The most widely predicted move in legal circles was confirmed yesterday when Sir Igor Judge was named as the next Lord Chief Justice.

Sir Igor said recently that knife crime had risen to “epidemic proportions” and that the courts should do everything possible to eradicate it, including imposing the most severe sentences.

Independent-minded and humane, Sir Igor is nevertheless seen as more inherently traditionalist than his two predecessors. Equally, the new head of the judiciary will find favour with rank-and-file judges who regard him as a “judge’s judge”, in tune with their concerns.

Sir Igor, 67, will take over when Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers steps down in October, Downing Street said yesterday.

New Lord Chief Justice should speak up

Sir Igor Judge's job demands that he flag up legal pitfalls of proposed legislation before it reaches the statute book

The country’s most senior judge, Sir Igor has already notched up a couple of firsts, being both the first President of the Queen’s Bench Division and the first Head of Criminal Justice.

In recent years, the Lord Chief Justice’s job has usually not gone to his deputy. In that position, he was a front-runner to succeed Lord Woolf when the latter retired in 2005. He was passed over in favour of Lord Phillips, then Master of the Rolls.

Sir Igor’s appointment is unlikely to mark a significant shift in penal policy at the top of the judiciary. He is more of a natural conservative than either of his predecessors, particularly on reforms, such as modernising court structures and allowing cameras into courts.

Nor is he such an obvious advocate of penal reform as his predecessor bar one, Lord Woolf; and has not, yet, delivered calls in favour of community sentences, as Lord Phillips did.

He does, however, believe in a sparing use of custody and that rehabilitation is most likely to be achieved through community sentences.

In his rulings, he has called for the law on infanticide to be re-examined when he upheld the conviction of a mother for the murder of her baby son. He also wants witnesses in jury trials to be filmed so that judges can see their expressions and he recently ruled with other judges that MPs should publish their home addresses.

Born in Malta, he went to the Oratory School in Berkshire and Cambridge. He was called to the Bar in 1963, took silk in 1979 and was appointed a High Court judge in 1988 and Court of Appeal judge in 1996.

Kindly, beneath a slightly stern exterior, Sir Igor keeps in mind the backgrounds of the offenders who come before him.

He said in 2005: “The defendant nearly always makes a difference. This isn’t namby-pamby psycho-babble. You are not sentencing a piece of paper.”

His predicted appointment had prompted a few rumblings of “stitch up”, because it was so widely endorsed with no other serious contenders.

An e-mail from Lord Justice May, a Court of Appeal judge who was co-ordinating judges’ responses, declared: “So far as I am aware — but I could be wrong — there is only one declared candidate.

“I shall personally support that candidate and I shall take silence as your support also.”

But if there was a view that Sir Igor had the job in the bag, that was a reflection of his unrivalled qualifications for the post.

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