He was
called to the bar at the
Middle Temple in 1961, and practised in a range of legal areas, including family finance cases, and professional
negligence. He became a
recorder in 1976, and was appointed a
Queen's Counsel in 1978. He became a
Bencher at Middle Temple in 1985. He was a member of the Committee that inquired into human fertilisation in 1982 to 1984, chaired by
Mary Warnock, which led to the
Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. He was appointed as a
High Court judge in 1988 (and was styled
Mr Justice Scott Baker), receiving the customary
knighthood, and allocated to the
Family Division. He moved to the
Queen's Bench Division in 1993. He was Presiding Judge of the
Wales and Chester Circuit from 1991 to 1995, and a member of the
Parole Board from 1999 to 2002. He was the Lead Judge of the
Administrative Court from 2000 to 2002. In 1999, he presided over the trial of
Great Western Trains following the
Southall rail crash in 1997. He dismissed charges of
corporate manslaughter, as there was no identifiable individual in the company who was also guilty of
gross negligence, but levied a then-record fine for
health and safety offences of £1.5m. His judgment was upheld on appeal. The same year, Baker presided at the trial of
Jonathan Aitken on charges of
perjury following the collapse of Aitken's
libel suit against
The Guardian. Baker was promoted in 2002, becoming a
Lord Justice of Appeal. He was Treasurer of his
Inns of Court, the Middle Temple, in 2004. He sat as
coroner for the
inquests into the
deaths of Princess Diana and
Dodi Fayed from 2 October 2007 to 7 April 2008. In March 2011, Baker was sworn in as a Justice of the
Court of Appeal of Bermuda, a position that he held until 2018. == Notable cases ==