What to call a Judge (2)

In my last post, I was exploring the ways in which we address Judges. Be relieved that unlike in the Chancery and Queen's Bench Divisions, there are no Masters of the Family Division. They are addressed as "Master". It is a curious term. It carries with it contrary notions of aggrandisement (as in the old-fashioned but still legally current master-servant relationship) and diminution: monarchs have been known to address their subjects thus. The term is also still properly used as a prefix to address a letter to a (male) child: I still recall the excitement of receiving such letters.

But what happens when, as has happened in recent years, a woman has been appointed to the position? Master Fontaine has just been elevated to Senior Master but I appeared before her when she was newly appointed. Knowing I had to open the case, I asked my much more senior opponent how I should address her. He didn't appear to know: "Master, Madam?", he mused. So when we went into court I simply raised it as a preliminary issue.

"I wonder how I should be addressing the court", I said at the outset.

I felt a little as must have the MP speaking in the House of Commons when he suddenly realised that Betty Boothroyd had taken the Chair for the first time as Deputy Speaker. She was, of course, the first woman to fill that role. Her tart response to his fumbling enquiry was: "Call me Madam".

Master Fontaine, on the other hand, addressed my rather gauche enquiry with reassuring pragmatism: "Just call me whatever you feel comfortable calling me". I decided that "Mistress" would be impertinent.... So I simply continued the practice I was used to in that particular room and called her "Master". What will happen, I wonder, when the first female Master of the Rolls is appointed?

More on this topic later.