25 Facts About Geoffrey Robertson

Geoffrey Robertson serves as a Master of the Bench at the Middle Temple, a recorder, and visiting professor at Queen Mary University of London.

Geoffrey Robertson was born in Sydney, Australia, and grew up in the suburb of Eastwood.

Geoffrey Robertson went to Epping Boys High School and then attended the University of Sydney, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1966 and a Bachelor of Laws with First-Class Honours in 1970, before winning a Rhodes Scholarship to study at the University of Oxford, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Civil Law from University College, Oxford in 1972.

In 1990, Geoffrey Robertson married the author Kathy Lette, and they lived together in London with their children until their separation in 2017.

Geoffrey Robertson won Australian Humanist of the Year in 2014 for his work as a human rights lawyer and advocate.

Geoffrey Robertson became a barrister in 1973, and was appointed QC in 1988.

Geoffrey Robertson has acted in well known libel cases, including defending The Guardian against Neil Hamilton MP.

Geoffrey Robertson was employed to defend John Stonehouse after his unsuccessful attempt at faking his own death in 1974.

Geoffrey Robertson then appealed the case to the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

In December 2002 Geoffrey Robertson was retained by The Washington Post to represent its veteran war correspondent, Jonathan Randal, in The Hague at the United Nations Court, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Geoffrey Robertson established the principle of qualified privilege for the protection of journalists in war crimes courts.

In 2006 Geoffrey Robertson successfully defended The Wall Street Journal in Jameel v Wall Street Journal Europe.

In early 2007, instructed by the Indigenous lawyer Michael Mansell, Geoffrey Robertson took proceedings for the Aboriginal Tasmanians to recover 15 sets of their stolen ancestral remains, then being held in the basement of the Natural History Museum in London.

Geoffrey Robertson accused the museum of wishing to retain them for "genetic prospecting".

Geoffrey Robertson has appeared in cases before the European Court of Human Rights and in other courts across the world.

Geoffrey Robertson was involved in the controversial inquest of Helen Smith and in the Blom-Cooper Commission inquiry into the smuggling of guns from Israel through Antigua to Colombia.

Geoffrey Robertson has been on several human rights missions on behalf of Amnesty International, such as to Mozambique, Venda, Czechoslovakia, Malawi, Vietnam and South Africa.

In 2010 Geoffrey Robertson unsuccessfully defended Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, in extradition proceedings in the United Kingdom.

In 2013 Geoffrey Robertson was appointed an honorary associate of the National Secular Society.

Geoffrey Robertson called Dogu Perincek a "vexatious litigant pest" at the ECHR hearing.

From 2016, Geoffrey Robertson has been representing former Brazilian president Lula da Silva with appeals to the United Nations Human Rights Committee regarding Lula's treatment by the Brazilian justice system.

Geoffrey Robertson is a patron of the Media Legal Defence Initiative.

Geoffrey Robertson speaks at public events including many literary festivals.

Geoffrey Robertson considers the Hiroshima bomb was certainly justified, and that the second bomb on Nagasaki was most probably justified but that it might have been better if it was dropped outside a city.

Geoffrey Robertson's 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.