With an established tradition of human rights expertise, Matrix Chambers ‘combines intellectual heft and sector-based knowledge with approachable and communicative barristers’ to represent vulnerable clients in prominent international criminal and human rights proceedings. Praised for her ’utterly brilliant written work and advocacy’, Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh KC represents South Africa in its International Court of Justice case against Israel, which it accuses of genocide regarding the war in Gaza following Hamas’s October 7th attack in 2023; Michelle Butler continues to represent the families of Israeli victims of physical and sexual violence as part of October 7th. Edward Craven KC took silk in 2025 and has ongoing involvement for the claimant in Abu Zubaydah v Home Office and Foreign & Commonwealth Office, which concerns allegations of international human rights abuses against UK and US authorities. Joanna Buckley was recently instructed to act before the UN’s Committee against Torture on behalf of Yazidi victims of slavery and torture, a case which raised complex cross-border conflict questions regarding non-state actors.
Legal 500 Editorial commentary
Profile
Position
Blinne is a human rights and international law expert with a broad criminal, civil and public law practice. She advises and acts for individuals, States, Non-Governmental Organisations, and other national and international bodies, arguing novel, complex and often high-profile points of law before domestic courts, including the Supreme Court, and before international courts and tribunals, including the International Court of Justice.
Her domestic practice includes cases involving the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of protest, discrimination and equality, international law, environmental law, national security, prisons, police.
Blinne was nominated Public International Law Junior of the Year in 2022. She was shortlisted for Barrister of the Year in 2022, Crime Junior of the Year in both 2020 and 2021, and for Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year in 2021. She was Times Lawyer of the Week in January 2022 and Irish Legal News Barrister of the Month in February 2022 for her defence of one of protesters who toppled the statue of the slaver Edward Colston in Bristol. She was appointed a Visiting Fellow at Harvard Law School in 2016, and a Pegasus Fellow to the Centre for Constitutional Right in New York in 2010.
She is called to the Bars of Ireland, North and South, in addition to the Bar of England and Wales. She is also on the International Criminal Court’s List of Counsel.
Languages
Fluent French, Basic Irish, Learning Arabic
Memberships
- Bar Human Rights Committee (former Vice Chair, current Executive Officer)
- Administrative Law Bar Association
- Criminal Bar Association
- Human Rights Lawyers Association
Education
- BA (Modern and Medieval Languages) Queens’ College, Cambridge (First Class Honours) Graduate Diploma in Law, University of Westminster (Distinction)
- Bar Vocational Course, Inns of Court School of Law (Outstanding)
- LLM International Legal Studies, New York University (equivalent Distinction)
- Visiting Fellowship, Harvard Law School (2015)
Fellowships and Awards
- Pegasus Scholarship, Inns of Court
- Phoenicia Scholarship, Bar European Group
- International Scholarship, Centre for Capital Punishment Studies
- Buchanan Prize, Lincoln’s Inn
- Bairstow Scholarship, ICSL
- St Thomas More Bursary, Lincoln’s Inn
- Lord Bowen Scholarship, Lincoln’s Inn
- Hardwicke Award, Lincoln’s Inn
- Foundation Scholarship, Queen’s College, Cambridge University
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Testimonials
Collated independently by Legal 500 research team.
- 'Clerks are good, especially Paul Venables.'
- 'Paul Venables must be highlighted for particular praise and credit. He knows the market in public international law better than any other clerk, and is highly effective at protecting the interests of the barristers with whom he works.'
- 'Good depth in senior and junior areas in this area of law.'
- 'Matrix is an incredibly experienced set for constitutional, public and international law. They manage to combine intellectual heft and sector-based knowledge with approachable and communicative barristers.'
- 'Matrix is outstanding.'