The professional diversity deficit:the UK Supreme Court’s social security law blind spot

It is no secret that the Supreme Court lacks demographic diversity. But there is very little commentary on a different diversity gap – that of professional experience. UK Supreme Court judges are typically drawn from lucrative areas of legal practice, creating a pronounced professional practice gap in the realm of social security law. None of the sitting Supreme Court judges have ever acted in a reported security case for social security claimants against the State. This creates a problem of perspective; would we really expect a panel of Goliath advocates to give David a fair hearing? This article highlights the hitherto under-explored evidence of a professional deficit on the court, and argues that this cannot help but have an influence upon judicial perspectives. One such possible influence is the ‘alegalisation’ of social security law – the treatment of it as not-law but as a matter of pure politics. Here, the article analyses how the line is drawn in key cases, in which it seems the court feels responsible for defending some ‘pure law’ human rights, while defending the courtroom from other human rights claims – those relating to social security. But poverty is a human rights issue, and human rights are (still) a matter of law. We need to bring social security expertise and claimant perspectives to the bench if we are to reassert the legal nature of social security rights.