Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, Baroness Butler-Sloss

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Anne Elizabeth Oldfield Butler-Sloss, Baroness Butler-Sloss, GBE, PC (born 10 August 1933) is a retired British judge.

Born Elizabeth Havers, she is the daughter of the late judge Sir Cecil Havers and is the sister of the late Lord Chancellor the Lord Havers. She is also the aunt of actor Nigel Havers. She was called to the Bar from the Inner Temple in 1955. In 1958 she married Joseph Butler-Sloss. She became the first woman appointed as a Justice of the Court of Appeal in 1988, having chaired the Cleveland child abuse inquiry in the previous year. In 1999 Butler-Sloss became President of the Family Division of the High Court of Justice. She was the first woman to hold this position and she remained the highest-ranking woman judge in the United Kingdom until Brenda Hale became the first female Lord of Appeal in Ordinary in January 2004.

She was raised to the rank of Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire in the New Year's Honours List published on December 31, 2004. On 12 January 2005 it was announced that she was retiring, being replaced as President of the Family Division by Sir Mark Potter, then a Lord Justice of Appeal.

She is Chairman of the Security Commission. On 3 May 2006 it was announced by the House of Lords Appointments Commission that she would be one of seven new life peers - so-called 'people's peers'. She was gazetted as Baroness Butler-Sloss, of Marsh Green in the County of Devon on 13 June 2006.

On 7 September 2006 she was appointed as Deputy Coroner of the Queen's Household and Assistant Deputy Coroner for Surrey for the purpose of hearing the inquest into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Lady Butler-Sloss is also Chancellor of the University of the West of England and an Honorary Fellow of St. Hilda's College, Oxford and Peterhouse, Cambridge. She sits on the Selection Panel for Queen's Counsel.