THE RIGHT HON. SIR GEOFFREY VOS
Sir Henry Brooke Award 2026 – Recipient: Ruth Lopez
Alliance for Lawyers at Risk
Fieldfisher, Riverbank House, 2 Swan Lane, London EC4R 3TT
Tuesday, 10 March 2026
Introduction
1. Many thanks to Dominic Grieve for that kind introduction.
2. It is an honour to have been invited to present the Sir Henry Brooke Award to Ruth Lopez, through her husband, it is very sad that she has been prevented from being here this evening.
3. Before doing so, I thought I would reflect on the rule of law itself. Some of you may have heard the speech I gave a few weeks ago at the Old Bailey about Justice for All.[1] In that speech, I explained that ‘justice’ has a new meaning in our modern times. When our justice system was created back in 1873, justice was provided only to the wealthy members of a much smaller non-diverse population. Now, the citizens and businesses of our country expect to see a system where justice is available equally to the least privileged and the most vulnerable in our society as it is to the most wealthy and the most privileged. That is a big change; it is a change that is not always immediately recognised.
4. The thesis that I shall explain tonight is equally important. I believe that the global legal community has failed adequately to explain the meaning and importance of the rule of law. I am not, of course, suggesting for a moment that lawyers are collectively responsible for the disturbingly numerous human rights violations that we see in so many countries in the second quarter of the 21st century. But I do think that we need to find more accessible and intelligible terminology if we are to persuade the generations, who have not been brought up in the shadow of two world wars, to value what we, sometimes glibly, refer to as the “rule of law”.
5. In using that term, we lawyers are really only talking to ourselves, because a vanishingly small number of young people have any real inkling of what we really mean when we use the term “rule of law”.
6. In this short speech, I will first preach to the converted, by explaining why the “rule of law” is actually even more important in 2026 than ever before, before suggesting some ways in which we might reach out more effectively nationally and internationally to explain the importance of a strong legal foundation in all our societies.
Why is the rule of law so important in 2026?
7. The essence of the rule of law, according to Lord Bingham, is, if I may summarise his famous 8 principles: the clear and accessible predictability of a legal system that applies equally to all, to protect the fundamental rights of the citizen, with the powers of the executive exercised proportionately, fairly and in good faith, so as to comply with national and international legal obligations.
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