Garden Court is very pleased to announce that our colleague Dexter Dias QC has been appointed as a Deputy High Court Judge after the recent open competition. Dexter is one of few people who also has authorisation to act as a Judge of the High Court under Section 9(1) of the Senior Courts Act 1981, where he has jurisdiction to sit in the Queen's Bench and Family Divisions of the High Court.
Dexter's practice at the Bar focuses on international human rights, public law and serious crime. Garden Court sends our congratulations to Dexter.
Dexter Dias QC is an award-winning barrister (Queen's Counsel) who has been instructed in some of the biggest cases of recent years involving human rights, murder, crimes against humanity, terrorism, war crimes and genocide.
He has also played a pivotal role in public inquiries and inquests that are watersheds in the developing law of the land.
Dexter has been instrumental in changing the law to better protect young women and girls at risk of FGM and works internationally on human rights with victims and survivors of abuse of institutional power and harmful social practices. He is Chair of the Global Media Campaign to End FGM (a development of The Guardian newspaper's project).
Dexter is a prize-winning scholar of Cambridge University, having been elected to a Foundation Scholarship at Jesus College and winning the Lopez-Rey Prize for the highest Distinction in his research degree at the Faculty of Law's Institute of Criminology, where he critically analysed the use of state coercive force on vulnerable young people in custody.
He was a finalist in Liberty & Justice's Human Rights Lawyer of the Year, nominated for "his outstanding commitment to the rule of law and justice for all; for his deep devotion to ensure that the voices of the weakest in society are heard."
Dexter is the author of The Ten Types of Human (Penguin Random House, 2018), a book based on ten years of his social justice research and his three decades' human rights practice. The book subsequently inspired a podcast The 100 Types of Human.
He is also a Crown Court Recorder authorised to sit at the Old Bailey and on Serious Sexual Offences, and is Visiting Researcher at Cambridge University and recently Harvard.
Dexter Dias QC will continue to practice at Garden Court Chambers.
