Lynne Berry chosen as JAC chair for England and Wales

The government has named Lynne Berry CBE as its preferred candidate to become Chair of the Judicial Appointments Commission, usually shortened to the JAC. According to the GOV.UK announcement, that means she is the leading choice for the role, but she has not yet been formally appointed. Before ministers complete the process, Berry is due to appear at a pre-appointment hearing with the Justice Select Committee. That matters because this is one of those senior public roles where Parliament gets a chance to question a candidate in public before the final decision is made.

If the title sounds technical, the work behind it is not. The JAC is the statutory body that identifies candidates for judicial roles in England and Wales. It also helps to fill posts for specialist tribunals whose powers stretch across the UK. Put simply, the commission sits close to a basic democratic question: who gets to become a judge, and how do we know the process is fair? The chair does not decide court cases, but helps lead the body responsible for running an important part of the appointments system.

Pre-appointment hearings can sound more dramatic than they usually are. In practice, they are a public check on major appointments. MPs on the Justice Select Committee can ask about a candidate's record, judgement and understanding of the job, then publish their view. The committee does not make the appointment on its own. Ministers still decide whether to go ahead, but they are expected to take the committee's conclusions seriously. For anyone learning how government works, this is a useful example of scrutiny rather than a simple rubber stamp.

Berry brings a long public service CV to the role. The government says she is currently Chair of Governors and Pro-Chancellor at the University of Westminster, Chair of the Human Tissue Authority, and a visiting Professor in Leadership at Bayes Business School, City St George's, University of London. Her earlier work also helps explain why she has reached this stage. She has served as a chair or senior independent director across public sector and not-for-profit bodies, and has held chief executive posts at the Charity Commission, the Equal Opportunities Commission and the General Social Care Council, as well as charities including the Royal Voluntary Service and the Family Welfare Association.

Why should you care about an appointment like this? Because confidence in the courts does not begin only when a judge enters a courtroom. It begins much earlier, with the systems used to choose people for judicial office and the standards expected of those overseeing that process. When these appointments are handled openly, the public has more reason to trust that roles are being filled through a proper process rather than through favour or political closeness. That is why a hearing for the JAC chair matters beyond Westminster and beyond the legal world.

So this is not just a story about one name being put forward. It is a story about how public institutions try to earn trust. Berry is the preferred candidate, MPs will test her suitability in public, and ministers will then decide whether to proceed. For readers, students and teachers, the bigger lesson is straightforward. The justice system depends not only on the people who wear robes in court, but also on the bodies that help choose them. When we pay attention to those quieter appointments, we understand much more about how the state actually works.