Stephen Grosz

Partner
Human rights and public law

Stephen is Head of Public Law and Human Rights at Bindmans LLP. He specialises in public and administrative law and human rights cases, both before the domestic courts and in the Strasbourg and Luxembourg courts. Stephen has advised a coalition of health and child care professionals on human rights and protocols concerning sexual activity in young people. He advises the Equitable Members Action Group and the Pensions Act Group on public law matters arising out of Parliamentary Ombudsman investigations, and he is advising on the lawfulness of rules on the time limit for making complaints to the Financial Ombudsman Service about endowment mortgage mis-selling. He has also acted in human rights cases against Turkey, Latvia, Romania and Hungary.

Case history:

Marshall v Southampton & S W Hampshire Area Health Authority:
concerning sex discrimination in retirement ages, and the level of compensation payable in sex discrimination claims.
Lustig-Prean v UK:
concerning the ban on gays and lesbians in the armed forces.
Sutherland v UK:
a case about discrimination in the age of consent for gay men.
Ghaidan v Mendoza:
about the succession rights for survivors of gay relationships.
R v Foreign Secretary ex parte World Development Movement:
about development aid for the Pergau Dam.

Stephen is chair of the Law Society’s Domestic Human Rights Reference Group; a member of the Council and Executive Committee of JUSTICE; a member of the advisory council of the British Institute of Human Rights; vice-chair of the management committee of the Human Rights Lawyers’ Association; a member of the editorial board of Judicial Review Quarterly; and a member of the Advisory Committee of the College of Law. He is the Law Society’s representative on the Department for Constitutional Affairs ministerial forum on human rights.

He is co-author of Human Rights: Judicial Protection in the United Kingdom (Sweet & Maxwell, 2008). He is also the co-author, with Peter Duffy QC and Sir Jack Beatson, of Human Rights: the 1998 Act and the European Convention (Sweet & Maxwell, 2000), and a columnist on human rights for the Law Society’s Gazette.

Stephen graduated in law from Clare College Cambridge in 1974, and has a post-graduate law degree (Licencié spéciale en droit européen) from the University of Brussels (1976).