Durham Law School
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Prof Gavin Phillipson, BA, LLM (Cantab)

Professor in Durham Law School
Telephone: +44 (0) 191 33 42805
Fax: +44 (0) 191 33 42801
Room number: 010
Member of the Human Rights Centre

Contact (email at gavin.phillipson@durham.ac.uk)

Biography

Gavin Phillipson joined the Department of Law at Durham on 1st January 2007 from King’s College London, where he was a Senior Lecturer. He was previously at Durham for five years from 2000, as Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer and Deputy Director of Durham’s Human Rights Centre, having earlier held lectureships at the Universities of Sussex and Essex, and qualified as a solicitor in 1995. He also currently holds the position of Senior Fellow, Centre for Media and Communications Law, University of Melbourne.
He is author of several recent leading articles on civil liberties and the Human Rights Act (HRA), as well as co-author of two books and co-editor of a leading edited collection. His most important contribution has been in the area of the development of a common law right to privacy, on which he has published several influential articles. His 'Transforming Breach of Confidence? Towards a common law right to privacy under the Human Rights Act' (2003) 66(5) Modern Law Review 726, has been cited with approval by the House of Lords in Naomi Campbell v Mirror Group Newspapers (2004), by the New Zealand Court of Appeal in Hoskings v Runtings (2004) and by the UK Court of Appeal in Douglas and Zeta-Jones v Hello! (2005). His analysis of Strasbourg case law in his recent book Media Freedom under the Human Rights Act (2006), (co-author Helen Fenwick) has been used by the Court of Appeal in the recent decision in McKennit v Ash [2006] EWCA 1714 at [40] and [41].
The focus of his research, in addition to privacy, is in four other main areas: House of Lords reform, the so-called "horizontal effect" of the HRA (his work on this was cited by the Court of Appeal in X v. Y, [2004] ICR 1634), the impact of the HRA on aspects of UK public order law affecting the right to freedom of assembly, in particular the "direct action" form of protest and its effect on UK anti-terrorism law and policy. He has delivered a number of papers on aspects of civil liberties and the Human Rights Act to international symposia in Dublin, Singapore, Berlin, Warsaw, North Carolina and Bari, to invited academics and practitioners in Melbourne and Sydney, to LIBERTY in London and has acted as one of a panel of advisers to the Northern Human Rights Commission on the draft Northern Ireland Bill of Rights in a meeting in October 2004 in Belfast, and adviser to the Canadian High Commissioner on anti-terrorism laws in 2006.
He was invited to give a lecture in UCL’s Current Legal Problems series in 2006, to give a paper on the UK perspective on contempt law at a prestitious international conference, The Court of Public Opinion, at Duke Law School, USA in September 2007; he spoke by invitation on US contempt law at a conference in Bari, Italy, The Relationship Between Justice and the Mass Media, in July 2008. He has been a visiting scholar at the Universities of Melbourne and New South Wales in Sydney and has taught on comparative law privacy courses on the LLM programmes at Melbourne, Kings College London and City University, London.
He published his monograph, Media Freedom under the Human Rights Act (2006, OUP), jointly authored with Professor Helen Fenwick of Durham University. The book provides a scholarly, comparative, and theoretically informed treatment of selected topics of UK media law that have a direct relationship with human rights; it was favourably reviewed by Professor Cram in Public Law (2007) (Winter) 852-855. He is co-editor with Professor Fenwick and Roger Masterman, also of the Law Department, of a leading edited collection, Judicial Reasoning Under the Human Rights Act (Cambridge: CUP, 2007) which arose out of a three year project carried out by the Human Rights Centre, and funded by a major award from the AHRB. He has two chapters in the book and co-wrote the Introduction. It whas been favourably reviewed in Public Law (2008, Sum), 406-407.

Teaching Areas

Constitutional Law
Human Rights
Media Law

Research Interests

  • The Human Rights Act, its constitutional significance, judicial deference; horizontal effect.
  • Freedom of Speech and Media Freedom in English law under the Human Rights Act
  • The right to privacy in English law and media freedom; comparative privacy law.
  • Anti-terrorism law and policy and human rights
  • Freedom of public protest, esp direct action.
  • House of Lords reform.

Selected Publications

Books: authored

Books: edited

  • Phillipson, G., Fenwick, H.M. & Masterman, R. 2007. Judicial Reasoning under the UK Human Rights Act. Cambridge University Press.

Books: sections

  • Fenwick, Helen. & Phillipson, G. 2008. The Human Rights Act, public protest and judicial activism. In Free to Protest: Constituent Power and Street Demonstration. Sajó, András. Utrecht: Eleven International Publishing. 189-219. (Additional information) (View publication online)
  • Phillipson, G. 2007. 'The Common Law, Privacy and the Convention'. In Judical Reasoning under the UK Human Rights Act. Fenwick, H.M., Phillipson, G. & Masterman, R. Cambridge University Press. 215-254.
  • Phillipson, G. 2007. Clarity Postponed: Horizontal Effect after Campbell and Re S. In Judical Reasoning under the UK Human Rights Act. Fenwick, H.M., Phillipson, G. & Masterman, R. Cambridge University Press. 143-173. (Additional information) (View publication online)
  • Phillipson, G., Fenwick, H.M. & Masterman, R. 2007. Introduction: the Human Rights Act in Contemporary Perspective. In Judical Reasoning under the UK Human Rights Act. Cambridge University Press. 1-21.

Journal papers: academic

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