Nicolas Bratza

The Honourable Sir Nicolas Bratza
Bratza at the Red Mass at Westminster Cathedral, 1 October 2010
President of the European Court of Human Rights
In office 3 November 2011 – 31 October 2012
Preceded by	Jean-Paul Costa
Succeeded by	Dean Spielmann
Judge of the European Court of Human Rights in respect of the United Kingdom
In office 1998 – 31 October 2012
Preceded by	Sir John Freeland
Succeeded by	Paul Mahoney
Personal details
Born	(1945-03-03) 3 March 1945 (age 72)
Nationality	British
Alma mater	University of Oxford
Profession	Barrister

Sir Nicolas Dušan Bratza (born 3 March 1945) is a British lawyer and a former President of the European Court of Human Rights.

Bratza was the Judge of the Court in respect of the United Kingdom, the second person to hold the post as a full-time appointment since Protocol 11 to the European Convention on Human Rights established the Court as a permanent body. His term ended on 31 October 2012. He was appointed as a Board member of the International Service for Human Rights in May 2013.

Bratza was born on 3 March 1945 and educated at Wimbledon College, a state-maintained Jesuit school for boys. His father was Milan Bratza, a Serbian concert violinist who settled in London after the First World War, and his mother, an operatic singer, came from the Russell family, which has produced three generations of Law Lords (Charles Russell, Frank Russell and Charles Ritchie Russell). He studied Law at Brasenose College, Oxford, and was awarded a first class degree. He then spent two years teaching at the University of Pennsylvania Law School before being called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1969, where he was a Hardwicke and Droop Scholar. He was appointed a Bencher of the Inn in 1993.

Bratza was appointed Junior Counsel to the Crown at Common Law in 1979 and took silk as Queen's Counsel in 1988. He acted in 1981 for the UK Government at the European Court of Human Rights against Jeffrey Dudgeon who complained successfully that the law in Northern Ireland, which made homosexual acts between consenting adult males a criminal offence, was a breach of the Convention. In 1993, Bratza was appointed a Recorder of the Crown Court and elected a Bencher of Lincoln's Inn.