Patrick Coghlin

Sir Patrick Coghlin, PC (born 7 November 1945), is a retired member of the Court of Appeal of Northern Ireland.

Educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, Coghlin was called to the Bar in Northern Ireland in 1970; England and Wales (Gray's Inn) in 1975; and the Republic of Ireland and New South Wales, Australia, in 1993. He became Junior Crown Counsel in 1983, serving until 1985, when he was made a Queen's Counsel. He served as a deputy County Court judge from 1983 to 1994, and as Senior Crown Counsel for Northern Ireland 1993–97. He was appointed a judge of the High Court of Justice of Northern Ireland on 7 April 1997,^[1] receiving the customary knighthood.

He was promoted to be a Lord Justice of Appeal of Northern Ireland on 5 September 2008.^[2] That year, he was also appointed to a five-year term as a judicial member of the Northern Ireland Judicial Appointments Commission. In consequence of his promotion, he was appointed to the Privy Council in 2009.^[3] He retired in 2015.

Coghlin was appointed President of the Lands Tribunal for Northern Ireland in 1999, and has been a member of the Council of the Association of European Competition Law Judges since 2002. He was elected an honorary bencher of Gray's Inn in 2000.^[4]

He served in the following roles:

• Vice-chairman Mental Health Review Tribunal for Northern Ireland, 1986–1997
• Member of Northern Ireland's Law Reform Advisory Committee, 1989–1993
• Vice-President of the Value Added Tax Tribunal for Northern Ireland, 1990–1993
• Chairman of the Executive Council of the Bar of Northern Ireland, 1991–1993
• Deputy Chair of the Boundary Commission for Northern Ireland, 1999–2002