Contact

• workRoom C99 Law and Social Sciences Building
  University Park
  Nottingham
  NG7 2RD
  UK
• Oliver.Butler@nottingham.ac.uk

Biography

Dr Oliver Butler joined the School of Law as an Assistant Professor in Law in September 2021. He read law at the University of Cambridge, graduating in 2010. He received a Distinction on the BCL at the University of Oxford in 2011, where he was the Supperstone Law Scholar and received the Faculty Prize in Constitutional Theory. He graduated from the LLM at Harvard Law School in 2012, which he attended on a Herchel Smith Scholarship. He received the Princess Royal Scholarship from Inner Temple and was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 2013. Oliver then worked at the Law Commission of England and Wales as a research assistant on the Data Sharing between Public Bodies project, which published its report in 2014. Oliver returned to the University of Cambridge for his PhD funded by the AHRC, on the development of information law in the UK and Europe, which he completed in 2018. From 2017 to 2021, he was a fixed-term Fellow at Wadham College, University of Oxford, jointly with a research fellowship at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights. During that time, he taught constitutional, administrative and human rights law on the BA and BCL and researched emerging digital rights.

Teaching Summary

Public Law.

Research Summary

Oliver is currently researching the regulation of information, with a particular focus on the fundamental rights to privacy and data protection as they have developed in Europe and are influencing… read more

Recent Publications

• 2025. Algorithmic Decision-Making, Delegation and the Modern Machinery of Government Oxford Journal of Legal Studies. (In Press.)
• OLIVER BUTLER, 2025. The Public Interest in Non-Publicity. In: JENNY RUSSELL and LEWIS GRAHAM, eds., Private Law and the UK Supreme Court: Key Cases and Decisions Routledge. (In Press.)
• JOE TOMLINSON, NAOISE COAKELY, OLIVER BUTLER, STERGIOS AIDINLIS, CASSANDRA SOMERS-JOCE, JED MEERS and ELIZABETH O'LOUGHLIN, 2025. The Law of Public Data Gaps. In: YEE-FUI NG and MATTHEW GROVES, eds., Automated in Public Governance – Theory, Practice and Problems Hart Bloomsbury. (In Press.)
• OLIVER BUTLER, 2022. Official Secrecy and the Criminalisation of Unauthorised Disclosures Law Quarterly Review. 138, 273

• View all publications

Current Research

Oliver is currently researching the regulation of information, with a particular focus on the fundamental rights to privacy and data protection as they have developed in Europe and are influencing other regional and transnational approaches. He is also researching the regulation of algorithmic decision-making, including the ways in which the application of computer-generated knowledge will challenge the traditional assumptions that underpin the judicial review of administrative decision-making.

Past Research

Oliver worked as an academic consultant on the Law Commission's Protection of Official Data Project from October 2017 to July 2019.

• 2025. Algorithmic Decision-Making, Delegation and the Modern Machinery of Government Oxford Journal of Legal Studies. (In Press.)
• OLIVER BUTLER, 2025. The Public Interest in Non-Publicity. In: JENNY RUSSELL and LEWIS GRAHAM, eds., Private Law and the UK Supreme Court: Key Cases and Decisions Routledge. (In Press.)
• JOE TOMLINSON, NAOISE COAKELY, OLIVER BUTLER, STERGIOS AIDINLIS, CASSANDRA SOMERS-JOCE, JED MEERS and ELIZABETH O'LOUGHLIN, 2025. The Law of Public Data Gaps. In: YEE-FUI NG and MATTHEW GROVES, eds., Automated in Public Governance – Theory, Practice and Problems Hart Bloomsbury. (In Press.)
• OLIVER BUTLER, 2022. Official Secrecy and the Criminalisation of Unauthorised Disclosures Law Quarterly Review. 138, 273
• OLIVER BUTLER, 2021. The End of the Transition Period: Implications for UK Data Protection and Privacy Journal of Data Protection and Privacy. 4(1), 22
• OLIVER BUTLER, 2019. The Implications of a No-deal Brexit for Data Protection in the United Kingdom Journal of Data Protection and Privacy. 3(1), 7
• OLIVER BUTLER, 2018. Obligations Imposed on Private Parties by the GDPR and UK Data Protection Law: Blurring the Public-Private Divide European Public Law. 24(3), 555
• OLIVER BUTLER, 2016. The Expanding Scope of the Data Protection Directive: The Exception for a "Purely Personal or Household Activity" Journal of Information Rights, Policy and Practice. 1(1),