems that mattered – tenants who had unfair landlords or people had been working and their employer had dismissed them unfairly or children excluded from schools – those kinds of real, practical problems and these things transformed people’s lives,” she said. She studied law at King’s College London and chose a career as a criminal law barrister. She is an alumna of the Inns of Court School of Law – The City Law School’s predecessor – where she received her Bar training. Last July, The City Law School awarded her an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws in recognition of her outstanding career at the Bar specialising in criminal and public law work, and her continuing career as a high court judge. She was called to the Bar in 1989, and worked at 2 Hare Court, specialising in prosecuting and defending cases spanning business crime, homicide, and terrorism. She has earned plaudits from the legal fraternity and attracted media attention for high profile cases, including the successful prosecutions of retired Church of England Bishop, Peter Ball, for sexual abuse, and of barrister and Recorder Constance Briscoe for perverting the course of justice. As she progressed, she could help but notice that there were not many who looked like her. And, she had to face prejudices on account of that – in addition. When she was a junior barrister, a man would tell her he didn’t want her to represent him. She was fearless, and in the end, represented him. “What’s carried many of us who are a bit different through the justice system is the idea that justice is not justice if it’s limited to certain types of people,” she later wrote. The year 2006 saw her break a glass ceiling for the first time, by becoming the first Asian woman to be appointed a junior treasury counsel. She subsequently became the third woman ever to become a senior treasury counsel in 2011 and was authorised to sit as a deputy high court judge. She was appointed a recorder in 2007 and took Silk in 2013. She was made a Dame in 2016, after her appointment to the high court. She is also actively involved in the administrative side of the judiciary. Between 2019 and 2022, she was a presiding judge of the South Eastern Circuit, responsible for the deployment of the judiciary and allocation of cases, along with the general supervision of judges on the circuit. She now leads the Judiciary’s International Training. Earlier, she chaired the Advocacy Training Council working group that produced the report “Raising the Bar: The Handling of Vulnerable Witnesses, Victims and Defendants in Court”. She takes special interest in promoting women who work in the criminal justice sector. She was instrumental in designing the mentoring scheme run by Women in Criminal Law. Outside of her work in the law courts, Cheema-Grubb enjoys art, architecture, the theatre and walking. Dame Bobbie has been married to Russell Grubb since 1990, a fine arts graduate she met at the university. They have three children, two daughters and a son.

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