Harry Woolf, Baron Woolf

In 2018, Woolf was appointed the Head Justice of the Astana International Financial Centre Court in Astana, Kazakhstan.

In the 2015 Queen's Birthday Honours, he was appointed a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH). In the same year, he was awarded the Gold Bauhinia Star by the Chief Executive of Hong Kong.

From 29–31 May 2009, Woolf served with Sir William Blair, a High Court Judge, as the Co-Convener of the inaugural Qatar Law Forum of Global Leaders in Law, held in Doha, Qatar.

In 2006 he was chairman of the Judging Panel of the FIRST Responsible Capitalism Awards. On 25 February 2007, Woolf was inaugurated as the first President of the Qatar Financial Centre Civil and Commercial Court, in Doha Qatar.

On 15 June 2007, he took the chair of an Ethics Committee set up by BAE Systems, the UK's largest arms company, in response to allegations of multimillion-pound bribery in arms deals with Saudi Arabia. This Woolf Committee reported in May 2008, and clearly influenced the Law Commission report proposing anti-corruption and bribery law reforms on 20 November 2008 and the Government's consequent Bribery Bill published on 25 March 2009, which was ultimately enacted as the Bribery Act.

In 2007 he was named as co-chair, with Professor Kaufmann-Kohler, of the Commission on Settlement in International Arbitration, for the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution for which he also consults.

On his retirement as Lord Chief Justice on 1 October 2005, Woolf joined Blackstone Chambers as a mediator and arbitrator. From September to December 2005 he conducted a review of the working methods of the European Court of Human Rights, and he is chairman of the Bank of England Financial Markets Law Committee.

Among other work, Woolf has been serving as Chancellor of the Open University of Israel since 2004. He is Chairman of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, Chairman of the Council of University College, London and a visiting Professor of Law. He is a member of the House of Lords Constitution Committee.

In 2003, he was appointed a Non-Permanent Judge of the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong, which position he held until 2012.

On 6 June 2000 he finally succeeded Lord Bingham of Cornhill as Lord Chief Justice. In this most senior judicial post, Woolf spoke out at the University of Cambridge in 2004 against the Constitutional Reform Bill that would create a Supreme Court of the United Kingdom to replace the House of Lords as the final court of appeal in the United Kingdom; and he severely questioned the Lord Chancellor's and the Government's handling of recent constitutional reforms. He delayed his retirement as Lord Chief Justice until these issues had been resolved.

Woolf LJ was appointed a Law Lord on 1 October 1992, being created a life peer as Baron Woolf, of Barnes in the London Borough of Richmond. Woolf gave few judgments on the Appellate Committee, being promoted Master of the Rolls on 4 June 1996. In 1998 Woolf was also the head of the committee that modernised civil procedure, and incidentally excised most Latin terms from English law in an effort to make it more accessible (such as changing the word "plaintiff" to "claimant"). The Civil Procedure Rules 1998 are a direct result of this work.

Lord Justice Woolf was appointed to hold a five-month public inquiry with Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons, Judge Stephen Tumim, into the disturbances at Strangeways prison, Manchester and other prisons between 11 June on 31 October 1990. His inquiry sent letters to every prisoner and prison officer in the country. The Woolf Report, quoting many of the 1700 replies, was published on 25 February 1991, and blamed the loss of control of the Strangeways prison on the prison officers abandoning the gates outside the chapel, which "effectively handed the prison to the prisoners".

He was promoted to Lord Justice of Appeal and was made a member of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council (PC) in 1986.

Woof was a member of the American Philosophical Society (1977) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1983). He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 2000 and an Honorary Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) in 2002.

Woolf, an Ashkenazi Jew, first met his wife Marguerite Sassoon, a Sephardi Jew, at a social event which was organised by a mutual friend at the National Liberal Club. They married early in 1961 and have three sons who have all entered the legal profession, as well as seven grandchildren.

Woolf chose to be a barrister in 1955 and began practising on the Oxford circuit. He became Junior Counsel to the Inland Revenue (Common Law) from 1973–74, and was First Junior Treasury Counsel (Common Law) from 1974–79. In 1979, aged 45, he was appointed as a Queen's Bench Division High Court judge.

Harry Kenneth Woolf, Baron Woolf, CH, PC, FBA, FMedSci (born 2 May 1933) is a British life peer and retired barrister and judge. He was Master of the Rolls from 1996 until 2000 and Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales from 2000 until 2005. The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 made him the first Lord Chief Justice to be President of the Courts of England and Wales. He was a Non-Permanent Judge of the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong from 2003 to 2012. He sits in the House of Lords as a crossbencher.

Woolf was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, on 2 May 1933, to Alexander Susman Woolf and his wife Leah (née Cussins). His grandfather Harry was a naturalised Briton of Polish and Russian Jewish origins. His father had been a fine art dealer, but was persuaded to run his own building business instead by his wife. They had four children, but their first child died, and his mother was protective of the three surviving children. Woolf lived in Newcastle-upon-Tyne until he was about five years old, when his family moved to Glasgow, Scotland, where he attended Glasgow Academy going on to Fettes College, an Edinburgh public school, where he mostly enjoyed his time and had supportive friends.