Elizabeth Cooke appointed Law Commissioner
19 May 2008
Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice Jack Straw has announced the appointment of Elizabeth Cooke as a Law Commissioner.
Professor Cooke has been appointed for five years from 3 July 2008. She will be responsible for property, family and trust law projects.
Jack Straw said:
'I am delighted to announce the appointment of Elizabeth Cooke as Law Commissioner. She is an extremely talented scholar and will be of enormous benefit to the Law Commission. I look forward to working with her.'
The Law Commission is an advisory non-departmental public body sponsored by the Ministry of Justice and established by the Law Commissions Act 1965.
It exists to keep the law of England and Wales under review and to recommend reform where needed. Its recommendations are designed to make the law as fair, modern, simple and cost-effective as possible.
Notes to editors
1. The Law Commission consists of five Commissioners, one of whom is the chairman. They are recruited from holders of judicial office, barristers or solicitors, or teachers of law in a university.
2. Each Commissioner is responsible for a specialist area of law. Professor Cooke will be responsible for leading the Commission's work on property, family and trust law.
3. Professor Cooke will take over as a Law Commissioner from Mr Stuart Bridge. Mr Bridge's tenure ends on 2 July 2008.
4. Professor Cooke's appointment will run from 3 July 2008 to 2 July 2013. The salary for the post is £115,661.
5. Appointments to the office of Law Commissioner are made in accordance with the Code of Practice for Ministerial Appointments issued by the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments (the OCPA Code). For more information on the OCPA Code.
6. Under the OCPA Code holders of public office have a duty to declare any private interests relating to their public duties and to take steps to resolve any conflicts arising in a way that protects the public interests. Candidates are required to declare any political activity in so far as it is already in the public domain during the past five years.
Professor Cooke declared that she has undertaken no political activity in the past five years.
Elizabeth Cooke's biography
7. Elizabeth Cooke is a Professor of Law at the University of Reading. Her legal career began as a trainee and assistant solicitor at Withers, London, from 1986 to 1989 and subsequently worked as an assistant solicitor at Barrett and Thompson, Slough, from 1989 to 1991. Following a Masters course in Property Law at the University of Reading she joined the university's School of Law as a Lecturer from 1992 to 2001 and as a Reader from 2001 to 2003.
8. Professor Cooke is currently a member of the sub-law panel for the UK Universities' Research Assessment Exercise and Chair of the University of Reading Research Ethics Committee and recently chaired a research team funded by the Nuffield Foundation investigating the community of property regimes.
9. Professor Cooke has also authored and edited several publications and books, including 'Land Law' in 2006 by the Clarendon Law series of the Oxford University Press, and 'The Modern Law of Estoppel' (2000) which was the joint winner of the prize for outstanding legal scholarship by a younger scholar given by the Society of Public Teachers of Law.
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