Foran debt

Politics Notebook #27: A note on one hell of a lawyer.

Image by UK Supreme Court

I’m not in the habit of praising lawyers, unless you count the greatest trial attorney of all time, Vincent La Guardia Gambini, who was, as even Judge Chamberlain Haller acknowledged, ‘one hell of a trial lawyer’.

But I’m prepared to make an exception for Dr. Michael Foran. If you’ve never heard of him, that’s likely to change in the near future. Dr. Foran is cited in For Women Scotland v. The Scottish Ministers, the Supreme Court’s decision on the definition of sex in the Equality Act. Lord Hodge noted the Glasgow University academic’s writing on the group-oriented nature of equalities:

142. The EA 2010 is also concerned to prohibit disguised discrimination which operates at a group level. This is important as Michael Foran explains (in an article entitled “Defining Sex in Law” (2025) 141 LQR 76, 91–92:

“Arguments concerning the definition of a protected characteristic are never simply manifestations of individual claims. They are always group orientated. The claim that one is a woman is a claim to be included within a particular category of persons and to be excluded from another. It is also a claim to include some persons and to exclude other persons within the group that one is a part of. This matters especially for aspects of the Equality Act 2010 which require duty-bearers to be cognisant of how their conduct might affect those who share a protected characteristic or where there is an obligation to account for the distinct needs and interests of those who share a particular characteristic.”

Dr. Foran is not new to this debate. He is, as best as this layman can tell, the foremost legal scholar on the interaction of sex and gender in UK equalities legislation and Scots law. He has provided substantial scholarly analysis as well as commentary in the mainstream media and on social networking platforms such as X, with his latter body of work commendable in its clarity and accessibility to those of us not learned in the law.

It was Dr. Foran who documented meticulously the ways in which the Scottish Government’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill negatively impacted Britain-wide equalities legislation. His legal opinion setting out the case for the Secretary of State for Scotland to make an order under Section 35 of the Scotland Act, preventing the GRR Bill from going forward for Royal Assent, was essentially copied and pasted into UK Government policy. It is rare that an academic, let alone a young academic, enjoys such influence over Downing Street decision-making.

The Supreme Court’s ruling is not a vindication of his scholarship, for his scholarship needed no vindication. It stands on its own in its command of legal texts, interpretation of statutes and analysis of the interactive effect of various enactments. Yet even the best legal scholarship can be wrong, or at least at variance with the holdings of the courts. What the Supreme Court’s ruling tells us is that Dr. Foran’s interpretation of the Equality Act 2010 matches that of all of the justices who heard this case. He was right from the start.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Typical. A women’s rights group battles its way through the courts and wins a landmark ruling, and a bloke journalist is giving a bloke academic the credit for it. To be clear, that is not my purpose here. For Women Scotland, and specifically Trina Budge, Susan Smith and Marion Calder, are trailblazers. They have fought a battle that was, until relatively recently, a very lonely, hyper-aggressive and no doubt frightening one. They have defeated a government and, in doing so, saved women’s sex-based rights from an ideologically-motivated erasure. They deserve their place in history, as do Dr Kath Murray, Dr Lucy Hunter Blackburn and Lisa Mackenzie of Murray Blackburn Mackenzie; Maya Forstater and Helen Joyce of Sex Matters; Naomi Cunningham of Outer Temple Chambers; Joanna Cherry KC; Julie Bindel; and up-and-coming novelist JK Rowling. (Yes, I know I’ve forgotten her, and her, and her too; a lot of hers have contributed to this cause.)

My reason for acknowledging Dr. Foran is that, when he first began to write and speak about these matters, the legal professoriate had been largely silent. It stayed largely silent for some time afterwards, too. In sticking his head above the parapet, Dr. Foran brought to bear a scholarly interpretation of the law where previously there had been almost universal misinformation, error, and sometimes wilful misrepresentation. He did so in a professional field — higher education — which is not known for encouraging critical thinking or viewpoint diversity. It would have served Dr. Foran and his career well either to say nothing or to adopt a different analysis. That he chose to be true to his conscience and, more importantly, the letter and meaning of the law speaks volumes of his personal and professional integrity.

I wanted to write this note for one further reason. In contributing to this debate, Dr. Foran has been subjected to insult, derision, and character assassination. His standing to comment was challenged on the asinine grounds that an academic is not a legal practitioner, which is not only wrong but ironic given that it is his analysis which the Supreme Court echoed and not that of some of his ‘practising lawyer’ critics. Some of his detractors even went as far as to demand his censure or dismissal by Glasgow University. (To its credit, my alma mater proved its commitment to the second word of its motto and stood by its employee, which is how these things should always work in academia and other professions.) All of which is to say that Dr. Foran was not just some sidelines commentator. He put skin in the game.

There is a debt owed to this man and this is my contribution to acknowledging it. He’s no Vincent Gambini, but Michael Foran is still one hell of a lawyer.