He has been outspoken in this job. In 2004 in a speech at Cambridge University he spoke out against plans to create a Supreme Court of the United Kingdom to replace the House of Lords as the final court of appeal, and severely questioned the Lord Chancellor's and the Government's handling of recent constitutional reform.
He was also the head of the committee that excised many of the remaining latin terms from English law, in an attempt to make it more accessible (such as changing the ancient word 'plaintiff' to the comparatively unexciting 'claimant').
Henry Kenneth Woolf, Baron Woolf, PC (born May 2, 1933), retired as Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, on October 1, 2005.
The Constitutional Reform Act made him the first Lord Chief Justice to be President of the Courts of England and Wales, and the most senior judge in the United Kingdom instead of the Lord Chancellor.
He became a barrister in 1954, a High Court judge in 1979, a Law Lord in 1992, and Master of the Rolls in 1996.
LordWoolf said that he had reduced the tariff, confirmed by Jack Straw as home secretary, because Darren Dermody's role in the attack - when he was 17 - had not directly led to the victim's death.
LordWoolf confirmed Coddington's 12 year minimum tariff for stabbing a man to death in a row over an ex-girlfriend and said he would not interfere in the case despite the offender's good progress in jail.
LordWoolf said in Malik's case even after 12 years it would be difficult to decide whether it was safe to release him back into the community.
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