The public image of judges has been stuck in a time warp; they are invariably depicted in the media – and derided in public bars up and down the country – as ‘privately educated Oxbridge types’, usually ‘out-of-touch’, and more often than not as ‘old men’. These and other stereotypes – the judge as a pervert, the judge as a right-wing monster – have dogged the judiciary long since any of them ceased to have any basis in fact. Indeed the limited research that was permitted in the 1960s and 1970s tended to reinforce several of these stereotypes. Penny Darbyshire is a Professor of Law at Kingston University, having been a lecturer, senior lecturer and reader at Kingston University since 1978. She is also an adjunct associate professor, University of Notre Dame, London Law Centre, and was a visiting lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley, from 1992 until 1993. She was a visiting fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge in 2005. She has a first degree in law, a master’s degree in criminology and a Ph D in socio-legal studies.
Image courtesy of interviewee
