IN A LEGAL career spanning more than three decades, Sir Akhlaq Ur-Rahman Choudhury has emerged as a consequential figure in British justice.
As a High Court judge, his rulings have repeatedly pushed sensitive questions – gender identity, religion, free speech and the safety of women – into the centre of national debate. He is also a trailblazer: the first British Bangladeshi and Muslim appointed to the High Court of England and Wales. In January 2024, he took on a further leadership role as the presiding judge of the Midland Circuit, a position he will hold until December 31, 2027.
Born in 1967 in Winchester, Hampshire, Choudhury moved with his family to Bishopbriggs, on the outskirts of Glasgow, when he was four. His parents had migrated to the UK from Sylhet district in Bangladesh.
Choudhury’s journey to the bench began via a scientific route rather than a traditional legal one. In 1988, he graduated from the University of Glasgow with a BSc in physics - a background that provided a rigorous analytical foundation for his later work. Shifting from the laws of thermodynamics to the laws of England proved to be a significant but successful pivot; he subsequently earned a first-class honours LLB from SOAS, University of London, in 1991.
He was called to the Bar the following year, where he developed a wide-ranging practice spanning commercial, employment, procurement, information and public law. Between 1999 and 2005, he served on the attorney general’s panel of approved counsel, advising the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Ministry of Defence, HM Revenue & Customs and other government departments.
Judicial appointments followed: Recorder in 2009, Queen’s Counsel in 2015, and deputy High Court judge in 2016, before becoming a High Court judge in 2017.
Several of his judgments have become touchstones in Britain’s most polarised debates. In 2021, he ruled in favour of Maya Forstater, the tax expert whose contract was not renewed after she posted on social media that transgender women are biologically male. Choudhury held that Forstater’s gender-critical views were protected under freedom of belief provisions in the Equality Act, while drawing a careful boundary: “This judgment does not mean that those with gender-critical beliefs can ‘misgender’ trans persons with impunity.”
In another case, he quashed a council policy allowing an unlimited number of sexual entertainment venues in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, finding the authority had “consistently downplayed and/or sidelined sex equality-based concerns”. The challenge had been brought by a survivor of domestic and sexual abuse who argued such venues contributed to a culture of harm against women.
As president of the Employment Appeal Tribunal from 2019 to 2021, he also upheld the removal of a magistrate who had publicly objected on religious grounds to children being adopted by same-sex couples, ruling the comments undermined judicial impartiality.
For Choudhury, the authority of the bench carries an unmistakable weight. “The best thing can also be the most daunting,” he has said, “having the responsibility and power to make decisions that will have a direct bearing on people’s lives.”
