[1] Sedley was called to the Bar (Inner Temple) in 1964[8] and practised in Cloisters chambers with John Platts-Mills,[4] David Turner-Samuels and Michael Mansfield.
He was counsel in many high-profile cases and inquiries, from the death of Blair Peach and the Carl Bridgewater murder appeal to the Helen Smith inquest and the contempt hearing against Kenneth Baker, then Home Secretary.
[14] As a first instance judge, Sedley delivered important judgments in the field of administrative law, notably in relation to the concept of legitimate expectation as a ground for judicial review,[15] and the duty to give reasons.
[21] His formulation of the real significance of freedom of expression in a case involving the unlawful arrest of a street preacher has been much quoted: "Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence.
At present criminal suspects detained by the police in the UK are automatically given cheek swabs and their DNA kept, in perpetuity, by the government.
[24] Ian McEwan said of Ashes and Sparks: Essays on Law and Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2011) "you could have no interest in the law and read his book for pure intellectual delight, for the exquisite, finely balanced prose, the prickly humor, the knack of artful quotation and an astonishing historical grasp".
[25] In February 2012, the London Review of Books published an essay by Sedley in which he criticised soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption's FA Mann lecture.
[26] The critique centred on Sedley's conceptions of the precise interplay of the judicial, legislative, and executive branches, and made reference to the grey areas within which Parliament had not expressed any set opinion.
A number of universities have given him an honorary LLD (law degree): Nottingham Trent (1997); Bristol (1999); Warwick (1999); Durham (2001); Hull (2002); Southampton (2003); Exeter (2004); and Essex (2007).