Masters of the Bench

Jennifer Temkin read Law at the LSE in the late sixties, when the number of women Law students was in single figures and many dropped out. After obtaining her LLM (with Distinction), she was appointed Lecturer in Law at the LSE at the age of 23, joining Dr Olive Stone and Judith Reid as the only women members in a faculty of around 30. She had the distinction of becoming the first woman in the department to take maternity leave.

Through her teaching of Criminal Law and a new course, Women and the Law, she became attuned to the treatment of women – particularly the victims of sexual violence – by the criminal justice system. This led to Rape and the Legal Process (second edition, 2002) and later, Sexual Assault and the Justice Gap: A Question of Attitude (2008, with Professor Barbara Krahe), and to many articles on criminal law and criminal justice for academic journals.

Jennifer has been a frequent broadcaster and has written often for the national press. She was a member of the Home Office Advisory Group on the Use of Video Recordings in Criminal Proceedings; the National Children’s Home Committee of Enquiry into Children and Young People Who Abuse other Children (1990-92); the Justice Committee on Sexual Offences Law Reform (1998); the External Reference Group of the Home Office Sex Offences Review (2000); and the Council of Europe’s Committee of Experts on the Treatment of Sex Offenders (2003-06). Her work has led to reform of the substantive, evidential and procedural law on sexual offences. 

She is Emeritus Professor of Law at Sussex University. In 2012 she became Professor of Law at City, University of London, where she teaches Forensic Science and the Legal Process. She is a member of the Biometrics and Forensics Ethics Group, a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Home Office.

Jennifer was awarded the LLD in 2002, became a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2009 and Master of the Bench in 2012. In 2018, she was appointed CBE for services to criminal justice.