The Faculty of Law is delighted to report that Eleanor Sharpston KC, FBA (Hon) has been made a Dame Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in this year's New Year Honours Overseas and International List. The honour was conferred for services to Justice and to the Education of Law in the UK and Europe.
Dame Eleanor has had a distinguished career as a barrister, being called to the Bar in 1980 and made Queen's (now King's) Counsel in 1999. She practised in the area of EU law, and public law more generally. Among her high profile and legally important cases at the Bar were R v Brown [1993] UKHL 19, Thoburn v Sunderland City Council [2002] EWHC 195 (Admin) and R (Fogg and Ledgard) v Secretary of State for Defence ('SS Storaa') [2006] 1 LLR 579, [2005] EWHC 2888 (Admin). In 2006 she became Advocate General at the European Court of Justice, and served in that role until Brexit in 2020. While Advocate General she delivered over 450 opinions at a very significant time for the development of EU law.
In parallel with these achievements, Dame Eleanor has also had a distinguished academic career. She was a lecturer at UCL (1990-1992) and then a lecturer (1992-1998) and affiliated lecturer (1998-2005) in the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, as well as an affiliate and a member of the advisory board of the Faculty’s Centre for European Legal Studies.More recently, her position at the Cambridge Law Faculty has been that of Yorke Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Cambridge Law Faculty, and, in 2023-2024, Arthur Goodhart Visiting Professor in Legal Science. She holds honorary doctorates from Glasgow, Nottingham Trent, Edinburgh and Stockholm Universities.
The Faculty offers its very warmest congratulations to Dame Eleanor on this fitting and richly deserved recognition of her very distinguished career in legal practice and legal academia. Further information about Dame Eleanor can be found on her Faculty profile page.