Family courts top judge dies
By Michael Herman
The Times
Mrs
Justice Bracewell, a senior judge in the High Court Family Division, died
yesterday aged 72.
As the Family Division's longest serving judge, Mrs Justice Bracewell, who last
year celebrated her fiftieth year in the legal profession, presided over some of
the most difficult and controversial family cases of recent times.
Sir Mark Potter, President of the Family Division, said: "Joyanne Bracewell was
universally admired and respected for the quality of her decisions and the
fairness, humanity and extreme care which she invariably displayed in reaching
them."
In one of her most controversial judgments, Mrs Justice Bracewell ruled that the
former lesbian lover of a woman who gave birth through artificial insemination
should spend more time with the child than the biological mother. The decision
was upheld at the Court of Appeal but reversed in House of Lords last year.
Following other emotive custody cases, Mrs Justice Bracewell became a target for
the pressure group Fathers 4 Justice, which threatened to stage protests on the
roof of her Somerset home.
Called to the Bar in 1955, Mrs Justice Bracewell was appointed a QC in 1978 and
a High Court judge in 1990.
She married Roy Copeland in 1963 and had one son and one daughter. A lifetime
supporter of the arts, she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in
1994.
The Hon Dame Joyanne Winifred Bracewell
