Geoffrey Robertson

Geoffrey Ronald Robertson QC (born September 30 1946 in Sydney, New South Wales) is an Australian human rights lawyer, academic, author and broadcaster. He holds dual Australian and British citizenship. Geoffrey Robertson is joint head of Doughty Street Chambers. He serves as a Master of the Bench at the Middle Temple, a recorder and visiting professor at Queen Mary, University of London.

Biography

Geoffrey Robertson was born in Australia and grew up in the Sydney suburb of Eastwood, attending Epping Boys' High School. He obtained his law degree from the Sydney University Law School before winning a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford. Robertson married author Kathy Lette in 1990 and currently lives with her and their two children in London.

Legal career

Robertson became a barrister in 1973. He became a QC in 1988. His became well known acting for the defence in the celebrated English criminal trials of Oz, Gay News, the 'ABC Trial', The Romans in Britain (the prosecution brought by Mary Whitehouse), Randle & Pottle, the Brighton bombing and Matrix Churchill. He has also acted in well known libel cases, including defending the Guardian against Neil Hamilton MP. He has appeared in civil liberties cases before the European Court of Human Rights and in other courts across the world. He sits as an appeal judge at the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone.

Media career

Over a twenty year period, often with long intervals in between, Robertson has hosted an Australian television series of programmes called Geoffrey Robertson's Hypotheticals. These shows invite notable people, often including former and current political leaders, to discuss contemporary issues by assuming imagined identities in hypothetical situations.

Writing career

Robertson has written several books. One of them, The Justice Game is on the school curriculum in New South Wales, Australia. His latest book, The Tyrannicide Brief, details the story of John Cooke, who prosecuted King Charles I of England in the treason trial that led to his execution. After the Restoration, Cooke was convicted of high treason and hung, drawn and quartered. In his 2006 revision of Crimes Against Humanity, Robertson deals in detail with human rights, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The book starts with the history of human rights and has several case studies such as the case of General Pinochet of Chile, the Balkans wars, and the latest war in Iraq. His views on the United States' atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan can be considered controversial. He considers the Hiroshima bomb was certainly justified, and that the second bomb on Nagasaki was most probably justified but might have been better if it was dropped outside a city. His argument is that the bombs, while killing more than 100,000 civilians, were justified because they pushed Emperor Hirohito of Japan to surrender, thus saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of Allied forces, as well as Japanese soldiers and civilians.

Bibliography

• The Tyrannicide Brief, Chatto & Windus, 2005
• Crimes Against Humanity - The Struggle for Global Justice, Alan Lane, 1999; revised 2002 (Penguin paperback) and 2006
• The Justice Game, 1998 Chatto; Viking edition 1999
• Media Law (with Andrew Nicol QC), Fourth edition, November 2001, Sweet and Maxwell
• Freedom the Individual and the Law, Penguin, 1993 (7th ed)
• Geoffrey Robertson's Hypotheticals - A New Collection, ABC, 1991
• Does Dracula Have Aids?, Angus and Robertson, 1987
• Geoffrey Robertson's Hypotheticals, Angus and Robertson, 1986
• People Against the Press, Quartet, 1983
• Obscenity, Wiedenfeld and Nicolson, 1979
• Reluctant Judas, Temple-Smith, 1976

External links

• Official website