The majority of High Court justices will be women for the first time in its 121-year history after the Albanese government announced Federal Court Justice Jayne Jagot would be elevated to the bench.

Jagot will replace retiring High Court Justice Patrick Keane and will start on October 17, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said in a joint statement on Thursday.

Justice Jayne Jagot.

“Justice Jagot is the 56th justice of the High Court and the seventh woman appointed to the court,” Albanese and Dreyfus said.

“This is the first time since federation that a majority of justices on the High Court will be women.

“Justice Jagot is regarded as [an] outstanding lawyer and an eminent judge. The government congratulates Justice Jagot on her well-deserved appointment. It is a role that she will fill with distinction.”

Jagot, 57, was appointed to the Federal Court in September 2008 and had been touted as a successor to Keane, who reaches the judicial retirement age of 70 in late October.

A former partner at law firm Mallesons Stephen Jaques, now King & Wood Mallesons, Jagot was born in the United Kingdom and migrated with her family to Australia in the late 1960s when she was a young child.

Her short stint as a barrister, which started in 2002, came to an end in 2006 she was appointed as a judge of the NSW Land and Environment Court.

The now-Federal Court Justice Anna Katzmann said during Jagot’s Federal Court swearing-in ceremony in 2008 that a leading judge had described Jagot as “a modest woman with nothing to be modest about”, in a reference to Winston Churchill’s famous observation about the modesty of former British prime minister Clement Attlee.

“Your Honour’s professional achievements are dazzling, your rise in the profession meteoric,” Katzmann said at the time.

She described Jagot’s “rapid progress through the ranks of the profession” as “a tribute to the quality of the public education system in this country, the ambition of your migrant parents for a better life for their children, your formidable intellect and, perhaps above all, your capacity for hard work”.

The High Court was established in 1901, although the first bench was not appointed until 1903. The first sitting of the court took place in Melbourne on October 6, 1903.

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