Timothy Otty KC
Tim Otty KC is widely recognised as a leading practitioner in public and private international law, state and diplomatic immunity, sanctions law, EU and Competition law, public law and civil liberties and human rights law. He also has extensive experience of commercial disputes particularly with an international dimension and sits as an arbitrator in investment treaty disputes. In November 2025 he was appointed to the Attorney General’s Senior Treasury Counsel Group.
In addition to his work at the Bar Tim is currently the United Kingdom’s representative on the Council of Europe’s European Commission for Democracy through Law, the Venice Commission. In December 2025 he was appointed Vice President of the Venice Commission. Tim is a visiting Professor at King’s College London and Notre Dame University in the United States having previously been a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University.
He took silk in 2006 as the youngest in his year, and has, since then enjoyed wide experience as Leading Counsel at all levels of United Kingdom courts, other Commonwealth domestic courts, and a range of international courts and tribunals. He has been Counsel to major constitutional inquiries relating to judicial misconduct in both the Cayman Islands and Gibraltar. He has appeared in more than 60 cases before the European Court of Human Rights and he has acted in an advisory capacity to United Nations office holders.
Among his most significant constitutional cases are successful challenges to the death penalty in Turkey, to the denial of habeas corpus rights for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and to the criminalisation of consensual homosexual conduct in multiple Commonwealth jurisdictions. He has appeared in the leading cases at the European Court of Human Rights relating to discrimination (Carson and Others v UK) and the inter-relationship between humanitarian law and human rights law (Hassan v UK) as well as before the Inter American Commission of Human Rights in the leading case in that forum on LGBT rights (Henry and Edwards v Jamaica).