The Judge  in Charge of the Media and Communications List, Mr Justice Warby, is one of eight new appointments to the Court of Appeal which were announced on 31 July 2020.  He will take up his appointment later in the year.

Mr Justice Warby was appointed as a High Court Judge in 2014, replacing the then Judge  in Charge of the Jury List, Mr Justice Tugendhat.  Since his appointment he has given judgment in a wide range of important defamation, privacy and data protection cases including, for example:

He is currently the judge managing the case of HRH the Duchess of Sussex v Associated Newspapers Ltd.

Mr Justice Warby was a strong advocate of the creation of the new Media and Communications List (replacing the old “Jury List” as jury trials became a thing of the past).  In March 2017, he was appointed as the Judge in charge of the newly list.  Media and Communications became a specialist list within the Queen’s Bench Division on 1 October 2019 and is widely viewed as a successful reform.

Before his appointment Sir Mark Warby practised at  the leading media law chambers 5RB for 32 years.  He was a specialist junior in media, entertainment and sports law for 20 years and was appointed QC in 2002. He appeared in many of the key cases in the development of privacy law, including Campbell v MGN, Prince of Wales v Associated Newspapers, Murray v Big Pictures and Mosley v News Group.  He is the joint editor of the Law of Privacy and the Media (3rd Edn 2016), with Dr Nicole Moreham,

The promotions to the Court of Appeal on the new list include another Media and Communications List judge, Mrs Justice  Elisabeth Laing.  The Chancellor of the High Court, Sir Geoffrey Vos, has been appointed Master of the Rolls, to succeed Sir Terence Etherton (who was also his predecessor as Chancellor) from 11 January 2021.