Misplaced Pages

This is a list of lawyers and judges associated with Balliol College, Oxford.

Judges

Image	Name	Join Date	Role	Dicta	Refs
	Julian Knowles	1987	High Court Judge	the police's treatment of the Claimant thereafter disproportionately interfered with his right of freedom of expression, which is an essential component of democracy
	Robert Reed	1978	President of the Supreme Court	a decision to prorogue Parliament will be unlawful if the prorogation has the effect of frustrating or preventing, without reasonable justification, the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions as a legislature
	Alan Rodger	1969	Justice of the Supreme Court	just as male heterosexuals are free to enjoy themselves playing rugby, drinking beer and talking about girls with their mates, so male homosexuals are to be free to enjoy themselves going to Kylie concerts, drinking exotically coloured cocktails and talking about boys with their straight female mates.
	William Nimmo Smith	1961	Judge of Supreme Courts of Justice, Scotland	We find it impossible to accept that there are categories of person, such as footballers, of whom it may be said, a priori and without other evidence, that they are "celebrities"
	Mathew Thorpe	1957	Lord Justice of Appeal	the very different role and functions of men and women, and the reality that those who sacrifice the opportunity to provide full-time care for their children in favour of a highly competitive professional race do question the purpose of all that striving, and question whether they should not re-evaluate their life before the children have grown too old to benefit
	Sir Henry Brooke	1957	Lord Justice of Appeal	The networked computer, supplied for the purposes of managing the court's current caseload, is surely going to be as important a judicial tool for the procedural judge in the new Millennium as the quill-pen and the chamber-pot behind the screen in the corner of the court was to the judges of Charles Dickens's day
	Thomas Bingham	1954	Lord Chief Justice	there are no circumstances in which a judge is entitled to direct a jury to return a verdict of guilty
	Brian Hutton	1950	Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland	I am satisfied that Dr Kelly took his own life and that the principal cause of death was bleeding from incised wounds to his left wrist which Dr Kelly had inflicted on himself with the knife found beside his body. The Hutton Enquiry Report 2004
	Alan Stewart Orr	1933	Lord Justice of Appeal	Alan Orr was a quiet unassuming judge of exceptional quality. His career reminds us that good judges do not need, and are often better without, a charismatic public personality. In court he listened, he perceived truth with a quick and accurate mind and he knew the law: the result was findings of fact based on a detailed and perceptive understanding of the evidence, with the law applied accurately and lucidly. Not many appeals against an Orr judgement succeeded.
	John Marshall Harlan II	1920 Rhodes Scholar	Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court	Divorced from their 'prurient interest' appeal to the unfortunate persons whose patronage they were aimed at capturing (a separate issue), these portrayals of the male nude cannot fairly be regarded as more objectionable than many portrayals of the female nude that society tolerates.
	Charles Bowen	1853	Lord Justice of Appeal	Coined the phrase "the man on the Clapham omnibus" denoting the legal concept of a reasonable person.
	Joseph William Chitty	1847	High Court Justice Liberal MP for City of Oxford 1880	When a piece of plaster fell from the ceiling in his courtroom, he aptly quoted 'fiat justitia, ruat coelum' ('let justice be done though the heavens fall') and he once famously remarked that 'truth will sometimes leak out even through an affidavit'
	John Coleridge	1838	Lord Chief Justice	a man has no right to declare temptation to be an excuse, though he might himself have yielded to it, nor allow compassion for the criminal to change or weaken in any manner the legal definition of the crime. It is therefore our duty to declare that the prisoners' act in this case was wilful murder, that the facts as stated in the verdict are no legal justification of the homicide; and to say that in our unanimous opinion the prisoners are upon this special verdict guilty of murder.
	Henry Bathurst	1730	Lord High Chancellor MP for Cirencester 1735	He was instrumental in writing the Intolerable Acts, most notably the Boston Port Act 1774 which led to the Boston Tea Party and revolution.
	Thomas Coventry	1592	Lord Keeper of the Great Seal MP for Droitwich 1621	In 1631 he passed sentence of death on Lord Audley who was convicted of raping his wife and committing sodomy with two of his servants
	John Popham	1549	Lord Chief Justice 1592–1607 MP for Lyme Regis in 1558 and for Bristol in 1571	In 1595 Popham presided over the trial of the Jesuit Robert Southwell and passed a sentence of death by hanging, drawing and quartering. He also presided over the trials of Sir Walter Raleigh (1603) and the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot, including Guy Fawkes (1606). He was also involved in the trial at Fotheringhay Castle of Mary, Queen of Scots (1587) which resulted in her execution.

