Sir Stephen Sedley, (born 9 October 1939), styled The Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Sedley was a judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales from 1999 to 2011.
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His father was Bill Sedley (1910–1985), of a Jewish immigrant family, who operated a legal advice service in the East End of London in the 1930s.[1][2] In the War he served in North Africa and Italy with the Eighth Army.[3] He founded the firm of lawyers of Seifert and Sedley in the 1940s with Sigmund Seifert and was a life-long Communist.[1]
After graduation from Queens' College, Cambridge, Stephen Sedley was called to the Bar (Inner Temple) in 1964[4] and started practice in chambers with John Platts-Mills.[3] He was involved in many high-profile cases and inquiries, from the death of Blair Peach and the Carl Bridgewater murder trial to the contempt hearing against Kenneth Baker, then Home Secretary.[5]
He became a QC in 1983. He was appointed a High Court judge in 1992, serving in the Queen's Bench Division. In 1999 he was appointed to the Court of Appeal as a Lord Justice of Appeal.[4] He retired from the Court of Appeal in 2011 following the publication of a collection of his essays and lectures.[6]
He has provoked considerable debate about the role of government in collecting and keeping DNA samples. At present criminal suspects detained by the police in the UK automatically are given cheek swabs and their DNA kept, in perpetuity, by the government. This has created the situation where different races are differently represented in the United Kingdom National DNA Database. On the grounds that this situation is indefensible, Lord Justice Sedley argued for a blanket DNA collection policy, including collecting samples from all visitors to the UK.[7]