At 60, Lord Neuberger (Baron Neuberger of Abbotsbury) is the youngest of the 12 law lords. He is also regarded as one of the brightest. Educated at Westminster and Oxford, he began as an investment banker at N M Rothschild & Sons but joined the Bar in 1974. An expert in property law, he took silk in 1987 and became a judge in the Chancery Division of the High Court in 1996. In 2004 he was elevated to the Court of Appeal but was moved up again to the House of Lords last year aged only 58, one of the quickest rises to the nation's highest court in decades. His appointment was widely acclaimed — not least in civil liberties circles: when in the Court of Appeal in 2004 he took an impassioned and minority stance, ruling that evidence obtained by torture should not be taken into account by the Home Secretary in detaining suspected terrorists. The scion of a prominent family of Jewish academics — he is the brother-in-law of Julia Neuberger, the rabbi and Liberal Democrat peer — Lord Neuberger also heads a committee that monitors the return of art looted by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Last year he reported after leading a year-long inquiry into how to widen access to the Bar.

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