Sir Andrew Nicol, the high court judge who presided over Johnny Depp's 2020 libel case against the Sun newspaper, has died aged 75. He was a founding member of Doughty Street Chambers and a leading barrister in immigration and media law before his judicial appointment in 2009.
Nicol's death was confirmed in an obituary published on 22 August 2026. Born on 9 May 1951, he was the elder child of Margaret (nee Mason), a physiotherapist, and Duncan Nicol, a gas engineer. He grew up in Ashtead, Surrey, and attended the City of London Freemen's school in Ashtead Park.
After completing a law degree at Cambridge and a master's at Harvard, Nicol worked in housing policy for the state of California from 1975 to 1976. He then spent a year at a commercial law firm in Sydney before returning to London in 1977 to lecture in law at the London School of Economics (LSE).
Career as a barrister and civil liberties champion
Nicol's career path changed when he became a pupil of the obituary's author, Geoffrey Robertson, during the 1978 ABC official secrets trial. On the first day of that trial, Jeremy Hutchinson QC discovered that the attorney general, Sam Silkin, had secretly ordered jury vetting for 'extremist opinions'. Nicol was tasked with finding authority to object. He rushed to the LSE library to retrieve Jeremy Bentham's 1821 book The Elements of the Art of Packing, as Applied to Special Juries, which denounced the practice. Hutchinson quoted it extensively in his submission that the trial was unconstitutional, a case later celebrated in a book by EP Thompson and a booklet by Harriet Harman, then solicitor for the National Council for Civil Liberties.
Called to the bar at the Middle Temple, Nicol joined chambers at 1 Dr Johnson's Buildings, headed by Emlyn Hooson and John Mortimer. He built a practice in immigration law, publishing Subjects, Citizens, Aliens and Others in 1990. In 1986, he acted for David Leigh and the Observer in a case that ended the practice of withholding magistrates' names from the press. The divisional court declared: 'There is no such thing as an anonymous JP.'
Nicol also helped defend the New Statesman against a contempt of court charge for interviewing jurors in the 1979 Jeremy Thorpe trial. On that occasion, he was reported to the Bar Council for wearing brown shoes, which under traditional rules could not be worn beneath a black gown.
Founding Doughty Street Chambers and key legal victories
Nicol maintained his LSE lectureship until 1987, where he talent-spotted students for pupillages, including Heather Rogers KC and Mrs Justice Heather Williams. In 1990, he and Robertson established Doughty Street Chambers. Nicol served as treasurer and on the management committee, and he was made a QC in 1995.
He represented the UK representatives of the African National Congress in a false imprisonment case against the apartheid South African government. In 1996, he established the duty of police under the Race Relations Act not to discriminate against Black victims of crime, even if the victim had not expressly requested help.
Nicol was the intellectual architect of the appeal in the case of Kiranjit Ahluwalia, a battered wife who killed her husband in 1989 after an arranged marriage. She had been convicted of murder and jailed for life, but Nicol argued she suffered diminished responsibility. The chief justice, Peter Taylor, accepted the argument in 1992, reducing the offence to manslaughter and enabling her immediate release. The case has served as a precedent for domestic violence victims.
Media law and judicial career
In 1984, Nicol and Robertson wrote the first book titled Media Law. They considered calling it The Journalists' Toothbrush because many reporters were summonsed to court and advised to pack overnight bags in case they were imprisoned. The book began as a slim volume but by its fifth edition ran to more than 1,000 pages.
Nicol and Robertson wrote separate chapters under the same names. Robertson's opinion that a secret trial was not a trial at all was cited years later, to Nicol's embarrassment, when as a judge he imposed a blanket secrecy order on a terrorist trial. His own book was quoted on an appeal from his own decision, and that decision was overturned.
As a judge, Nicol was punctilious and learned. His ruling against Depp in 2020 was considered appeal-proof, despite social media condemnation from Depp's fans. It was not undermined by the 2022 US proceedings in which Depp and Heard sued each other. There, jurors ruled in favour of Depp's defamation claim across three counts, awarding him $15m. Heard won on one count of her countersuit, receiving $2m.
Personal life and legacy
Nicol was kind, unassuming, and had an infectious sense of humour. He was generous in helping younger barristers at Doughty Street. Tall and skinny, he was welcoming to those he knew well and those he barely knew. He served as presiding judge on the South-Eastern Circuit from 2011 to 2014 and deputy chairman of the Boundary Commission from 2017 to 2020.
Politically, he was on the side of social justice, a commitment shared by his longtime partner, Camilla Palmer KC, an equality law specialist and mediator at Doughty Street, whom he married in 2005. They lived in north London and raised two sons, Robert and Jamie. He is survived by them, a granddaughter named Lark, and his sister, Fiona.
