Donald Nicholls, Baron Nicholls of Birkenhead

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Donald James Nicholls, Baron Nicholls of Birkenhead QC (born 25 January 1933), is a British lawyer and Law Lord (Lord of Appeal in Ordinary).

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, taking silk as a Queen's Counsel in 1974. He was made a High Court Judge in 1983, the same year in which he was knighted, before rising to the rank of Lord Justice of Appeal, a position in which he served until 1991. He became Vice-Chancellor of the Supreme Court between 1991–94, before his appointment to a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and elevation to a life peer as Baron Nicholls of Birkenhead, of Stoke d'Abernon in the County of Surrey.

In 1998, Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead and the other British Law Lords came to the international fore in deciding whether Sen. 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.

Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead said:

International law has made plain that certain types of conduct, including torture and hostage-taking, are not acceptable conduct on the part of anyone. This applies as much to heads of state, or even more so, as it does to everyone else. The contrary conclusion would make a mockery of international law."

In 2004 Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead stated in part of the ruling against Part 4 of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 which allowed indefinite detention without trial, that:

The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these. That is the true measure of what terrorism may achieve. It is for Parliament to decide whether to give the terrorists such a victory.[1]

On 13 December 2006 it was announced that he will retire as Lord of Appeal on 10 January 2007^[1].