Gavin Phillipson

Gavin Phillipson has held a Chair in Law since January 2007 and moved from Durham University to University of Bristol in 2019. He is also a qualified solicitor. His research and teaching interests cover aspects of UK constitutional law and practice, European, UK and comparative human law on free speech, public protest, privacy and anti-terrorism and the interface of these fields with constitutional and political theory. He has published widely in in top law journals in the UK, Australia, Canada and the US and is co-author of the leading text Media Freedom under the Human Rights Act (2006, OUP), with Fenwick. His work has been cited in judgments by the High Court, Court of Appeal, former House of Lords and Supreme Court in the UK, by the New Zealand Court of Appeal and by the Media Lawyer’s Association in their intervention to the European Court of Human Rights in the Hannover v Germany (no 2) (2012). His evidence on free speech issues has been cited by Parliament’s Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions and the Joint Committee on Human Rights; the Law Commission discussed his evidence on Abusive and Offensive Online Communications in its 2014 Report. He held an Academic Parliamentary Fellowship in the House of Commons library 2018-19, working on constitutional aspects of Brexit and his work has been cited extensively in parliamentary reports in both Houses on reforming the Fixed-term Parliaments Act and control of war powers. He was the academic member of the Ministry of Justice Working Group on Libel (2010), drafted parts of its report and his evidence on the Defamation Bill to the Joint Committee on Human Rights influenced the conclusions in the Committee’s Report (Dec 2012). He recently gave oral evidence to the House of Commons Justice Committee on the Bill of Rights Bill 2022.