Geoffrey Robertson QC & Caoilfhionn Gallagher reflect on the triumphs & challenges of human rights since 1990
Doughty Street Chambers celebrates its 25th birthday this year. It was founded in 1990 by 21 like-minded barristers who wanted to leave the Dickensian rabbit warren of the Temple and found a new Chambers dedicated to the shared ethos that—as Baroness Helena Kennedy QC has put it “law had to serve all of the people, lawyers had to be creative, courageous and progressive and that we should be striving for the highest standards in the protection of civil liberties and the Rule of Law” (“Doughty Street: the Next 25 Years” in Rights: Up Our Street—Celebrating 25 Years of Doughty Street Chambers (November 2015)).
The 21 founders included Baroness Kennedy, Peter Thornton (now the chief coroner) and Keir Starmer, former DPP and now MP for Camden. Three associate tenants supported the new chambers: Sir Louis-Blom Cooper, the great South African silk, Ismael Mohammed QC, and leader of the Mauritius Bar, Guy Ollivry QC.
Landmark cases
1990 was a tumultuous and important year in many ways: Margaret Thatcher resigned as prime minister of the UK after over 11 years in power; Nelson Mandela was released from prison; Germany was reunified; and Tim Berners-Lee created the first web server and the foundation for the World Wide Web. It was against this backdrop that the founders decided that their work should be tackled with a rights based approach, even though this was a decade before the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA 1998) came into force. From the outset there were high profile, landmark human rights cases being undertaken: in 1990, the Blom Cooper Royal Commission exposed the corrupt relationship between the government of Antigua, the Israeli arms industry and Pablo Escobar’s Medellin drugs cartel. Goodwin v United Kingdom (App No 17488/90) established the right of a journalist to protect his or her source—a right unheard of in common law. Under police protection, Geoffrey Robertson QC defended Salman Rushdie in a case that virtually ended prosecutions for sedition and blasphemy (R v Chief Metropolitan Stipendiary Magistrate, ex parte Choudhury [1991] 1 All ER 306. At the “friendly fire” inquest, we persuaded a jury to bring back a verdict of “aerial manslaughter” on US pilots who had negligently killed nine British soldiers in the first Iraq war.
“Describing oneself as a human rights lawyer was unusual in 1990”
Wrongful convictions
From an early stage we had success in exposing wrongful convictions. For example, there was the case of the wife, Kiranjit Ahluwalia, beaten every day of her marriage, convicted of murder for burning her husband to death. With six experts, and working closely with Southall Black Sisters, we pioneered the defence of diminished responsibility as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder (R v Ahluwalia [1992] 4 All ER 889, 96 Cr App Rep 133). This was the first of our cases to be made into a movie (Provocation) – to Geoffrey’s children’s amusement he was played by Robbie Coltrane, forever to their minds Hagrid in Harry Potter.
In 1993 came the case of which Edward Fitzgerald QC and Geoffrey remain most proud: our assault on death rows in the Caribbean. The Westminster constitutions, vouchsafed to these countries by the UK, preserved the death penalty. But there was also a prohibition on torture, which was an exact description of the mental anguish to which those on death row were subjected, in most cases, for many years. So we argued, for a month, before seven law lords, that a prolonged stay on death row amounted to torture, and in consequence the capital sentence had to be commuted. That argument was upheld in Pratt v AG for Jamaica [1994] 2 AC 1, [1993] 4 All ER 769 and in consequence we understand that over 900 death sentences have since been commuted. Keir Starmer had Pratt followed by the courts in Malawi and Tanzania, and Edward Fitzgerald went on to argue a series of Privy Council cases which led to mandatory death sentences being declared unconstitutional.
Describing oneself as a human rights lawyer was unusual in 1990. It is a description which has become much more mainstream, particularly as HRA 1998 has begun to permeate so much of what lawyers in all fields do. We now undertake much campaigning and creative, strategic litigation work, to challenge discrimination and protect the most vulnerable in society. For example, there has been the dogged and ultimately successful work on behalf of Gary McKinnon, the Aspergers sufferer who would have committed suicide if extradited to a US “Supermax” prison; or the change to the law to ensure arrested 17-year-olds are treated as children, not adults, in the police station.
There are now many new challenges for human rights lawyers, and more importantly for their clients. Swingeing legal aid cuts undermine the ability of the most vulnerable and the voiceless in our society to have access to justice—to ensure that they are adequately protected when they face the power of the state, if they are charged with a crime or are involved in immigration or family law proceedings; or to ensure that they can effectively challenge breaches of common law or human rights standards. The legal profession must stand firm against these cuts and ensure that all should be able to defend their rights and challenge state discrimination and abuses, regardless of their finances. A quarter of a century on, we must all be “creative, courageous and progressive” and strive to protect the rule of law and access to justice for all.
Geoffrey Robertson QC & Caoilfhionn Gallagher, barristers, Doughty Street Chambers (www.doughtystreet.co.uk)
