Donald Nicholls, Baron Nicholls of Birkenhead


Donald James Nicholls, Baron Nicholls of Birkenhead, was a British barrister who became a Law Lord.

Biography

Nicholls was educated at Birkenhead School, before reading Law at Liverpool University and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He was called to the bar in 1958 as a member of the Middle Temple, becoming a Queen's Counsel in 1974. He was made a High Court judge on 30 September 1983, receiving the customary knighthood. On 10 February 1986, he was appointed a Lord Justice of Appeal and subsequently appointed to the Privy Council. He became Vice-Chancellor of the Supreme Court on 1 October 1991. He was appointed a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary on 3 October 1994 and consequently created a life peer as Baron Nicholls of Birkenhead, of Stoke d'Abernon in the County of Surrey.
In 1998, Nicholls and the other Law Lords came to the international fore in deciding whether Augusto Pinochet could be extradited to Spain. Three lords, including Nicholls, rejected the argument that Pinochet was immune from arrest and prosecution for his acts as Head of State in Chile. They said the State Immunity Act 1978 flouted a battery of international legislation on human rights abuses to which Britain is a signatory, and secondly, it would have meant endorsing the arguments of Pinochet's legal team that British law would have protected even Adolf Hitler. Nicholls said,
He became Second Senior Law Lord on 1 October 2002, and retired in 2007, succeeded by Lord Hoffmann.
From 1998 to 2004, he was a Non-Permanent Judge of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal.
He retired from the House of Lords on 3 April 2017.
He died on 25 September 2019 at the age of 86.

Judgments