Lawyers in the North who are appointed Queens Counsel will no longer have to take an oath promising to serve Queen Elisabeth II. The British Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine has ordered that new Queens Counsel 's will simply have to promise to "well and truly serve all whom I may lawfully be called upon to serve in the office of one of Her Majesty's Counsel".
Earlier this year two Catholic barristers from Belfast lost a High Court case in which they alleged that the declaration to the Queen discriminated against Irish nationalists seeking to become Queens Counsel. In 1997 a committee of the Northern Ireland Bar Council recommended that the reference to serving the Queen be abolished.
In a statement announcing the removal of the oath, the Northern Ireland Court Service said Lord Irvine had been given the impression, during the High Court challenge, that the judiciary in the North had been consulted and were against changing the oath, when in fact there had been no such consultation.