Lawyers

Image	Name	Join Date	Branch	Focus	Refs
	Gautam Bhatia	2011 Rhodes Scholar	India Constitutional law	Offend, Shock, Or Disturb: Free Speech Under the Indian Constitution 2016 Also Science fiction author
	Jennifer Robinson	2006 Rhodes Scholar	Human rights barrister	the "alphabet soup" case Julian Assange and Wikileaks "Silenced Women: Why The Law Fails Women and How to Fight Back" 2024
	Rose-Marie Belle Antoine	1994	Labour law	Professor of Labor Law and Offshore Financial Law pro-vice chancellor, graduate studies, University of the West Indies
	Clare Moriarty	1982	Chief Executive Citizens Advice	Permanent Secretary at the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and then Permanent Secretary at the Department for Exiting the European Union
	Joel Bakan	1981	Constitutional law	Professor, University of Columbia The New Corporation: How "good" corporations are bad for democracy 2020
	Simon Walsh	1980	Police law barrister	Magistrate
	Jane Stapleton	1980	FBA, Fellow Law of tort	Ernest E. Smith Professor of Law at the University of Texas at Austin Master of Christ's College, Cambridge 2016-2022
	Hugh Tomlinson	1973	Media law Privacy law barrister	Co-founder of Matrix Chambers 2000
	George Carman	1949	Celebrity defence barrister	Defended Jeremy Thorpe, leader of the Liberal Party against charges of conspiracy and incitement to murder
	Peter Benenson	1939	Human rights barrister	founder Amnesty International
	Nicholas Katzenbach	1947 Rhodes Scholar	US Attorney General	Confronted George Wallace, the governor of Alabama, who was standing in a schoolhouse door preventing the integration of black students 1963
	Courtenay Ilbert	1860	Constitutional law	Clerk of the House of Commons
	Charles Isaac Elton	1856	property law antiquary MP West Somerset 1884	"The Great Book Collectors"
	Albert Venn Dicey	1853	Constitutional law	Professor at Oxford Professor at LSE popularised the phrase "the rule of law"

Notes

1. Miller v College of Police EWHC 225 (Admin)
2. ^ Balliol College Register (Seventh Edition) by Tom Bewley and John Jones. 2005.
3. Miller/Cherry UKSC 41
4. HJ and HT v Home Secretary UKSC 31
5. Scottish Daily Record v Procurator Fiscal HCJAC 24
6. S (CHILDREN) Re: S (Children) EWCA Civ 583
7. Brooke H, 'Computers and Judges', Commentary, 1997 (3) The Journal of Information, Law and Technology (JILT)
8. R v Wang UKHL 9
9. Balliol College Register (Fifth Edition) by John Jones and Sally Viney 1983
10. Enterprises, Inc. v. Day 370 U.S. 478 1962
11. Balliol College Register (Third Edition) by Ivo Elliott 1953
12. Sir Richard Henn Collins MR in McQuire v. Western Morning News ( 2 KB 100)
13. ^ Balliol College Register (Second Edition)
14. Sir Joseph William Chitty ODNB
15. R v Dudley and Stephens (1884) 14 QBD 273, DC
16. "Bathurst, Earls" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). 1911. p. 520. see para 2:- Henry, 2nd Earl Bathurst (1714–1794), was the eldest surviving son of the 1st earl. Educated at Balliol College, Oxford, he was....
17. "Thomas Coventry" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 7 (11th ed.). 1911. pp. 340–341. see lines 3-4:- ....was born in 1578. He entered Balliol College, Oxford, in 1592, a...
18. John Popham ODNB. The college does not have an extant record of his being a student and the university has no record of his receiving a degree.

• Lists of judges
• Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford
• Lists of people associated with the University of Oxford
• People associated with Balliol College, Oxford