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Jonathan Philip Chadwick Sumption, Lord Sumption, OBE, is a British judge, author and medieval historian. He was sworn in as a Justice of the Supreme Court on 11 January 2012, succeeding The Lord Collins of Mapesbury, and was granted the style of Lord as a courtesy title by Royal Sign Manual in 2011, but without a seat in Parliament. Exceptionally, he was raised to the Supreme Court bench directly from the practising bar, rather than from prior service as a full-time judge.
He is well known for his role as a barrister in many legal cases. They include appearances in the Hutton Inquiry on the UK Government's behalf, in the Three Rivers case, his representation of former Cabinet Minister Stephen Byers and the UK Department for Transport in the Railtrack private shareholders' action against the British Government in 2005, for defending the Government in an Appeal hearing brought by Binyam Mohamed, and for successfully defending Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich in a private lawsuit brought by Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky.
A former academic, Sumption was honoured as an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1998 and is also known for writing a substantial narrative history of the Hundred Years' War, so far in three volumes. Lord Sumption has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
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