[1] Baroness Hale of Richmond observed that his pioneering role in the formation of the United Kingdom Supreme Court may be his most important and long-lasting legacy.

[4] After retiring from the judiciary in 2008, Bingham focused on teaching, writing, and lecturing on legal subjects, particularly the law of human rights.

His parents, Thomas Henry (1901–1981) and Catherine Bingham (née Watterson; 1903–1989), practised as doctors in Reigate, Surrey.

His father was born in Belfast,[5] a kinsman of the Earls of Lucan;[citation needed] his mother was from California before being raised on the Isle of Man.

He enjoyed history, took up fell-walking, and developed a strong attachment to the Church of England; he was a Head of House and a School Prefect.

He won an open scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, first undertaking National Service from 1952 to 1954, as a second lieutenant in the Royal Ulster Rifles serving in Hong Kong.

[18] Bingham succeeded Lord Donaldson as Master of the Rolls in 1992 and initiated significant reforms, including a move towards the replacement of certain oral hearings in major civil law cases.

Bingham was a strong advocate of divorcing the judicial branch of the House of Lords from its legislative functions by setting up a new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, which was accomplished under the Constitutional Reform Act 2005.

[20] Bingham oversaw an increasing workload of constitutional affairs after Scottish devolution, and human rights matters after the Human Rights Act came into force, and assembled the first nine-judge panels for important cases since 1910, including the Belmarsh Case in December 2004 which reviewed the regime for indefinite detention of foreign nationals suspected of involvement in terrorism who could not be deported due to the risk of torture in their home countries, holding that the regimes might breach the Human Rights Act.

As Master of the Rolls, Bingham served on the Advisory Council on Public Records, the Magna Carta Trust, and the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts.

In 2009, Bingham became involved with Reprieve, a UK charity,[25] as well as delivering the fourth annual Jan Grodecki Lecture at the University of Leicester, entitled The House of Lords: Its Future.

He said that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was "a serious violation of international law", and he accused Britain and the US of acting like a "world vigilante".

[29] His book, The Rule of Law, was published by Allen Lane in 2010; it won the 2011 Orwell Prize for Literature.

[30] Diagnosed with lung cancer in 2009 (he was a non-smoker), Bingham died the following year, and is buried at St Cynog's Church at Boughrood in Powys, Wales.