Supreme Court of the United Kingdom

The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom is the final court of appeal for civil cases throughout the UK and for criminal cases in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (Scotland's High Court of Justiciary remains supreme in Scottish criminal matters). It opened for business on 1 October 2009, created by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 to separate the judicial function that had, until then, been exercised by the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords, a panel of Law Lords sitting as members of the legislature's upper chamber. That earlier arrangement, in which the UK's most senior judges were also unelected legislators, had drawn long-standing criticism on separation of powers grounds, and the 2005 Act's central purpose was to give the judicial function its own building, its own court, and formal independence from Parliament, while carrying forward the same body of case law and largely the same senior judges who had sat as Law Lords. The Court sits in the Middlesex Guildhall on Parliament Square, hears appeals from England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and its decisions on devolution matters also bind the devolved legislatures.