Leonard Hoffmann, Baron Hoffmann

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Leonard Hubert "Lenny" Hoffmann, Baron Hoffmann, PC (賀輔明勳爵) (born 1934 in Cape Town, South Africa) is a senior British judge, serving as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary.

Born into a Jewish family near Cape Town, Lord Hoffmann was the son of a well-known solicitor. He was educated at Cape Town University and then attended The Queen's College, Oxford, as a Rhodes scholar. He studied for the BCL, thought by many to be the leading graduate law degree in the common law world, where he won the Vinerian Scholarship. After being called to the Bar, he became one of the most sought after and highly-priced barristers of his generation and was quickly made a judge.

In 1995 Hoffmann was appointed a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and thereby created a life peer by the title of Baron Hoffmann, of Chedworth in the County of Gloucestershire.

His failure to declare his links with Amnesty International before ruling on whether General Pinochet was immune from prosecution led to the unprecedented setting aside of a House of Lords judgment. He later went on to comment "The fact is I'm not biased. I am a lawyer. I do things as a judge. The fact that my wife works as a secretary for Amnesty International is, as far as I am concerned, neither here nor there," he told the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

Hoffmann is a non-permanent judge of Hong Kong SAR Court of Final Appeal.

[edit] Cases Decided

Standard Chartered Bank v Pakistan National Shipping Corp (No 2) [2003] 1 AC 959.

Co-operative Insurance Society Ltd. v Argyll Stores [1997] UKHL 17.