A leading barrister who is facing disciplinary proceedings for saying a judge had shown a “boys’ club attitude” has applied for the case against her to be thrown out, claiming she is being held to a higher standard than her male counterparts.
Charlotte Proudman has been charged by the Bar Standards Board (BSB) in relation to a 14-part thread she posted on X about Jonathan Cohen – a member of the Garrick Club, which recently ended its ban on female members after 193 years – over remarks he made in a family case ruling two years ago.
At a private hearing in central London on Monday, Alison Padfield KC, acting for Proudman, argued that the BSB had discriminated against her client by pursuing proceedings against her, treating her less favourably because of her sex and her feminist beliefs.
Proudman’s thread said she was troubled by Cohen referring in a judgment to the relationship between a woman and her part-time judge and barrister ex-husband as “tempestuous”, and his use of the word “reckless” to describe the alleged domestic violence. She added: “This judgment has echoes of the ‘boys’ club’ which still exists among men in powerful positions.”
The BSB’s charges include that Proudman used “offensive, derogatory language which was designed to demean and/or insult the judge”.
Padfield said her client had received “starkly different treatment from” nine male barristers who variously referred to the approach to bail applications of another judge, in a separate case, as “unfathomably stupid”, “particularly stupid”, “idiotic”, “pretty bonkers”, “unlawful” and “illegal”.
Padfield wrote that it was “unfathomable that the Bar Standards Board should investigate, and bring charges, in respect of Dr Proudman’s tweets about [Cohen] and yet decide not even to investigate these extreme comments by male barristers” about a judge.
“It follows that the Bar Standards Board accorded Dr Proudman’s article 10 [of the European convention of human rights] right to freedom of expression less respect than it accorded to the male barristers’ article 10 right to freedom of expression,” she added.
She also contrasted the BSB’s treatment of Proudman with the regulator’s stance towards Jolyon Maugham KC, the founder of the Good Law Project, when he said a high court judge was “a sort of fallen hero for what we all regard as the work she’s done to roll back trans rights, to empower transphobia and transphobes in domestic public discourse”.
Padfield said that in a letter to Maugham the BSB said it did not consider his conduct a breach of its rules because his comments “whatever the merits of the reasoning or conclusion, represented your sincerely held view and did not amount to gratuitous abuse”.
Padfield wrote: “The Bar Standards Board has treated Dr Proudman less favourably than Mr Maugham KC, a male barrister, in bringing charges against her but not him.”
The written submissions said the BSB had failed to investigate “the discrimination, bullying and harassment of Dr Proudman by barristers individually and collectively on social media”.
None of the judges concerned have responded to the criticisms against them, in keeping with the protocol that judges cannot comment on cases outside court.
The judge declined an application by Proudman’s lawyers for the strike out application hearing to be conducted in public. It is expected to conclude on Tuesday.
The BSB said that as the hearing was being held in private it was “not able to provide any documentation related to the proceedings and it would not be appropriate for us to comment further”.
