Brian Neill

Sir Brian Thomas Neill PC (August 2, 1923 – December 24, 2017) was a British jurist.

He was the son of Sir Thomas Neill, JP and the elder brother of Patrick Neill, Baron Neill of Bladen.

He was educated at Highgate School, where he later served as a Governor for 21 years.

After serving as a Captain in the Rifle Brigade in World War II he attended Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he was later elected an Honorary Fellow in 1986. He was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1949, eventually becoming a Queen's Counsel in 1968. In 1972 he became a Recorder of the Crown Court. In 1980-81 he served as Master of the Turners' Company.

As is customary with such judicial appointments, Neill became a Knight Bachelor in 1978 on being named to the High Court of Justice, Queen's Bench Division and was sworn of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom in 1985 on being named a Lord Justice of Appeal.

On concluding his service on the Court of Appeal in 1996 he joined the Judiciary of Gibraltar, becoming a Lord Justice, in 1997, and President, in 1998, of the Court of Appeal there before retiring in 2003.

He then returned to practice as an arbitrator in Chambers, joined by his brother.

In 2015 he was appointed a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur.

Reading

 * Essays in Honour of Sir Brian Neill: The Quintessential Judge, edited by Lord Saville and Richard Susskind, foreword by Lord Woolf and Lord Bingham, LexisNexis Butterworths, 2003.
 * Telegraph obituary (subscription required)