Dr Patrick O'Brien

I've been an academic lawyer and a non-practising barrister for the past two decades, researching judges, the courts and the nature of judicial independence and impartiality.

I have recently decided to take this knowledge and experience in a more practical direction, by starting my own independent mediation and dispute consultancy practice on the side of my academic work. Mediation is a quick, voluntary, confidential and cheap alternative to court disputes, where the parties – supported by the mediator in a structured process – agree their own settlement.

I am a qualified mediator, registered with the Civil Mediation Council in England and Wales, and a non-practising barrister called to the bars of England and Wales and of Ireland.

I am a Senior Lecturer in Public Law and Postgraduate Research Tutor for Law and Criminology at Oxford Brookes University. I am also Co-Director of the Centre for Law, Criminology and Social Justice Research at Brookes. I have previously worked at the LSE, at UCL and at the University of Oxford (from where I graduated with a doctorate in law). My academic work focusses on public law in general and judicial independence in particular, blending elements of constitutional and political theory with black letter constitutional and administrative law and practical policy.

If you ask nicely (and in person) I'll tell you a story about the judges who were allowed to take pet dogs to work.

Work in progress

I am currently working on a monograph project on trust in judges, which approaches this topic from a range of theoretical, legal and regulatory perspectives.

I am also in the very early exploratory stages of a separate project on the use of compulsory mediation by courts in England and Wales, looking at this from the perspective of the Art 6 ECHR right of access to the courts.

I blog very occasionally on the UK Constitutional Law Association blog, the Constitution Unit blog and aspire to doing so on my Substack (but as you will see if you click through, the latter is still very much 'to do'!).

Selected books and projects (links)

Research Handbook on Judging and the Judiciary (Edward Elgar 2025)

Leading Works in Public Law (Routledge 2024)

The Judicial Afterlife Project (2023)

The Politics of Judicial Independence in the UK's Changing Constitution (CUP 2015)

contact@patrickobrien.info

LinkedIn

Substack