On 29 January, a vacancy appeared on the government’s public appointments website which stood out from the list of otherwise rather unremarkable job adverts. The Judicial Appointments Commission is seeking a new chair. The next day, the JAC’s own website confirmed that the recruitment process had begun, following the expiry of the previous chair’s three-year term of office. The eventual appointment will be approved by His Majesty the King on the recommendation of the current Lord Chancellor – one of whose predecessors, incidentally, I served as Parliamentary Private Secretary for in a former life.
Thus, the familiar constitutional choreography of an appointment to the JAC has swung into action. Why is this significant? After all, Westminster is crowded with committees, commissions and conclaves whose workings are seldom noticed or understood outside SW1. In truth, that’s probably because most of these bodies are not perceived as having much impact on the day-to-day lives of folk outside the bubble, and so they largely escape attention. But the Judicial Appointments Commission is, or perhaps should be, a notable exception. The JAC is vested with the vital task of selecting candidates for judicial office in courts and tribunals in England & Wales. In plain language, it appoints our judges. It’s an important constitutional role, which makes it worthy of scrutiny. So, who are the members of the JAC, and how do they get that job? In short, who selects the selectors?
The Statutory Framework of the Judicial Appointments Commission
The JAC is an independent commission whose members are appointed according to a complex web of statute and statutory instrument. The framework’s genesis was the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. This Act reimagined the judicial appointments process, formalising what had previously been an opaque ‘tap on the shoulder’ system into a statutory model built on openness, meritocracy and judicial independence.
While the CRA laid down the broad architecture, a later Statutory Instrument, known as the Judicial Appointments Commission Regulations 2013, provided the nuts and bolts for who can be a commissioner and how they get chosen.
Then there’s the Crime and Courts Act 2013 which, among other things, strengthened diversity provisions by permitting the JAC to give preference to candidates from under-represented groups.
Taken together, these laws and regulations lay down the basic rules and procedures for appointing commissioners. The JAC must have fifteen members, twelve of whom are appointed through open competition. The other three are selected by the Judges’ Council and the Tribunal Judges’ Council. The chair must always be a lay member, while out of the fourteen other commissioners, seven must be holders of judicial office, five must be lay members, and two must be practising lawyers, qualified as barristers, solicitors or Fellows of the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives. The regulations specify which positions satisfy the requirement to be a ‘holder of judicial office’, and what constitutes a ‘lay member’. The level of detail is impressive: for example, the regulations even define whether a tribunal judge counts under specific categories and how lawyers from different branches qualify.
As we’ve heard, the chair’s role is currently vacant. The vice chair is Lord Justice (Mark) Warby, a court of appeal judge. The lay commissioners, the JAC’s website tells us, include a university professor, a former army officer, and a native speaker of Welsh. Among the judicial commissioners are a senior circuit judge at the Old Bailey, a hospital consultant who serves as a senior magistrate, and a justice on the court of appeal of the Chagos islands, who presumably has half an eye on current diplomatic developments in the Indian Ocean.
When a vacancy on the Commission arises, it’s generally advertised publicly, typically on the JAC’s own website and on the Civil Service jobs portal, as is currently the case with the chair’s position. Prospective commissioners submit applications, which are initially assessed by a selection panel convened by the JAC Secretariat. This panel evaluates candidates against statutory criteria such as experience, character and legal qualification, and is required to consider diversity too. It must also consult certain official bodies, including the Judges’ Council, senior members of the judiciary, and relevant professional groups such as the Bar Council and the Law Society. After its deliberations, the panel recommends suitable candidates to the Lord Chancellor, who has the statutory power to accept the recommendation, request reconsideration or reject a candidate where there is good reason to do so. The Lord Chancellor’s choice is then submitted to the Palace for the royal rubber stamp.
This statutory framework restrains and guides ministers who might otherwise be tempted to test the boundaries of the Commission’s independence or legitimacy. Politicians cannot appoint members to the Commission on the basis of patronage, favouring their allies or generous party donors, who in turn cannot then privilege certain judges or lawyers, for example. Imagine other important public appointments being made like that? Perish the thought.
Is the Judicial Appointments Commission a model for other public bodies?
Having unpacked the statutory rules, let’s ponder the bigger question: could the JAC mechanism be a model for more robust appointment processes across the public sphere? There’s a natural temptation for reformers to point to the JAC as a paragon of independence and merit-based recruitment. After all, it moved judicial selection out of the old, informal patronage system into a far more regulated, transparent and legally grounded process. Some lessons here could be fruitful elsewhere.
A key strength of the JAC model is that its powers and duties are embedded in statute. That makes it harder for future governments to tinker with its purpose or composition, and in so doing to bring influence to bear over the judiciary more broadly. This contrasts with advisory committees, for example, which exist by mere policy or guidance and can therefore be reshaped overnight on the whim of ministerial diktat. For other public bodies, whether regulatory boards, oversight commissions or quangos of various types, a similar statutory anchoring could mitigate cronyism and short-term political influence. Not all appointments need royal assent, of course, but a statutory definition of roles, duties and membership criteria would at least provide a firm foundation and serve to shore up public confidence in the process.
The JAC’s composition rules deliberately blend judicial experience, professional expertise and lay perspectives. That mix is designed to balance insider knowledge with broader societal views. For more robust appointments elsewhere, from regulatory authorities to watchdogs, a similar framework could ensure that suitably qualified people get the job, rather than merely the ‘right’ appointees in the eyes of the government of the day. Yet it isn’t perfect: the JAC’s own internal diversity challenges mirror broader issues in the legal professions. Recruitment isn’t just about process; it’s about the pool from which candidates come. The statutory requirement to ‘have regard to the need to encourage diversity’ at least pushes the Commission to seek to address that.
Of course, not every public appointment carries such weight. The judiciary’s independence is of special constitutional significance in ways that, say, the membership of a housing regulator or an arts board is not. For these other bodies, an overly-rigid appointment model, governed by the sort of complex statutory framework we’ve seen with the JAC, could add layers of bureaucracy, delay and challenge, without proportionate benefit.
Conclusion
The Judicial Appointments Commission stands as an example of how to marry statutory law with practical reality. Its appointment mechanism is comprehensive, legally anchored and carefully regulated. This is not an informal or merely advisory body, but one whose composition and operation are tightly governed by law. That legal architecture reflects a broader constitutional ambition: to remove judicial appointments from political patronage, while stopping just short of removing them from politics altogether.
At a time when trust in public institutions is fragile, the JAC offers a model that blends merit, transparency and procedural rigour. Whether other sectors should replicate its statutory framework is open to debate, but it’s hard to fault the Commission’s clear legal framework, balanced composition and public accountability, even when their origins lie in a political process from which so many people feel disengaged.
Incidentally, the deadline for applications to be the new chair of the Judicial Appointments Commission is 2 March 2026, just in case you want to throw your hat in the ring.
Peter Heaton-Jones.
Peter Heaton-Jones served two terms as MP for North Devon, and was Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Work & Pensions. He now works in government consultancy.
The Constitution Society is committed to the promotion of informed debate and is politically impartial. Any views expressed in this article are the personal views of the author and not those of The Constitution Society.