Sir John Patrick Cavanagh (born 17 June 1960) is a British High Court judge.

Early life end education

Born in Belfast, Cavanagh was educated at

Warwick School Warwick School is a British Public school (United Kingdom), public school (independent school (UK), independent boarding school, boarding and Day school, day school) for boys, in the market town of Warwick, in Warwickshire, England. Known as ...

. He studied at

New College, Oxford New College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1379 by Bishop William of Wykeham in conjunction with Winchester College as New College's feeder school, New College was one of the first col ...

, receiving an MA in law and followed this by postgraduate study at

Clare College, Cambridge Clare College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. The college was founded in 1326 as University Hall, making it the second-oldest surviving college of the Unive ...

, where he completed an

LLM A large language model (LLM) is a language model trained with Self-supervised learning, self-supervised machine learning on a vast amount of text, designed for natural language processing tasks, especially Natural language generation, language g ...

Career

From 1979 to 1980, he worked as a

social worker Social work is an academic discipline and practice-based profession concerned with meeting the basic needs of individuals, families, groups, communities, and society as a whole to enhance their individual and collective well-being. Social wo ...

at St Philip's School in Airdrie. Later he was an instructor in law at

University of Illinois College of Law The University of Illinois College of Law at Urbana-Champaign is the law school of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, a public land-grant research university in Champaign and Urbana, Illinois. It was established in 1897 and offers th ...

from 1983 to 1984, then a part-time lecturer in law at New College from 1984 to 1987. He was

called to the bar The call to the bar is a legal term of art in most common law jurisdictions where persons must be qualified to be allowed to argue in court on behalf of another party and are then said to have been "called to the bar" or to have received "call to ...

Middle Temple The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known simply as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court entitled to Call to the bar, call their members to the English Bar as barristers, the others being the Inner Temple (with whi ...

in 1985,

took silk A King's Counsel ( post-nominal initials KC) is a senior lawyer appointed by the monarch (or their viceregal representative) of some Commonwealth realms as a "Counsel learned in the law". When the reigning monarch is a woman, the title is Qu ...

in 2001, and served as a

recorder Recorder or The Recorder may refer to: Newspapers * ''Indianapolis Recorder'', a weekly newspaper * ''The Recorder'' (Massachusetts newspaper), a daily newspaper published in Greenfield, Massachusetts, US * ''The Recorder'' (Port Pirie), a newsp ...

from 2004 to 2019; from 2013 to 2019, he was joint head of chambers at 11 King's Bench Walk. As a practitioner, he appeared before the

European Court of Justice The European Court of Justice (ECJ), officially the Court of Justice (), is the supreme court of the European Union in matters of European Union law. As a part of the Court of Justice of the European Union, it is tasked with interpreting ...

and the

Supreme Court of the United Kingdom The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom (initialism: UKSC) is the final court of appeal for all civil cases in the United Kingdom and all criminal cases originating in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as some limited criminal cases ...

. He was appointed a deputy High Court judge in 2017.

High Court appointment

On 1 October 2019, Cavanagh was appointed a judge of the High Court and assigned to the

Queen's Bench Division The King's Bench Division (or Queen's Bench Division when the monarch is female) of the High Court of Justice deals with a wide range of common law cases and has supervisory responsibility over certain lower courts. It hears appeals on point ...

. He received the customary

knighthood A knight is a person granted an honorary title of a knighthood by a head of state (including the pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church, or the country, especially in a military capacity. The concept of a knighthood ...

in the same year. Since 2021, he has been

Presiding Judge A chief judge (also known as presiding judge, president judge or principal judge) is the highest-ranking or most senior member of a lower court or circuit court with more than one judge. According to the Federal judiciary of the United States, the ...

of the South Eastern Circuit, replacing

Sir Andrew Edis Sir Andrew Jeremy Coulter Edis PC (born 9 June 1957), styled The Rt Hon. Lord Justice Edis, is a Lord Justice of Appeal, who served as the Senior Presiding Judge having previously served as a High Court Judge. Edis studied at Liverpool College ...

who was promoted to the

Court of Appeal An appellate court, commonly called a court of appeal(s), appeal court, court of second instance or second instance court, is any court of law that is empowered to Hearing (law), hear a Legal case, case upon appeal from a trial court or other ...

Personal life

In 1989, he married Suzanne Tolley, with whom he has a son and three daughters.

Notable cases

Notable cases heard by Cavanagh include: *

Murder of Sara Sharif Sara Sharif, then 10 years old, was murdered by her father Urfan Sharif and stepmother Beinash Batool on 8 August 2023. Her body was discovered in her family's residence in Woking, Surrey, England, two days later. An autopsy revealed that she h ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cavanagh, John Living people 1960 births 21st-century English judges Knights Bachelor Alumni of Clare College, Cambridge Alumni of New College, Oxford Members of the Middle Temple Queen's Bench Division judges People educated at Warwick School