UK High Court gets first Sikh judge
Wednesday, 12/10/2011
London: Rabinder Singh, a leading lawyer who successfully appeared on behalf of Indian doctors in an immigration case in 2007, has been sworn in as the first Sikh judge of the High Court at the Royal Courts of Justice. Singh, 47, is the son of Indian immigrants, and studied at the Bristol Grammar School and the University of Cambridge. He is the first Sikh judge of the High Court, but not the first Sikh to be appointed to a senior level in Britain’s judiciary.
The first Sikh and Asian to be appointed a judge was Mota Singh, who was knighted in 2010.
A leading human rights lawyer, Rabinder Singh told the Law Society Gazette: “I am a barrister who happens to be a Sikh. I have always tried to be a role model, by the work I do. I haven’t said, ‘I’m a Sikh barrister, look at what I do’.”
Singh is best known through his work suggesting that the 2003 invasion of Iraq broke international law and for his part in the landmark 2004 House of Lords case that outlawed indefinite detention of foreign terror suspects. PTI
