He then obtained a DPhil at Balliol College, Oxford, with a doctoral thesis on "Legal Control of Government Assistance to Industry",[1] and was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1983.

He has been one of the United Kingdom's ad hoc judges at the European Court of Human Rights,[4] and sat in the Grand Chamber judgements on the appeals of the killers of James Bulger in 1999.

[6] He has been Chairman of the Franco-British Judicial Co-operation Committee since 2005, and was President of the EU Forum of Judges for the Environment from 2006 to 2008, now serving as Vice-President.

[2][3] On 20 December 2011, it was announced that Reed would replace the late Lord Rodger of Earlsferry as a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.

[10] Reed was appointed Deputy President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in May 2018, succeeding Lord Mance on his retirement.

On 24 July 2019, the Queen declared her intention to appoint him President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and to raise him to the peerage.

He succeeded Baroness Hale of Richmond as President on 11 January 2020 on her retirement[12] and on the same day was created a life peer as Baron Reed of Allermuir, of Sundridge Park in the London Borough of Bromley.