We are delighted to announce that Professor Dimitrios Giannoupoulos has joined Garden Court Chambers as an associate tenant.
Professor Dimitrios Giannoulopoulos holds the Inaugural Chair in Law, and is the Head of the Department of Law, at Goldsmiths University of London. In October 2020, he was elected an Academic Bencher at the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Visiting Professor at the Panteion School of Social and Political Sciences in Athens.
Dimitrios has internationally leading expertise in how human rights norms are applied in national criminal justice systems across different legal cultures, particularly in the common law and civil law. He has published widely on improperly obtained evidence, suspects’ rights, evidence obtained in violation of the right to privacy, confessions, the right to a fair trial, the rule of law, politics and human rights, and the application of ECHR jurisprudence in domestic systems. He has taught criminal law, criminal procedure, criminal evidence, ECHR jurisprudence and comparative law for nearly twenty years.
Dimitrios’ monograph on Improperly Obtained Evidence in Anglo-American and Continental Law (Oxford, Hart Publishing, 2019) is the first book to offer an extensive cosmopolitan insight into the ‘exclusionary rule’ debate. It received outstanding reviews in leading journals, including the Modern Law Review, Criminal Law Review, and International Journal of Evidence & Proof, and was longlisted for the Inner Temple Book Prize (Major Prize). Dimitrios' latest book (with Prof Yvonne McDermott), Judicial Independence Under Threat (OUP, 2022), was published in the prestigious Proceedings of the British Academy series and explores threats to judicial independence in their legal, philosophical, political and historical contexts.
Linking legal academia with the Bar
In his role as Master of the Bench at the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, Prof Giannoulopoulos supports the strengthening of links between the Bar and legal academia, notably as a member of the Inn’s ‘Education & Training Committee’.
In joining Garden Court Chambers as an Associate Tenant, Prof Giannoulopoulos aims to further develop these links through contributing specialist research expertise in appropriate cases (especially where they lend themselves to the adoption of comparative and international human rights methodologies), supporting widening participation initiatives for prospective barristers from non-traditional backgrounds, and further advancing the integration of theory and practice in legal education (including through creating opportunities for University students to gain professional practice insights from Garden Court barristers and pupils). Professor Giannoulopoulos’ work on widening participation, equality, human rights and social justice mirrors those intrinsic in Garden Court Chambers’ mission to ‘fight injustice, defend human rights and uphold the rule of law’.
As the Inaugural Professor of Law at Goldsmiths, Dimitrios designed the LLB and LLM degrees in the Department of Law embedding equality, human rights and social justice as the central values and pedagogic philosophies that define the character of the Law programme.
Public engagement and impact
In recent years, Dimitrios has developed a strong interest in the impact of Euroscepticism, populism and Brexit on human rights, drawing on his cross-cultural research and dynamic public engagement work, and his ability for cross-cultural legal analysis. He was the founder and director of the academic thinktank, 'Britain in Europe', which contributed to public debate on EU membership, and provided analysis of the impact of Brexit (between 2016 and 2020), particularly on the rights of EU citizens in the UK. He also directed (2017-2020) the 'Knowing Our Rights' research project (funded by the Open Society Foundations), which sought to raise awareness about the impact of the European Convention on Human Rights in the UK.
Dimitrios’ contributions to public debate and analysis on Brexit and the Human Rights Act included: expert consultation to the Delegation of the EU to the UK, on the Independent Human Rights Act Review (March 2021); oral and written evidence to the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE) at the European Parliament (May 2017) and oral evidence to the House of Lords' EU Justice Sub-committee (October 2017).
His work in this area has been featured in publications such as Guardian, the Times, the Financial Times, Politico, the Prospect magazine, LBC, Euronews, France 24, Le Parisien, and Open Democracy, while he regularly appears on national radio and television in Greece, and frequently contributes op-ed pieces to Sunday papers there.
